In a lengthy article in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, Larry Diamond -- coordinator of the Democracy Program at CDDRL and a political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq last spring -- details the United States' blunders in Iraq and asserts that the coalition occupation "has diminished the long-term prospects for democracy there."

The article, titled "What Went Wrong in Iraq?" chronicles the U.S. government's miscalculations on several fronts, including its failure to commit enough forces to ensure security in Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein; Pentagon officials' disregard for the elaborate postwar planning that had been done by the State Department; a lack of determination to face down political threats such as cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; the launching of a de-Baathification campaign that was too broad; a failure to address early on the widespread grievances with the interim constitution that was drafted this past spring; and above all, the U.S. government's failure to understand Iraqi politics, Iraqi society, and the way average Iraqis viewed the United States and its occupation of their country.

Diamond writes that the Bush administration deserves credit for changing its posture after the "rapid implosion of its plan for a political transition in Iraq." And he praises several aspects of the Coalition Provisional Authority's work, such as the training programs it set up to offer Iraqi political parties the skills and tools needed to organize and mobilize. He writes encouragingly that "I have found many Iraqis to have a deep ambition to live in a decent, democratic and free society and found them prepared to do the hard work that building a democracy will require."

But Diamond concludes that because of the failures of the U.S. occupation, along with the intrinsic difficulties of establishing order and democracy in a society like Iraq, "it is going to take a number of years to rebuild the Iraqi state and to construct any kind of viable democratic and constitutional order there."

STANFORD -- With oil prices heading toward $50 a barrel, what would happen if the markets really blew?

Ever since the late 1970s, Washington's answer to such an event has relied on oil stockpiled mainly by the federal government, to be released if market instability warranted it. Today, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains 666 million barrels -- nearly 65 days of imports -- worth nearly $30 billion at current prices. Our industrialized allies have similar stocks, India has started one and China, whose oil imports are rising rapidly, is expected to create a reserve soon. Through the International Energy Agency in Paris, the major oil importers have agreed, in principle, to coordinate their stockpiles.

Unfortunately, reserves in the United States and most democracies are nearly feckless as a policy instrument. The legislation that created the U.S. reserve gave the power to buy and sell stocks to a federal agency, now the Department of Energy, that, in effect, passes the decision on to the president. White House control automatically converts every key decision into a highly political act.

In July 2000, President Clinton's order to transfer some strategic reserves to fill a newly created Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve had obvious political implications for Al Gore's presidential bid. In 1996, Congress required the sale of more than $220 million of stockpiled oil to help pay down the budget deficit, another political move, though one that, in hindsight, looked wise when oil prices tanked two years later.

The uncertainty of reliable production in Russia and Iraq, coupled with the general threat of new terrorist attacks, makes for many worrisome scenarios. But a cloud of political suspicion would hang over any management decision. If President Bush released stockpiled oil to stabilize prices in an election year, no matter how justified his action, he surely would be accused of political pandering. And if he rightly refused to release oil because speculative trading doesn't meet the standard of "severe energy supply interruption," as called for in the 1975 legislation setting up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, would he face charges that he was rewarding his oil buddies with record profits?

One way to take the politics out of governing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would be to mechanize decision-making, such as by setting a price trigger for sales and fills. President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, among others, considered this option and wisely demurred. In the 1980s, the international spot market for oil was not fully developed; prices were mainly driven by opaque long-term contracts, not market dynamics. Price triggers act similarly to price controls, increasing the risk of creating true scarcities in oil supply. Such automatic triggers would have smoothed small gyrations in the oil market but failed when most needed to dampen large price swings.

There's a better way: independent management of the strategic reserve. In contrast to an automatic mechanism, an independent authority would be able to detect subtle economic and political shifts that determine our true vulnerability to oil shocks. More important, such an authority would depoliticize Strategic Petroleum Reserve decision-making, which would enable us to use the stockpile for its originally intended purpose of providing a credible bulwark against the most severe chaos in oil markets.

The president could create an independent board to manage the reserve within existing legislation, but that would not completely remove a political taint. New legislation would better accomplish the job. Congress and the president should look to the Federal Reserve as a model. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve needs its own resources, with politicians supplying broad guidelines for action and periodic review rather than direct control. Such a change would not only affect the United States but would also require remaking the International Energy Agency into something closer to a central bankers' forum.

