Would You Believe 625 People?

Colin Powell publicly eats more crow related to bad data. This time around, it has to do with April's State Department report showing a decline in terrorist-related deaths and injuries.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the flawed report was the result of "computational and accounting errors" by the recently created Terrorism Threat Integration Centre and that neither the CIA nor the State Department caught the mistakes. But, Mr Powell denied Democrat claims that the inaccuracies in the report were politically motivated.

"The report is not designed to make our efforts look better or worse, or terrorism look better or worse, but to provide the facts to the American people," a grim-faced Mr Powell said at a special briefing for reporters….

The number of people killed in terror attacks last year was 625—more than twice the 307 listed in the April report. And the number of injured was revised upward from 1593 in the April report to 3646.

Whole story here.