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TB attacks not down after all, blames computer error and AFG reporting - Aypee
 WASHINGTON -- The American-led military coalition in Afghanistan backed off Tuesday from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped off in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline.
In response to Associated Press inquiries about its latest series of statistics on security in Afghanistan, the coalition command in Kabul said it had erred in reporting a 7 percent decline in attacks. In fact there was no decline at all, officials said.
| We at the Burg already knew this; while we don't have access to DoD statistics we do read the Pakistan Daily Times... |
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is among the senior officials who had publicly repeated the assertion of an encouraging drop-off in Taliban attacks last year, was disturbed to learn of the error, said his spokesman, George Little.
| Did he fire anyone? Reprimand anyone? Put a letter into someone's personnel jacket? If he didn't do any of those things then he wasn't particularly disturbed... |
"This particular set of metrics doesn't tell the full story of progress against the Taliban, of course, but it's unhelpful to have inaccurate information in our systems," Little said.
| More at the two-letter news distribution service from which we're extracting fair-use material. |
Posted by: Besoeker 2013-02-27 |