New management for America's oil reserve would spark new thinking about the optimal size and operation of strategic stocks. Until now, most public debate has focused on the reserve's size. The International Energy Agency suggests that its member countries keep a petroleum stockpile roughly equivalent to 90 days of domestic consumption. In truth, the optimal size of strategic reserves is not a single quantity but depends on political and economic conditions. A competent independent authority would make it possible to carry a smaller stockpile -- at lower cost. Because today's oil prices are formed in highly liquid markets, the standard of "severe supply interruption" is largely meaningless. The better standard is our willingness to absorb price shocks. For that there is no simple answer, yet independent economic authorities can make the wisest choices.

More than 30 years after our first oil shock, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve still wears polyester and bell-bottoms. A dose of market reform and political independence can bring its fashion up to date and create a truly useful tool for protecting the U.S. economy.

Whole World on Fire, by CISAC associate director for research Lynn Eden, received the 2004 Robert K. Merton Professional Award from the Science, Knowledge and Technology section of the American Sociological Association. The award was presented to Eden on Aug. 15 during the association's annual meeting in San Francisco.

The award committee cited the book's merits:

"Whole World on Fire is an ambitious undertaking that examines a critical problem using theory and methods from two fields of sociology: the sociology of science and technology and the sociology of organizations. It is a study of how organizational processes led nuclear scientists to drastically underestimate the damage of a nuclear attack. At a deeper level, it is a study in the social construction of organizational knowledge.

"The question Eden addresses is: How and why, for more than half a century, did the U.S. government fail to predict nuclear fire damage as it drew up plans to fight strategic nuclear war? Eden's research shows that U.S. efforts focused on the damage that would result from the explosion while systematically ignoring the far more damaging effects of subsequent fires. How and why could this 'ignorance' continue until today? . . .

"This book takes a position on an ongoing scientific controversy about the predictability of fire damage and on scientists' current assessments of risk. There is a debate in science and technology studies about whether we should take positions on scientific controversies--that is, on the science itself. Some scholars prefer to leave arguments about the 'science' to the scientists and instead follow the activities and political logics of the various debating parties. In this case, Eden chooses to take a stand on the truth claims of the science in question. As such, Whole World on Fire is a work of intellectual daring.

"To our knowledge, there have been few sociological studies that have penetrated the inner workings of the military establishment. Few sociologists have studied the highest reaches of the social structure, as does Eden in this study. In fact, those of us who study science and medicine usually do our research in university-based laboratories or teaching hospitals--that is, we study people who are in some senses like ourselves.

"While the book addresses a critical issue--that is, nuclear-weapons policy, it is an exemplar of how sociological concepts can illuminate important public issues. Eden's analysis can be readily applied to explaining how decision makers construct relevant and legitimate science to illuminate disasters such as the collapse of the Twin Towers. But what convinced one committee member of the book's power was a recent New York Times article describing the findings of the committee investigating the Iraq War. The Committee reported that the CIA had systematically denied the credibility of numerous reports that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction did not exist, in part because those reports were outside its organizational frame.

"Finally, we all believe that this book will have a major public impact. In addition to its accessible style and meticulous research, the book is often riveting and sometimes chilling. We had thought that by now everyone believed that survivable nuclear war is an oxymoron; that people had filled in their bomb shelters long before the close of the Cold War. That a significant portion of the military establishment still believes that a limited, winnable and survivable nuclear war is possible gave us nightmares. That Eden's book may give people nightmares is only appropriate, given the frightening scenario she presents."

Serving on the award committee were Renee Anspach, Department of Sociology, University of Michigan; Sydney Halpern, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago; Kathryn Henderson, Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University; and Joan Fujimura (Chair), Department of Sociology and Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The post-1970 crisis in the Islamic world and Pakistan's role

It is possible to trace today's crisis in the Islamic world back to the time of the Prophet (pbuh) and the four Righteous Caliphs. Many Salafists among Muslims and many so-called Orientalists among Westerners do just that. Opposed in every other way, they both believe in an Islamic "essence" unchanged since then. Others go back to the 19th century CE, to the onset of Western domination over much of the Muslim 'umma. Yet it seems to me that to understand today's crisis adequately we need go no further back than the years around 1970 in Islam's old Arab and Iranian heartlands. Admittedly a number of factors had to come together to produce the dilemmas we still live with.

