Olbermann: Inflated Terror

Inconsistent, incompetent and exaggerated reporting of terrorist threats? Whodathunk it? Keith Olbermann covers it on Countdown:

Nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics reported by the US Justice Department and the FBI from the September 11 attacks until early 2005 had some inaccuracies, the department's inspector general has said.

The findings drew immediate criticism from US senators, who said it raised serious doubts over how effectively the administration was fighting the terrorism threat.

...The report found that only two out of 26 statistics were accurate after reviewing the number of terrorism convictions in the 2003 and 2004 financial years, the number of convictions or guilty pleas from September 11, 2001, through February 3, 2005, and the number of terrorist threats tracked by the FBI in 2003 and 2004.

"We found many cases involving offenses such as immigration violations, marriage fraud, or drug trafficking where department officials provided no evidence to link the subject of the case to terrorist activity," the report said.

...Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and a judiciary committee member, said of the report: "The question I have now is whether the inaccuracies are an accident or if there was some other motive behind it."