Last week, the U.S. State Department quietly let slip that it would no longer publish "Patterns of Global Terrorism," the annual report that since 1985 has compiled how many major terror incidents occur each year. As you may recall, that report gained a certain notoriety during last year's presidential campaign, after the State Department announced that the number of terrorist attacks declined in 2003. Bush administration officials quickly cited the finding as vindication for their anti-terror policies, until it was discovered that the report had somehow left out hundreds of terror attacks. In reality, the number of attacks had increased in 2003, not declined.

Given that embarrassment — and the fact that the report for 2004 would reportedly have shown another increase — the report was made to vanish.

That fits a pattern. When the number of mass layoffs announced around the country began to be a political problem, the Bush Labor Department simply stopped collecting that data.

When governors complained about inadequate funding, citing a document called "Budget Information for States," the White House stopped publishing that document, too. Spokesman Trent Duffy said at the time that the change was necessary to reduce the cost of "paper and producing another volume."

These days, more than two years into the Iraq war, the Bush administration still refuses to include the mounting costs of the war in its official budget, insisting that it be treated as an emergency expenditure. That way, the cost of the war isn't included in the official estimate of the federal budget deficit.

That particular game has become so obvious — and so embarrassing, even to some Republicans — that the U.S. Senate voted 61-31 this week to urge the Bush administration to be more forthright in its budget. But that won't happen.

You see, it's hard to reduce our huge budget deficit. You'd have to raise taxes and cut spending. It's a lot easier to just change the perception.

Likewise, it's a lot easier to eliminate a report on terrorism than to eliminate terrorism.

The problem, of course, is that perception is not reality. Reality exists independent of whatever perception we care to create about it.

If the money spent in Iraq isn't reflected in the official deficit figures, does that somehow make our budget reality any better?

If there are no pictures of dead American soldiers being returned to this country for burial, did they not really die?

If the White House promises Congress that a new Medicare drug benefit will cost no more than $400 billion — and threatens to fire government analysts if they tell the truth, that the real cost will be closer to $530 billion — does that mean taxpayers won't have to pay the bill of $720 billion, which is the latest reality-based estimate?

If study after study proves that abstinence-only education doesn't work and may actually backfire, can we pretend away the increased number of pregnancies, abortions and cases of HIV likely to result?

Every administration tries to manipulate public perception, but this is something different. In many cases, this administration actually believes in the false reality it tries so hard to create. It weaves an illusion around itself of how the world really works, then makes policy based on that illusion.

In time, that must inevitably lead to big trouble. It already has in Iraq — you know, that country that was filled with weapons of mass destruction, ready to greet us with open arms, able to finance its own reconstruction? — and it will do so again.

It is impossible for anyone, either as individuals or as nations, to have a complete and accurate grasp on reality. The best we can ever do is guess and be willing to adjust our concept of reality based on new information.

But to the Bush administration, those adjustments to reality are signs of weakness. Its working principle is that if reality doesn't conform to ideology, it is reality that must be altered, because the ideology is fixed and not to be questioned.

In the short term, that can pay political benefits. But in the long run, you pay a serious price if you let your perception of reality diverge too far from reality itself.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor.

© 2005 Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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