The 20th century struggle against colonialism raised high hopes that the departure of the colonisers would usher in a new era of dignity and prosperity for Muslims. The main ideology of these hopes was the kind of republican nationalism associated with Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser in Egypt and Muhammad Mossadeq in Iran. By about 1970 these hopes had collapsed.

Not only had Israel persisted as a reminder that decolonisation did not mean an end to subordination, but the 1967 Six Days' War was such a catastrophe that its casualties were not just military: it discredited the republican nationalist ideology as well. The Arab world was rent by rivalries between republicans and monarchists, with the Cold War protagonists egging them on and paying them rents for friendship. Worst of all, the postcolonial regimes turned out to be authoritarian and corrupt.

Nor was that the whole story. There had also been much economic and social development, yet it was of very special kinds. State-led industrialisation had been based mainly on oil and gas, and oil and gas are special commodities. The iron and steel that drove earlier Western growth had created new middle and working classes; oil and gas do not, and their profits are easily captured by sitting elites. To pay for industry, moreover, states ran down agriculture. Within decades this drove millions from farms and small towns into cities that then exploded their infrastructures. The states offered education, particularly at higher levels - at one point Egypt was producing 75,000 graduates a year - but beginning about 1970 states were withdrawing from the economy and turning responsibility for growth over to captive and anaemic private sectors. So more and more first-generation graduates were entering increasingly slack economies with no real prospects for jobs or dignity.

All this was a recipe for political radicalism, and the ideological vacuum left behind by discredited republican nationalism was filled by the dream of recreating the unity and purity of the original 'umma in the 7th century CE. That dream had been part of Islamic discourse almost from the beginning, but it had mainly appealed to the 'umma's fringes, the Bedouin soldiers of the Khariji movement, the small townsmen of Islam's middle years who had then become Shi'a or Sufis. Now, around 1970, the dream had been modernised by thinkers like Sayyid Qutb in the Arab lands, 'Ali Shariati in Iran, and Maulana Abu-l-'Ala Maududi in this country, and in that form it entered the Islamic mainstream. It became the chief ideology of opposition to the authoritarian and corrupt postcolonial regimes.

The result has been thirty years of savage and bloody civil war among Muslims. It has struck Westerners and Israelis too, but most of the victims have been Muslim, because the regimes were now headed by Muslims. When Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad retook the city of Hama from Sunni insurrectionists in 1982, he killed at least 10,000 people, three times the casualties of September 11.

What would it take for Muslims to transcend this crisis? Time after time in their history they have overcome huge challenges by creating marvellous new syntheses of thought and feeling and practice. I have no doubt that they have the spiritual and intellectual and physical resources to do so once again. But what would be the elements of renewal at this new stage?

Some elements have already been moving into place.

As the civil war has proceeded, there has been covert movement on both sides toward a new centre. Regimes have been Islamising themselves. They have been introducing some Islamic law and some Islamic practice into their governance. Conversely, Islamists have been entering the political system. They now run for election; they enter cabinets; they serve in parliaments; they function as (more or less) loyal oppositions.

The process has been drenched in bad faith on both sides, but movement has been real.

Concurrently, more and more Muslims who might have become Islamist political revolutionaries two decades ago are now forsaking politics for community action in the 'umma. Rather than bombs and guns, the name of the game is now schools, clinics, charities, and the Islamic piety of individual Muslims and their families.

Moreover, with the end of the Cold War sitting regimes can no longer collect rents from the USSR, and they find it harder to collect rents from the US now that competition with the USSR is over. Even the new rents the US is paying since September 11 will never match Cold War largesse. There will never again be enough official assistance to keep regimes in power by sustaining their growth rates.

Now they must rely instead on private foreign direct investment (PFDI). This is because all over the world production of knowledge is replacing production of things as the engine of economic growth. PFDI flows mainly on economic grounds. It is not attracted by the archaic, state-dominated, information-shy economies of the Arab Middle East and Iran. Their share of world PFDI has fallen from 12 percent in 1990 to 3-4 percent today. To attract it, they need reforms that will make them less rigid, less state-dominated, and less information-shy. Such economic reforms typically lead to demands for political reforms too. That is their quandary.

