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War on terror needs better defined goals - report finds
 | 11.29.2005 | 08:22:35 | Views: 4759 | ID:

November 29 '05: The Bush administration and Congress have not provided adequate goals and measurements of success in the war on terror according to a new Congressional report.

Reuters found Tuesday that the report, obtained Monday, detailed the failures of the government to truly construct an adequate picture in the progress being made in the war on terror. "Although four years have gone by since September 11," the government report's author Raphael Perl said, "government agencies have still not agreed on criteria to measure progress against terrorism, even though billions of dollars have been spent."

Perl told Reuters, "The risk is that without these criteria, we just take action and we measure progress retrospectively against what we've done. And of course since we've done some stuff, we've made progress."

In addition to a lack of immediate goals and measurable time lines for success, Perl said that the increasing cost of anti-terror technology and increasing security has put a drain on the system. Perl told Reuters that the US government should "go beyond the numbers and look at the meaning of the numbers and their significance, and their significance to us (versus) to the terrorists."

In similar news, a New York Times story in the International World Tribune found in the same report at least 26 countries the US has said have failed to adequately cut off or siphon funds from terrorist groups' cash flows. The Times reported that the Bush administration has seen the elimination of funds used for attacks and planning attacks as a central foundation in the fight against terror.

The US government has "seized tens of millions of dollars in American accounts and assets linked to terrorist groups and encouraged other countries to do the same, and it is now developing a program to track tens of millions of international bank transfers into the United States," the Times reported.

Although the list of 26 counties is classified, many of the countries in question are those that have traditionally been under scrutiny by the US government for their propensity to give money to what federal officials call questionable charities that have been linked to possible terrorist funding operations.

 

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