been trending downward in the last two years after five years of steady increases beginning in 2006. the problem is the attacks weren t trending downward. they were exactly the same as in 2011. an embarrassing admission by the pentagon that the the narrative about how the president s strategy in afghanistan was bearing fruit may have been misleading, shep. shepard: they must be making some case at the pentagon in their own defense. well, in essence, they blame the afghans. the afghan commanders supposedly forgot to submit their field reports about the attacks so the pentagon data was misleading. this is a regrettable error in our database systems that was discovered during a routine quality check. we are making the appropriate ajustments. in spite of this data adjustment, our assessment of the fundamental progress in afghanistan remains positive. sef and nato are revising