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Britain's Intelligence Dossier on Iraq was Plagiarized from a Grad Student
by Decius at 12:42 pm EST, Feb 7, 2003 |
] Feb. 6, 2003, 2230 hrs, PST, (FTW) - A story is sweeping
] the world tonight and it says a great deal about those
] who are forcing the world into a war it does not want. The
] famed dossier presented by British Prime Minister Tony Blair
] to his Parliament was plagiarized from two articles and a
] September 2002 research paper submitted by a graduate
] student. Worse, the Iraq described by the graduate student
] is not the Iraq of 2003 but the Iraq of 1991. This is a very interesting story. From what I can tell, the central claim is accurate. Britain plagiarized large sections of the student's report in their report. The students report was compiled from open sources (the intelligence kind not the computer kind :). The link here is a good one, because it provides both reports. You can do your own comparisons. I'm not sure what to make of this politically. I'd like to see what other people on MemeStreams have to say. The link here makes the claim that the student's report is about the Iraq of 1991. That certainly would be a smoking gun, but it doesn't appear to be accurate. The student's report mentions that there are very few open sources on Iraq. A large number of documents were release in 1991, and these are used as one of the reference sources for the article, but there are many other reference sources, the majority of which are relatively recent. Furthermore, Britain ought to be using open sources, and one could imagine that they are careful to keep open source intel and closed source intel separate, and for a public report they would rely completely upon open sources. So one can imagine how this text might have crept into their report. It doesn't mean the information in the student's analysis is bad.
On the other hand, it does appear that the author of the British report took some amount of journalistic liberty with the student's words in an attempt to make things sound more dramatic. Furthermore, Britain should have attributed their sources. Both of these things are certainly dishonest. Whether or not they amount to a smoking gun on the war issue, I'm just not sure. What do YOU think? |
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RE: Britain's Intelligence Dossier on Iraq was Plagiarized from a Grad Student
by Rattle at 6:17 pm EST, Feb 7, 2003 |
Decius wrote:
] I'm not sure what to make of this politically. I'd like to see
] what other people on MemeStreams have to say. Yeah. Me too. I can see reasons for it, but it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth anyway. I have a feeling that there will be a steady stream of oped peices in reference to this. ] The link here makes the claim that the student's report is
] about the Iraq of 1991. That certainly would be a smoking gun,
] but it doesn't appear to be accurate. The student's report
] mentions that there are very few open sources on Iraq. A large
] number of documents were release in 1991, and these are used
] as one of the reference sources for the article, but there are
] many other reference sources, the majority of which are
] relatively recent.
]
] Furthermore, Britain ought to be using open sources, and one
] could imagine that they are careful to keep open source intel
] and closed source intel separate, and for a public report they
] would rely completely upon open sources. So one can imagine
] how this text might have crept into their report. It doesn't
] mean the information in the student's analysis is bad. Good observation. That is one of the points I was thinking also. There is a lot of logic to keeping to two type of intel seperate. The military and intelligence community has a very black and white view of things, for good reason, so I can see them concluding that it would be best to use open sources where possible, and just only use sources that they know to be accurate and line up with their other intelligence. I can see this being an easier route, as if it was out there, they would need "less" approval to use it. I assume they would need several people in some chain of command to sign off on every damn sentence that came from a classified source, and that's time consuming. This report was likely demanded on short notice. Work from the pool of information already available in open sources, only use what you know to be true from your other sources. Logical. You betray nothing that way. Another way to look at it, is that the focus of the game is public perception, not truly providing proof.. They would like to reenforce the enemy having a view like "they don't know anything that we don't know they know".. And that this report was not created by their intelligence people, but rather their poltical PR people, who would not necessarly have the ability to pull from the classified intel sources. Ot at least, they would get more friction doing so. This too is likely possible. ] On the other hand, it does appear that the author of the
] British report took some amount of journalistic liberty with
] the student's words in an attempt to make things sound more
] dramatic. Furthermore, Britain should have attributed their
] sources. Both of these things are certainly dishonest. Whe... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ] |
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Britain's Intelligence Dossier on Iraq was Plagiarized from a Grad Student
by Moon Pie at 11:34 am EST, Feb 7, 2003 |
Feb. 6, 2003, 2230 hrs, PST, (FTW) - A story is sweeping the world tonight and it says a great deal about those who are forcing the world into a war it does not want. The famed dossier presented by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his Parliament was plagiarized from two articles and a September 2002 research paper submitted by a graduate student. Worse, the Iraq described by the graduate student is not the Iraq of 2003 but the Iraq of 1991. So glaring was the theft of intellectual property that the official British document even cut and pasted whole verbatim segments of the research paper, including grammatical errors, and presented the findings as the result of intense work by British intelligence services. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell both praised and quoted that same British report in his presentation at the United Nations yesterday. |
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