The number of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan did not decline last year, as previously indicated by the U.S. military.

Last month, the Department of Defense was happy to crow that Taliban attacks dropped 7% in 2012, based on statistics compiled by the U.S.-led military coalition. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the news demonstrated that the strength of the insurgency was waning.

Not surprisingly, Panetta was not pleased to hear that the 7% figure was wrong, having come about from a clerical error.

Still, defense officials insisted that the U.S. was gaining the upper hand in the war, regardless of what the numbers showed.

“This particular set of metrics doesn't tell the full story of progress against the Taliban, of course, but it's unhelpful to have inaccurate information in our systems,” said Pentagon spokesman George Little.

The 7% statistic first appeared on January 22 on the website of the American-led coalition, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It subsequently was used in the Pentagon’s semi-annual report to Congress on Afghanistan security progress. The figure then abruptly vanished from the website without explanation. A coalition spokesman later said the error was caught during a “quality control check.”

There were more than 28,000 Taliban "enemy initiated" attacks in 2011, according to an Associated Press review of ISAF charts. After adding corrected statistics into the ISAF database, the coalition determined that the number of Taliban attacks in 2012 was indeed unchanged from 2011.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Danny Biederman

To Learn More:

Taliban Attacks Not Down After All (by Robert Burns, Associated Press)

Gen. Petraeus and the Phantom Capture of Thousands of Taliban Fighters (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

Petraeus and Obama Accused of Lying to Public about Afghanistan War Situation (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)