UK War Dossier a shame, experts say (oops Powell)

Sava · February 9, 2003, 15:47

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...890916,00.html

Quote:

UK war dossier a sham, say experts

British 'intelligence' lifted from academic articles

Michael White and Brian Whitaker
Friday February 7, 2003
The Guardian

Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old.
Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein, Whitehall's dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on Wednesday.

Citing the British dossier, entitled Iraq - its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation in front of a worldwide television audience Mr Powell said: "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."

But on Channel 4 News last night it was revealed that four of the report's 19 pages had been copied - with only minor editing and a few insertions - from the internet version of an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi which appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last September.

Though that was not the only textual embarrassment No 10 seemed determined to tough it out last night.

Dismissing the gathering controversy as the latest example of media obsession with spin, officials insisted it in no way undermines the underlying truth of the dossier, whose contents had been re-checked with British intelligence sources. "The important thing is that it is accurate," said one source.

What Whitehall may not grasp is the horror with which unacknowledged borrowing of material - the crime of plagiarism - is regarded in American academic and media circles, even though successive US governments have a poor record of misleading their own citizens on foreign policy issues at least since the Vietnam war. On a special edi tion of BBC Newsnight, filmed before a critical audience last night, Mr Blair stressed that he was willing to forgo popularity to warn voters of the dangers of weapons of mass destruction: "I may be wrong, but I do believe it."

With trust a critical element in the battle to woo a sceptical public the first sentence of the No 10 document merely states, somewhat cryptically, that it "draws upon a number of sources, including intelligence material".

But Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, told Channel 4: "I found it quite startling when I realised that I'd read most of it before."

The content of six more pages relies heavily on articles by Sean Boyne and Ken Gause that appeared in Jane's Intelligence Review in 1997 and last November. None of these sources is acknowledged.

The document, as posted on Downing Street's website at the end of January, also acci dentally named four Whitehall officials who had worked on it: P Hamill, J Pratt, A Blackshaw and M Khan. It was reposted on February 3 with the first three names deleted.

"Apart from passing this off as the work of its intelligence services," Dr Rangwala said, "it indicates that the UK really does not have any independent sources of information on Iraq's internal policies. It just draws upon publicly available data."

Evidence of an electronic cut-and-paste operation by Whitehall officials can be found in the way the dossier preserves textual quirks from its original sources. One sentence in Dr Marashi's article includes a misplaced comma in referring to Iraq's head of military intelligence during the 1991 Gulf war. The same sentence in Downing Street's report contains the same misplaced comma.

A Downing Street spokesman declined to say why the report's public sources had not been acknowledged. "We said that it draws on a number of sources, including intelligence. It speaks for itself."

Dr Marashi, a research associate at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, said no one had contacted him before lifting the material.

But on the regular edition of Newsnight he later gave some comfort to No 10. "In my opinion, the UK document overall is accurate even though there are a few minor cosmetic changes. The only inaccuracies in the UK document were that they maybe inflated some of the numbers of these intelligence agencies," he said.

Explaining the more journalistic changes inserted into his work by Whitehall he added: "Being an academic paper, I tried to soften the language.

"For example, in one of my documents, I said that they support organisations in what Iraq considers hostile regimes, whereas the UK document refers to it as 'supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes'.

"The primary documents I used for this article are a collection of two sets of documents, one taken from Kurdish rebels in the north of Iraq - around 4m documents - as well as 300,000 documents left by Iraqi security services in Kuwait. After that, I have been following events in the Iraqi security services for the last 10 years."

Iraq's decision last night to let weapons inspectors interview one of its scientists for the first time without government "minders" signalled that Baghdad may be bending under international pressure.

But diplomats will be trying to determine over the next few days whether it is a token gesture or a real shift away from what they describe as Iraq's "catch us if you can" approach to inspections. Hours before the announcement, a Foreign Office source in London signalled that this was the kind of change of heart that Iraq would have to make to avoid war.

Relying on intelligence that is years old, cutting and pasting from the internet, and photoshop created graphics of "suspected" chemical weapons facilities... And people wonder why I think the Bush admin is not trustworthy, and why Colin Powell's statements aren't worth the TV airtime used up.

Going to war with this crap evidence is simply not worth American lives or the 100 billion dollar price tag. Now when the rest of the world thinks its wrong to go to war, don't you think we should listen?

With France and Germany's plan (20k UN troops) I doubt Saddam is going to be building or distributing WMD's... he's effectively neutralized while we try to depose him without opening pandora's box.

But in America, dissenting views like this have become "unpatriotic". And those that remember the rise of Fascism in Germany are noticing history is repeating itself.

Ted Striker · February 9, 2003, 15:50

The Guardian huh?

Nubclear · February 9, 2003, 15:55

Quote:

Originally posted by Sava
And those that remember the rise of Fascism in Germany are noticing history is repeating itself.

