Timesonline.co.uk
Report on Iraq was copy & paste job from a outdated thesis!
Wed Jun 8, 2005 20:57
64.140.158.33
February 07, 2003
No 10 admits mistake in copying Iraq dossier
by pa news
Downing Street today said it made a mistake in failing to acknowledge that a large section of a dossier on Saddam Hussein was copied from a Californian postgraduate student’s outdated thesis.
The dossier was designed to help win over sceptics by outlining Iraq’s alleged efforts to hide its weapons of mass destruction. It said UN weapons inspectors were outnumbered by 200 to one by Iraqi agents trying to deceive them, and provided "up to date details" of Iraq’s security organisations.
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, even recommended it to the world in his keynote UN presentation on Wednesday, in which he called the document a "fine paper".
But it emerged overnight that much of the document was lifted from a paper by Ibrahim al-Marashi, from Monterey, California - who was researching material relating to the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War and not to the current situation.
Today former Labour minister Glenda Jackson, MP for Hampstead and Highgate, suggested the Government had misled the public. She told the BBC: "If that was presented to Parliament
and the country as being up-to-date intelligence ... and in fact as we now know they simply lifted it from a university thesis, it is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament on the issue of a possible war with Iraq.
"And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying."
Dr al-Marashi said he was surprised to learn his work had been used by the British Government.
"My immediate reaction was of surprise that these materials had made it into this report," he said.
"I was a bit disenchanted because they never cited my article ... any academic, when you publish anything, the only thing you ask for in return is that they include a citation of your work.
"There are laws and regulations about plagiarism that you would think the UK Government would abide by."
Today the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: "The first and third sections (of the dossier), which are largely based on intelligence material, describe the extreme lengths to which Saddam has gone to hide his weapons and obstruct the inspectors, and the third section the impact on the Iraqi people of the regime.
"The second section describes how the regime is structured, and it is parts of that which were based on Dr al-Marashi’s work, which in retrospect we should have acknowledged.
"The fact that we used some of his work does not throw into question the accuracy of the document as a whole, as he himself acknowledged on Newsnight last night, where he said that in his opinion the document overall was accurate.
"Nor does it take away from the core argument of the document ... that Saddam has mounted a deliberate policy of deception, that the inspectors are outnumbered by a ratio of 200 to one, that they are under constant surveillance, and that there is a deliberate policy of intimidation of scientists and others and that every effort has been made to obstruct rather than fully comply as (Security Council resolution) 1441 said they should."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-569669,00.html
Bush said the #10 Downing Street Memo was a lie?
Here it is in the ARCHIVES:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030424112944/www.number-10.gov.uk/files/pdf/iraqdossier.pdf
ALSO MIRRORED AT: http://www.apfn.org/pdf/WMD-dossier.pdf
=====================================
Fake Terror Alerts
We're as stupid as they think we are
How stupid do they think we are? Only hours after our much-praised Secretary of State is revealed to have been using material plagiarized from a college student to justify why we're going to kill thousands of people with bombs, our government issues a terror alert and expects us to believe it?
http://www.rense.com/general34/STUPID.HTM
=====================================
REAL AUTHORS OF IRAQ DOSSIER BLAST BLAIR
Feb 8 2003
Exclusive By Gary Jones And Alexandra Williams In Los Angeles
JOURNALIST Sean Boyne and student Ibrahim al-Marashi have attacked Tony Blair for using their reports to call for war against Iraq.
Mr Boyne, who works for military magazine Jane's Intelligence Review, said he was shocked his work had been used in the Government's dossier.
Articles he wrote in 1997 were plagiarised for a 19-page intelligence document entitled Iraq: Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation to add weight to the PM's warmongering.
He said: "I don't like to think that anything I wrote has been used for an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war."
The other main source was a thesis by post-graduate student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, the US-born son of Iraqis, who lives in California. His research was partly based on documents seized in the 1991 Gulf War.
He said: "This is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the Government if it is up to these sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish with a lot of scepticism from now on."
After the dossier's origins were revealed, Mr Blair was accused by his own MPs of theft and lies. The fiasco has deeply damaged his attempts to win backing for military action.
It emerged the PA to Mr Blair's spin chief Alastair Campbell was involved in drawing up the dossier which was published last month.
Alison Blackshaw and a Government press officer were both named on the dossier when it was first put on the Government's website. But the names were later removed.
The bulk of the Government's document is directly copied, without acknowledgement, from Ibrahim's 5,000-word thesis - Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network - published last September.
He did not even know the dossier existed until Glen Rangwala, a Cambridge-based Iraq analyst, spotted the plagarism and called him.
Ibrahim, whose parents fled to the US from Iraq in 1968, said the Government not only blatantly lifted much of his work, including typing and grammatical errors. Mr al-Marashi and Mr Boyne said their figures had been altered in the Government document.
Former Labour Defence Minister MP Peter Kilfoyle said: "It just adds to the general impression that what we have been treated to is a farrago of half-truths.
"I am shocked that on such thin evidence that we should be trying to convince the British people that this is a war worth fighting."
And Labour MP Glenda Jackson said: "It is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament.
"And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying."
The PM's official spokesman rejected Ms Jackson's claims but admitted it had been a mistake not to acknowledge Mr al-Marashi's thesis in the dossier.
He added: "The fact we used some of his work doesn't throw into question the accuracy of the document as a whole. This document is solid."
Asked whether Downing Street was embarrassed about the affair, the spokesman said: "We all have lessons to learn."
The dossier had been praised by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speech to the UN Security Council. Mr Boyne added: "Maybe I should invoice Colin Powell."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12620001&method=full&siteid=50143
No 10 admits mistake in copying Iraq dossier
by pa news
Downing Street today said it made a mistake in failing to acknowledge that a large section of a dossier on Saddam Hussein was copied from a Californian postgraduate student’s outdated thesis.