Such pressures will not end Islamist radicalism. The conditions that give it birth are often still there. But such pressures do tend to force radicalism to the margins of the 'umma once again. Osama is a perfect example: through the 1990s he was forced step by step back to the only place in the world where he now had a double layer of protection and hence the space and time needed to mount an operation like September 11.

Nor will such pressures automatically generate the new Islamic synthesis the planet needs. But they do create a new opportunity for Muslims to fashion an authentically Islamic modernity that is adequate to their history and their hopes.

I would argue that September 11 did not change this basic picture. It came as a shock to most Muslims, and even Islamists asked themselves whether Osama's methods were the best path to the common goal. Iraq, of course, has been much more problematic. There military defeat was so rapid and complete that it rekindled the usual Arab feelings of helplessness and rage, and the botched aftermath has given these feelings time to swell and take political form. Radicalism is reconstituting itself, but - it should be noted - on a new basis.

For Osama, for Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, Islam may still be the banner of revolutionary overthrow. For younger Muslims, Islam is increasingly the badge of membership in national communities. It is no longer just an ideology for outsiders. More and more it is the ideology of outsiders and deprived or threatened ruling ethnic elites: Sunni Tikritis in Iraq, Pushtuns in Afghanistan. Driven toward the margins by repression, cooptation or military defeat, Islamism is re-entering the body politic through the service entrance of Islamo-nationalism.

The consequences can be unhealthy. If only Muslims should be citizens, Christians and Jews are excluded in ways quite novel in Islamic experience, and quite dangerous. But there may also be a new and exciting opening for an Islamic legitimation of the modern nation-state that is valid for Sunnis.

So far, the only place in the Islamic heartlands to produce such a legitimation has been Iran. Not long before he died in 1989, Imam Khomeini ruled on religious grounds that in emergencies national interests can take precedence over the shari'a. It helps explain how Iran has emerged from the charismatic phase of Islamic rule without widespread violence. But Iran's special Shi'i traditions make it hard to transpose to Sunni-majority societies. Taliban rule in Afghanistan was perhaps an effort to create a version for Sunnis, but it ended before it succeeded. In both cases, moreover, the effort took place within a theocratic framework, direct rule by 'ulema.

Theocracy is not a mainstream Islamic tradition and will not appeal in most Muslim countries. A broader version of religious legitimation of the nation-state could be taking shape now in Iraq. It may be that the Americans are needed both as a parameter and as a target. But the outcome is very uncertain, the circumstances very special. And Iraq too has a majority of Shi'a.

Where does Pakistan fit in this picture? I see some similarities and more differences.

Like some Arab states, Pakistan inherited a postcolonial security threat that has absorbed disproportionate resources and has thereby reinforced older socio-political structures and a traditional sense of political irresponsibility: someone else is always to blame.

Although Pakistan was founded as an Islamic nation-state by modern means and modern people, here too modernity is so associated with the West that it must be denied as un-Islamic.

And Pakistan too has been stranded by the end of the Cold War and the onset of the IT era in economics. New rents from the war on terrorism will not restore the levels of official assistance Pakistan attracted before 1990, and private foreign direct investment has not rushed in to fill the gap.

But Pakistan is also different from the Arab world and Iran in relevant ways. Some are counterintuitive; most are to Pakistan's advantage.

First, Pakistan is not dependent on oil and gas, and can be better off for it. Pakistan is dependent on cotton, and compared to oil and gas, cotton and cotton textile production makes for larger middle and working classes, better attuned to modern political and economic needs than Middle Eastern elites.

Second, Pakistan is less developed than the old Islamic heartlands - more agricultural, less urbanised, less educated - and that too can help. It has not destroyed its agriculture. Except for Karachi, rural outmigration has not exploded its cities, and even there civil war has been on an ethnic and not a religious basis. And the graduating cohorts entering the limp economy have been relatively small. In other words Pakistan has not yet produced the conditions that brought Islamist radicalism to the centre of Middle East politics. It therefore has a window of opportunity to create better structures less conducive to civil war.

Third, Pakistanis have been struggling for over half a century to bring religion and politics together in a functioning system of governance. The need to experiment came with Pakistan's original mandate; it has led through the Ahmedi riots, the Objectives Resolution, the MRD in 1977 (sic: PNA is meant), and various Islamisation steps thereafter. Certainly, however, experimentation has been particularly intense since 2002. Its outcome is also quite uncertain.