Do not forget those whom lived through the horrors of the Soviet Union.

Sava · February 9, 2003, 15:57

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/in...pe/08BRIT.html

Quote:

February 8, 2003
Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq Came From Magazines
By SARAH LYALL

ONDON, Feb. 7 — The British government admitted today that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic journals.

But while acknowledging that the 19-page report was indeed a "pull-together of a variety of sources," a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair defended it as "solid" and "accurate."

The document, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," was posted on No. 10 Downing Street's Web site on Monday. It was depicted as an up-to-date and unsettling assessment by the British intelligence services of Iraq's security apparatus and its efforts to hide its activities from weapons inspectors and to resist international efforts to force it to disarm.

But much of the material actually came, sometimes verbatim, from several nonsecret published articles, according to critics of the government's policy who have studied the documents. These include an article published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002, as well as three articles from Jane's Intelligence Review, two of them published in the summer of 1997 and one in November 2002.

In some cases, the critics said, parts of the articles — or of summaries posted on the Internet — were paraphrased in the report. In other cases, they were plagiarized — to the extent that even spelling and punctuation errors in the originals were reproduced.

The Blair government did not deny that any of this had happened. But its spokesman insisted today that the government believed "the text as published to be accurate" and that the document had been published because "we wanted to show people not only the kind of regime we were dealing with, but also how Saddam Hussein had pursued a policy of deliberate deception."

He added: "In retrospect, we should, to clear up any confusion, have acknowledged which bits came from public sources and which bits came from other sources." He said the document had been written by government officials and drawn from "a number of sources, including intelligence sources."

"The overall objective was to give the full picture without compromising intelligence sources," he said.

But critics of the government said that not only did the document appear to have been largely cut and pasted together, but also that the articles it relied on were based on information that is, by now, obsolete.

For instance, the second section of the three-part report, which is described on the Downing Street Web site as providing "up-to-date details of Iraq's network of intelligence and security," was drawn in large part from "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: a Guide," an article about the activities of Iraqi intelligence in Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, which appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last September. Its author was Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.

Mr. Marashi told Channel 4 News, which first reported the plagiarism charges, that his research had been drawn primarily from two huge sets of documents: "one taken from Kurdish rebels in the north of Iraq — around four million documents — as well as 300,000 documents left by Iraqi security services in Kuwait." He also said that while he had no reason to doubt the truth of anything he had written and believed the government report to be accurate, no one had asked permission or informed him about using his work.

"I am surprised, flattered as well, that this information got used in a U.K. government dossier," Mr. Marashi said in an interview with Reuters. "Had they consulted me, I could have provided them with more updated information."

Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University who has compared the British report with the articles it used as sources, said that in some cases, the authors apparently changed phrases from the original articles to make the case against Iraq seem more extreme.

For instance, Dr. Rangwala said, a section on the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi directorate of general intelligence, appeared to have been lifted verbatim from Mr. Marashi's article, except for a few tweaks. Where Mr. Marashi mentions that the Mukhabarat's responsibilities include "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq," the government document speaks of "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq." Mr. Marashi's description of the Mukhabarat's role in "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes" becomes "supporting terrorist organizations in hostile regimes."

Critics of the British and American policy toward Iraq said the report showed how little concrete evidence the two governments actually have against Iraq, as well as how poor their intelligence sources were.

"Both governments seem so desperate to create a pretext to attack Iraq that they are willing to say anything," said Nathaniel Hurd, a consultant on Iraq and a critic of the American position. "This U.K. dossier, which deceptively uses outdated material and plagiarizes, is just the latest example of official dishonesty."

Opposition politicians here attacked the report as the deceptive work of a bumbling government clutching at straws as it tries to make a case for war.

"This is the intelligence equivalent of being caught stealing the spoons," said Menzies Campbell, the foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats. "The dossier may not amount to much, but this is a considerable embarrassment for a government trying still to make a case for war."

Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative Party's shadow defense secretary, said the government had not satisfactorily addressed the concerns raised by the disclosures.

"The government's reaction utterly fails to explain, deny or excuse the allegations," Mr. Jenkin said. "The document has been cited by the prime minister and Colin Powell as the basis for a possible war. Who is responsible for such an incredible failure of judgment?"

Hey Striker, is the NY Times good enough for you?

Provost Harrison · February 9, 2003, 16:05

Lifted from academic articles? I thought J.K.Rowling wrote it, because it is pure fantasy

Sava · February 9, 2003, 16:05

I'm still waiting for Striker's response

Provost Harrison · February 9, 2003, 16:09

Oh, and Sava, where is Ondon? (see 2nd article)

Ted Striker · February 9, 2003, 16:10

What can I say? You got me.

loinburger · February 9, 2003, 16:14

Sava apparently plagiarized this thread from here and here.

