Newsweek: Bush has captured a "meaningless 75%" of Al-Qaeda

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5945061/site/newsweek/



Sept. 8 - Without any public explanation, President George W. Bush last week increased the estimate of Al Qaeda leaders who have been killed or captured after receiving a revised U.S. intelligence analysis delivered the day before his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, NEWSWEEK has learned.

In his nationally televised speech to the convention last Thursday night, Bush for the first time claimed that “more than three quarters of Al Qaeda’s key members and associates have been detained or killed.”

For the past year, the president and senior administration officials have repeatedly used a lower figure to measure the U.S. government’s progress in the war on terror. Bush in his State of the Union speech last January asserted that “nearly two thirds” of Al Qaeda’s “known leaders” had been captured or killed.

White House and U.S. intelligence officials declined to provide any back-up data for how they developed the new number—or even to explain the methodology that was used, which they said was classified. The absence of any explanation, as well as the timing, prompted some counterterrorism experts to deride the figure as “meaningless” and predict the revision could fuel allegations that the administration is massaging terrorism data for political purposes.

" Gee, ya think?? Wow, wonder how much investigative journalism it took the folks at NEWSWEEK to figure that one out?
What a no-brainer.

....so how do we know we've killed or captured 75% of them?

They're an irregular force...I'll bet al Queda themselves don't know how many they have under arms at any given moment.

Ingnant, ignant, ignant.

"We're keeping you safe"...Cheney's threats of bloodshed on a grand scale if Kerry is elected...and like any "protection racket," Bush is MAKING UP THE NUMBERS.