The dossier was designed to help win over sceptics by outlining Iraq’s alleged efforts to hide its weapons of mass destruction. It said UN weapons inspectors were outnumbered by 200 to one by Iraqi agents trying to deceive them, and provided "up to date details" of Iraq’s security organisations.
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, even recommended it to the world in his keynote UN presentation on Wednesday, in which he called the document a "fine paper".
But it emerged overnight that much of the document was lifted from a paper by Ibrahim al-Marashi, from Monterey, California - who was researching material relating to the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War and not to the current situation.
Today former Labour minister Glenda Jackson, MP for Hampstead and Highgate, suggested the Government had misled the public. She told the BBC: "If that was presented to Parliament
and the country as being up-to-date intelligence ... and in fact as we now know they simply lifted it from a university thesis, it is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament on the issue of a possible war with Iraq.
"And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying."
Dr al-Marashi said he was surprised to learn his work had been used by the British Government.
"My immediate reaction was of surprise that these materials had made it into this report," he said.
"I was a bit disenchanted because they never cited my article ... any academic, when you publish anything, the only thing you ask for in return is that they include a citation of your work.
"There are laws and regulations about plagiarism that you would think the UK Government would abide by."
Today the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: "The first and third sections (of the dossier), which are largely based on intelligence material, describe the extreme lengths to which Saddam has gone to hide his weapons and obstruct the inspectors, and the third section the impact on the Iraqi people of the regime.
"The second section describes how the regime is structured, and it is parts of that which were based on Dr al-Marashi’s work, which in retrospect we should have acknowledged.
"The fact that we used some of his work does not throw into question the accuracy of the document as a whole, as he himself acknowledged on Newsnight last night, where he said that in his opinion the document overall was accurate.
"Nor does it take away from the core argument of the document ... that Saddam has mounted a deliberate policy of deception, that the inspectors are outnumbered by a ratio of 200 to one, that they are under constant surveillance, and that there is a deliberate policy of intimidation of scientists and others and that every effort has been made to obstruct rather than fully comply as (Security Council resolution) 1441 said they should."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-569669,00.html
Bush said the #10 Downing Street Memo was a lie?
Here it is in the ARCHIVES:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030424112944/www.number-10.gov.uk/files/pdf/iraqdossier.pdf
ALSO MIRRORED AT: http://www.apfn.org/pdf/WMD-dossier.pdf
=====================================
Fake Terror Alerts
We're as stupid as they think we are
How stupid do they think we are? Only hours after our much-praised Secretary of State is revealed to have been using material plagiarized from a college student to justify why we're going to kill thousands of people with bombs, our government issues a terror alert and expects us to believe it?
http://www.rense.com/general34/STUPID.HTM
=====================================
REAL AUTHORS OF IRAQ DOSSIER BLAST BLAIR
Feb 8 2003
Exclusive By Gary Jones And Alexandra Williams In Los Angeles
JOURNALIST Sean Boyne and student Ibrahim al-Marashi have attacked Tony Blair for using their reports to call for war against Iraq.
Mr Boyne, who works for military magazine Jane's Intelligence Review, said he was shocked his work had been used in the Government's dossier.
Articles he wrote in 1997 were plagiarised for a 19-page intelligence document entitled Iraq: Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation to add weight to the PM's warmongering.
He said: "I don't like to think that anything I wrote has been used for an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war."
The other main source was a thesis by post-graduate student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, the US-born son of Iraqis, who lives in California. His research was partly based on documents seized in the 1991 Gulf War.
He said: "This is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the Government if it is up to these sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish with a lot of scepticism from now on."
After the dossier's origins were revealed, Mr Blair was accused by his own MPs of theft and lies. The fiasco has deeply damaged his attempts to win backing for military action.
It emerged the PA to Mr Blair's spin chief Alastair Campbell was involved in drawing up the dossier which was published last month.
Alison Blackshaw and a Government press officer were both named on the dossier when it was first put on the Government's website. But the names were later removed.
The bulk of the Government's document is directly copied, without acknowledgement, from Ibrahim's 5,000-word thesis - Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network - published last September.
He did not even know the dossier existed until Glen Rangwala, a Cambridge-based Iraq analyst, spotted the plagarism and called him.
Ibrahim, whose parents fled to the US from Iraq in 1968, said the Government not only blatantly lifted much of his work, including typing and grammatical errors. Mr al-Marashi and Mr Boyne said their figures had been altered in the Government document.
Former Labour Defence Minister MP Peter Kilfoyle said: "It just adds to the general impression that what we have been treated to is a farrago of half-truths.
"I am shocked that on such thin evidence that we should be trying to convince the British people that this is a war worth fighting."
And Labour MP Glenda Jackson said: "It is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament.
"And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying."
The PM's official spokesman rejected Ms Jackson's claims but admitted it had been a mistake not to acknowledge Mr al-Marashi's thesis in the dossier.
He added: "The fact we used some of his work doesn't throw into question the accuracy of the document as a whole. This document is solid."
Asked whether Downing Street was embarrassed about the affair, the spokesman said: "We all have lessons to learn."
The dossier had been praised by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speech to the UN Security Council. Mr Boyne added: "Maybe I should invoice Colin Powell."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12620001&method=full&siteid=50143
- The Original Thesis by a postgraduate who lives in Californi —Ibrahim al-Marashi, Wed Jun 8 23:55
- The Original Thesis by a postgraduate who.... Part 2 —Ibrahim al-Marashi, Wed Jun 8 23:57
- The Original Thesis by a postgraduate who.... Part 3 —Ibrahim al-Marashi, Wed Jun 8 23:58
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