Sava · February 9, 2003, 16:14

Okay, Striker, I must apologize for making fun of you in that other thread. You, like me, can admit fault (I should know from experience

).

C'mon guys, where are my pro-war peeps? When the truth comes out, they scatter like roaches when you turn the lights on.

But I'm not about to gloat here. This is a serious situation. Let's talk about a responsible solution to deal with Saddam and how we can support a peaceful, post-Saddam era in Iraq.

Ted Striker · February 9, 2003, 16:16

The solution is to ****ing kill Saddam.

End of story.

Sava · February 9, 2003, 16:16

Quote:

Originally posted by loinburger
Sava apparently plagiarized this thread from here and here.

I'm applying for a job in the State Department

But with so much proof to the contrary out in the open, how can the pro-war people still support the wrong solution?

Sava · February 9, 2003, 16:17

Quote:

Originally posted by Ted Striker
The solution is to ****ing kill Saddam.

End of story.

I agree. To kill Saddam without sacrificing American lives and wasting 100 billion dollars sounds like a good solution, too.

Provost Harrison · February 9, 2003, 17:02

And what about innocent Iraqi civilian life in this equation Sava? Are they somehow expendible?

Sava · February 9, 2003, 17:04

I'm trying to put things in terms that the pro-war people can understand Provost...

NeOmega · February 9, 2003, 17:12

This story is already dead in America. I saw it on the news for about 30 seconds yesterday.

Even though I see it as a glaring example of our intelligence communities ineptitude, I think the American media will choose to ignore this story, since the big ratings will come from a war. Higher probably even than the Superbowl.

Sava · February 9, 2003, 17:13

Quote:

Originally posted by NeOmega
This story is already dead in America. I saw it on the news for about 30 seconds yesterday.

Even though I see it as a glaring example of our intelligence communities ineptitude, I think the American media will choose to ignore this story, since the big ratings will come from a war. Higher probably even than the Superbowl.

And that's what's really sad about this country.

Provost Harrison · February 9, 2003, 17:13

I withdraw my objection

Wernazuma III · February 9, 2003, 17:22

Sava: What is even more sad is the fact that also in the media over here you didn't hear about that story. I found a one sentence remark in a short article on page 8 of our provincial newspaper where it is mentiones...

Sava · February 9, 2003, 17:28

Yup... that's why I accidently copycated... I didn't even hear about it. And I read a lot of online news and watch about an hour of news a day.

OneFootInTheGrave · February 9, 2003, 17:31

The fact is that we are all being brainwashed, but who cares... we better kill Saddam ASAP - and the confusion will stop. Man let's pour some beer, watch Iraqis burn on CNN and have some popcorn. It will be better than "Survivor" series. Soon this confusing nightmare of all those conflicting reports and doubt in our governments will stop when we kill Saddam.

NeOmega · February 9, 2003, 17:52

until the report about North Korea is realeased, then Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Malaysia, Myanmar......

Oerdin · February 9, 2003, 17:55

I see we have a supporter of the domino theory here, eh Omega?

OneFootInTheGrave · February 9, 2003, 18:48

Now what happens when we have a report about France on the table

The Andy-Man · February 9, 2003, 19:00

Quote:

Now what happens when we have a report about France on the table

simple, land a few troops on there cost and watch them run away.

David Floyd · February 9, 2003, 20:43

This is hilarious

Wernazuma III · February 10, 2003, 07:32

Quote:

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
The fact is that we are all being brainwashed, but who cares... we better kill Saddam ASAP - and the confusion will stop. Man let's pour some beer, watch Iraqis burn on CNN and have some popcorn. It will be better than "Survivor" series. Soon this confusing nightmare of all those conflicting reports and doubt in our governments will stop when we kill Saddam.

Excellent analysis, it reflects how politics are being made!

Solly · February 10, 2003, 07:47

The left-wing will find fault with anything - they are never happy as they know they are dead and buried.

Daz · February 10, 2003, 08:03

What stunned me was the fact that, although the USA proclaim that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, Bush actually said: "Iraq has to show us proof they dont have weapons of mass destruction".

Now, how do you do that? How do you prove you dont have something? I'm not trying to defend a well known dictator here, but this kind of behaviour is threatning the whole world. I mean, tomorrow the USA will occupy another country because they think they pose a threat to the US and next year police are gonna blast your ass to kingdom come because you didn't prove youre not a drug dealer!? Where does this lead to other that US hegemony? How soon until this is applied to the American people themselves?

Solly · February 10, 2003, 08:08

Quote:

Bush actually said: "Iraq has to show us proof they dont have weapons of mass destruction".

We know what weapons they had. Weapons that you can't just throw in a bin. If we aren't being shown where they have been disposed of, it's safe to assume that Iraq still has them somewhere.