What this means, though, is that Pakistanis have a wealth of lived experience wrestling with issues that are newer and more destructive in other Muslim societies, and of doing so mainly without violence. They should therefore be better able to integrate the religious impulse into a basically democratic political system without first establishing theocracy. If they can, it will be a first version of religious legitimation for the modern nation-state in a society with a recognisably Sunni majority. Where Pakistan fits in todayís Islamic world is as a major test case. Not for Americans: for Pakistanis. And for all the other members of the 'umma.

*Footnote: This essay draws on themes from the writer's book on Islam and a talk he gave at the Administrative Staff College in Lahore on May 24, 2004.

Those advocating nuclear arms control and nonproliferation have few reasons for optimism and many reasons for concern, with obstacles including a lack of public interest in the issue; inadequate security controls at facilities storing nuclear-weapons materials; the threat posed by rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea; and the Bush administration's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banning nuclear weapons testing.

These and other challenges were explored at a special CISAC workshop on "Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Past Triumphs, Future Prospects," held June 1 at SIIS. The event honored George Bunn -- a nuclear nonproliferation pioneer and consulting professor at CISAC -- on the occasion of his 79th birthday. The workshop, which drew more than 120 attendees, was moderated by CISAC co-director Christopher F. Chyba and featured presentations by four expert panelists who have worked closely with Bunn. They included his son Matthew, a senior research associate for Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom.

As the first presenter, Matthew Bunn discussed the problem of inadequate security systems to prevent the theft of weapons-grade nuclear materials. Because there are no worldwide standards for protecting such materials, many nations devote inadequate resources to the task. Bunn showed slides of nuclear materials storage facilities with primitive locks, flimsy seals and broken-down fences. He cited Russia as the largest threat, because it has the world's biggest stock of unguarded nuclear-weapons materials. He urged international standards for safeguarding nuclear materials; renewed discussion with Russia on the issue; and the removal of nuclear material from sites where adequate security is not feasible.

In the second presentation, Thomas Graham -- a senior U.S. diplomat who has negotiated numerous major arms-control agreements -- said the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was not meant to forever discriminate between nuclear "haves" and "have-nots." Instead, it was designed so that those without nuclear weapons would benefit by receiving peaceful nuclear technology from weapons-producing nations, and guarantees that they would not be attacked. But when the United States shirks its nonproliferation obligations -- as it has done by rejecting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and taking steps to develop new nuclear weapons -- the entire regime is threatened, Graham said. He cited Pakistan and North Korea as the biggest nuclear threats, and said the United States must engage in direct negotiations with the latter.

The next presentation, by Daryl Kimball -- executive director of the Arms Control Association -- addressed prospects for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Though the treaty has been signed by 171 nations including the United States, it has been ratified by only 113 of those nations -- not including the United States -- and must be ratified by 12 more of the 44 designated "nuclear-capable" nations before the treaty can take effect. Kimball discussed the Bush administration's opposition to the treaty, noting that Bush has sought to remove it from the Senate's agenda. Still, Kimball said he's optimistic that the treaty will ultimately be ratified by the United States and will take effect. He cited increasing international pressure on CTBT "holdout states," and a recent U.S. poll showing that public support for the treaty is at its highest level ever, 87 percent.

John Rhinelander, an attorney who helped negotiate the ABM Treaty and SALT I agreements, discussed the prospects for nuclear weapons in space. The weaponization of space is supported by the Bush administration, he noted, and is a real possibility if the United States follows through on its missile defense program. He predicted that President Bush, if re-elected, would continue to pursue weapons development in space, but said Kerry seemed unlikely to do so if elected.

During a question-and-answer session following the presentations, the panelists offered perspectives on why it is so difficult to get the public's and lawmakers' attention on nuclear non-proliferation issues. The panelists agreed that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, most Americans -- including lawmakers -- no longer perceive nuclear weapons as a serious threat, and they have little knowledge about the existing quantity of nuclear weapons. Matthew Bunn said the problem is, "there is no one whose reelection depends on reducing or securing nuclear weapons." He said nuclear non-proliferation could best be promoted by tying it to the issues of terrorism and homeland security. Rhinelander and Grahm advocated holding Congressional hearings on the issue for the first time in 20 years.

