That GAO Enemy-Initiated Attack Trendline Is Seriously Harshing My Mellow

From Justin Rood at TPMMuckraker:

[This chart] was produced in December, but it's missing data for the months of September, October and November of this year -- a period of increased violence, according to news reports. What gives?

[Rood] called Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO official who produced the document. "I have all [the Pentagon's] data" for those months, he told [Rood]. But the military stamped it classified, he said. And despite making weeks of phone calls, he can't convince anyone there to declassify the numbers.

"They give conflicting reasons," Christoff [said]. "For some reason, they haven't gotten through their bureaucracy."

Could that "some reason" be similar to this?

Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.

[snip]

According to Leverett the op-ed was "all based on stuff that Secretary Powell, Secretary Rice, Deputy Secretary Armitage have talked about publicly. It’s been extensively reported in the media." Leverett says the incident shows "just how low people like Elliot Abrams at the NSC [National Security Council] will stoop to try and limit the dissemination of arguments critical of the administration’s policy."

That is, politics trump policy.

Dissension is such a buzzkill...