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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (71923)	2/6/2003 5:48:13 PM
From: Rascal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"I've got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere: Britain's Iraq dossier was a cut-and-paste job: report 1 hour, 14 minutes ago By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer LONDON - A dossier released by the British government purporting to show how Iraq is deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors was based on old information, including an article by an American university lecturer, a British news program said Thursday. Channel 4 News said the 19-page report — entitled "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation" and posted Monday on Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s Web site — contained large chunks lifted from other sources. Channel 4 said the "bulk" of the document was copied from three articles, including one in Jane's Intelligence Review and another by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, that appeared last September in the Middle East Review of International Affairs. In response to the Channel 4 report, Blair's 10 Downing St. office said the dossier had been "put together by a range of government officials." The office said, "We consider the text as published accurate." Julian Rush, a Channel 4 reporter, compared a six-paragraph passage from al-Marashi's article with an identical passage in the government's dossier. Other passages contain very minor alterations, and typographical errors in al-Marashi's article are repeated in the dossier. Al-Marashi said he had not been approached by the British government about using his research, "It was a shock to me," he told The Associated Press. The article looked at Saddam's security apparatus over the past three decades, and drew on a range of sources including information that was recent at the time of publication in September, al-Marashi said. The government's dossier purported to detail ways in which the Iraqi regime has blocked the work of weapons inspectors currently in Iraq. The government said it was based on "a number of sources, including intelligence material," but did not give details. The dossier said that while the United Nations (news - web sites) has only 108 inspectors in Iraq, Saddam has 20,000 intelligence officers "engaged in disrupting their inspections and concealing weapons of mass destruction." Among its claims, it said Iraqi security agents had bugged every room and telephone of the weapons inspectors in Baghdad and hidden documents in Iraqi hospitals, mosques and homes. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) cited the dossier on Wednesday as he addressed the United Nations with evidence of Iraq's weapons programs. Chris Aaron, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, told Channel 4 he had not been asked for permission to use material from his article in the dossier. Al-Marashi said he was not angry at the copying, but hoped the British government would now credit his work "out of academic decency." "I hope they do the right thing," he said. __ On the Net: Government Iraq dossier: number-10.gov.uk Ibrahim al-Marashi's article: meria.idc.ac.il Rascal@ tracking.com

To: Ilaine who wrote (71923)	2/6/2003 5:48:35 PM
From: Condor	Respond to of 281500

Sorry, it's impossible to take you or your "source" seriously when he can't even spell "Rangwala" correctly. If you have a real article by the real Ibrahim al-Marashi accusing British intelligence or the State Department of plagiarizig his work, please link it, because it doesn't turn up on Google. You spelled plagiarizing wrong. :o) C

To: Ilaine who wrote (71923)	2/6/2003 5:55:19 PM
From: paul_philp	Respond to of 281500

to be fair ... UK document on Iraq 'a hasty cut and paste job' By Stephen Fidler in London Published: February 6 2003 20:15 \| Last Updated: February 6 2003 20:15 news.ft.com A British government document on Iraq praised this week by US Secretary of State Colin Powell contains factual errors and has been described as a "cut and paste job" by researchers. The document, released at the weekend, was meant to highlight Iraq's efforts to deceive weapons inspectors. But large sections were drawn without attribution from three articles on Iraq's security services, one of which was published in 1997. In his address to the United Nations on Wednesday, Mr Powell described the document as "a fine paper... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities". Yet in one section, the UK document describes the Iraqi Military Security Service as having been established in 1992 - and as having moved to a new headquarters two years earlier in 1990. Glen Rangwala, a politics lecturer at Cambridge University, who uncovered the errors, said officials had apparently incorrectly copied part of a document related to one security service in a section devoted to another. Copying the three articles - Mr Rangwala called it "plagiarism" - has also resulted in different spellings for Arabic names, including the Ba'ath Party, he said. A Downing Street spokesman said it stood by the document, which described itself as drawing upon "a number of sources including inteligence material". He would not say who compiled it. An author of one of the reports used as a source, Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in Monterey, California, said: "I know it's cut and paste because they have copied a lot of my mistakes." He said he had rushed the article to the publisher, the Middle East Review of International Affairs. Asked if he objected to being used in a propaganda effort, Mr al-Marashi said: "Only if I don't get proper attribution." The UK document, released to journalists and published on Downing Street's website, also copied most of a diagram Mr al-Marashi said had taken months of research - without attribution or permission. Two other researchers were also quoted extensively: 1997 articles by Sean Boyne and a 2002 article by Ken Gause, both of which appeared in Jane's Intelligence Review. Chris Aaron, editor of the review, said it was not unusual for UK governments to use a combination of publicly-available material with some intelligence information - but the mistakes raised questions about how carefully the document had been compiled. Mr Rangwala said that the UK document had also altered wordings and rounded up numbers to make its claims appear stronger. "It looks like it has been rushed out by Number 10 to play into the US agenda that inspections cannot work," he said.