Regarding Israel, India and Pakistan, Graham said those nations -- which produce nuclear weapons but have refused to join the NPT regime -- cannot continue to remain outside the regime. He proposed that the three nations be allowed to join in limited form, in exchange for accepting basic limitations such as no first use and no nuclear testing.

Throughout the event, Bunn was praised by the panelists and moderator; Chyba described him as "the personification of the best that CISAC strives to be." Bunn was the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, helped negotiate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and later served as U.S. ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

CDDRL organized a conference on "Governance and Sovereignty in Failed and Failing States," held April 16-17, 2004 at Stanford University. The event drew participants from around the United States and abroad, including speakers from Georgetown University, Oxford University, Stanford, Free University of Berlin, the United Nations, the World Bank, the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Speakers from SIIS included Larry Diamond, Stephen J. Stedman and Michael A. McFaul.

The participants addressed a variety of topics including "Why States Fail," "UN Responses to State Failure," "Global Security and the United Nations," "Building Democracy in Iraq," and "Corruption and Misgovernance Lessons from U.S. Foreign Aid."

Although keeping score is difficult, the State Department's annual report on international terrorism, released last month, provides the best government data to answer this question. The short answer is "No," but that's not the spin the administration is putting on it.

"You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight," said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. As evidence, the "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report says that worldwide terrorism dropped by 45 percent between 2001 and 2003. The report even boasts that the number of terrorist acts committed last year "represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969."

Yet, a careful review of the report and underlying data supports the opposite conclusion: The number of significant terrorist acts increased from 124 in 2001 to 169 in 2003 -- 36 percent -- even using the State Department's official standards. The data that the report highlights are ill-defined and subject to manipulation -- and give disproportionate weight to the least important terrorist acts. The only verifiable information in the annual reports indicates that the number of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003 reached its highest level in more than 20 years.

To be sure, counting terrorist acts is not as straightforward as counting the number of SARS victims. Specialists have not agreed to any test that would unambiguously qualify an act as one of international terrorism. But in the words of the Congressional Research Service, the State Department's annual report is "the most authoritative unclassified U.S. government document that assesses terrorist attacks."

So how did the report conclude that international terrorism is declining?

It accomplishes this sleight of hand by combining significant and nonsignificant acts of terrorism. Significant acts are clearly defined and each event is listed in an appendix, so readers can verify the data. By contrast, no explanation is given for how nonsignificant acts are identified or whether a consistent process is used over time -- and no list is provided describing each event. The data cannot be verified.

International terrorism is defined in the report as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets" involving citizens or property from multiple countries, "usually intended to influence an audience." An event "is judged significant if it results in loss of life or serious injury to persons" or "major property damage."

A panel determines whether an event meets this definition, but the State Department refused to tell us the members of the panel or the practices used to count nonsignificant terrorist acts.

We do know that the definition leaves much room for discretion. Because "significant events" include such things as destroying an ATM in Greece or throwing a molotov cocktail at a McDonald's in Norway without causing much damage, it is easy to imagine that nonsignificant events are counted with a squishy definition that can be manipulated to alter the trend.

The alleged decline in terrorism in 2003 was entirely a result of a decline in nonsignificant events.

Another curious feature of the latest report is that its catalogue of events does not list a single significant terrorist act occurring after Nov. 11, 2003, despite averaging 16 such acts a month in the rest of the year.

The representation that no terrorist events occurred after Nov. 11 is patently false. The bombings of the HSBC Bank, British Consulate, and Beth Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues in Istanbul by individuals associated with al Qaeda occurred on Nov. 20 and Nov. 15, respectively. Additionally, the report mentions the bombing of the Catholic Relief Services in Nasiriyah, Iraq, on Nov. 12 but somehow omits it from the official list of significant events.

So the record number of 169 significant international terrorist events for 2003 is undoubtedly an understatement. It is impossible to know if these and other terrorist events were left out of the State Department's total of events.

Despite the lack of transparency and the rose-colored graphs, the department's data reveal that administration policies in the past year have not turned the terrorist tide. Of course, it is impossible to know how many terrorist acts would have occurred absent the war on terrorism, but it is unambiguous that the number of significant international terrorist acts is on the rise.

The fact that the number of nonsignificant terrorist acts has headed down -- even if true -- is, well, nonsignificant. What matters for security is the number of significant acts. It is regrettable that one casualty in the war against terrorism has been the accurate reporting of statistics. This seems to be another fight we are losing.