More about the bogus British report Powell Quoted at UN

[hudini36]

Feb. 7, 2003, 1830 hrs, PST, (FTW): Mainstream media in the U.S. has finally started to report on this story:
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...ier/index.html
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.

It is important that readers see and understand the enormity of this violation of public trust for themselves. The story was first broken by Britain's Channel 4 today and it is appearing in more papers and web sites by the hour. The following links lead directly to the Channel 4 story, to the British "intelligence" report and to the original student paper.

What was also disclosed was that certain portions of the academic report were altered by the PM Tony Blair to make them more inflammatory. In one cited instance Blair changed "aiding opposition groups" to "supporting terrorists."

The Channel 4 story is at:
http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/...6/dossier.html

The Official UK intelligence report is at:
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp

The original student research paper is located at: http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html

In the context of merely preventing or slowing a war with Iraq this would be earth shattering news. But in a world that is slowly beginning to feel the pressure of and admit the reality of dwindling global oil supplies the fallout from the story may actually accelerate hostilities. British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be, by tomorrow, facing monumental challenges in both Parliament and from British public opinion that is overwhelmingly opposed to an Iraqi invasion. The event could be enough to topple his government and cause new elections which might well result in a new government that is not mind-melded with the Bush administration.

The Bush administration, faced with its own embarrassment over the issue, cannot wage a successful war without England. The first thought that came to my mind when I saw the story was that George W. Bush must pre-empt this story and make it moot to save not only Blair but himself as well. The only way to do that is to have the war begin before the justified outrage of the electorate which has been treated with utter contempt can make itself felt.

I noticed tonight that the Associated Press and Yahoo news had reported that the 101st Air Assault Division based at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky - the Army's premier "door kickers" - had been given their deployment orders for the Gulf this afternoon. As I have previously reported, the 101st, along with units like the 75th Rangers can be deployed and operational within 96 hours, anywhere in the world. When the 101st heads out you know the war is going to start very soon.

These are incredibly dangerous times, made more so because there is no turning back for the Bush administration. This story is incredible proof of the cynicism, dishonesty and callousness of the tyrants pushing the world toward destruction. And Iraq is merely the first stop on a sequential plan for control of the last remaining oil reserves on the planet. I encourage all who read the information contained in these links to spread it far and wide and also, by whatever means at their disposal, to tell the mainstream press, members of congress and the White House itself that we will not follow; we will not obey; and we will not kill on the orders of those who lie to us and who demonstrate the integrity of thieves and intellectual cowards.

This might be our last chance before the bombs start falling, before young American men and many innocent Iraqi civilians are reduced to blood and ash.

[Jimbo]

hundi36,

Just when I begin to think you are a harmless liberal living in a dream world you write things like this "These are incredibly dangerous times, made more so because there is no turning back for the Bush administration. This story is incredible proof of the cynicism, dishonesty and callousness of the tyrants pushing the world toward destruction. And Iraq is merely the first stop on a sequential plan for control of the last remaining oil reserves on the planet." and this "I encourage all who read the information contained in these links to spread it far and wide and also, by whatever means at their disposal, to tell the mainstream press, members of congress and the White House itself that we will not follow; we will not obey; and we will not kill on the orders of those who lie to us and who demonstrate the integrity of thieves and intellectual cowards."

I hardly believe you have any real facts indicating that the US has a sequential plan to control the worlds' oil reserves. Nor do I believe there is any information either within your posts or the attached links that will cause a widespread rebellion of the American people against our fine government, no matter how strongly you may advocate this rediculous action.

When you write phrases such as "we will not follow; we will not obey " I no longer consider you harmless but perhaps a real threat to our government and personal freedom. Please turn youself in either to the authorities or a local hospital and seek both mercy and help. It may not yet be too late.

[Clarkmeister]

Jimbo,

In typical conservative fashion, you ignore the thrust of his message ("This is some pretty scary [censored] they found in the UK") and find a pretext to personally attack the poster and obfuscate the issue.

His inflammatory rhetoric isn't intended to "incite a rebellion", its intended to highlight just how disturbing the revelations in those links really are.

Seriously Jimbo, you don't find the fact that the UK is using a 12 year old student paper as the basis a public speech disturbing? That they are using 12 year old allegations as "evidence" supporting war, and by extension the death of tens of thousands of human lives disturbing?

And even worse, our Secretary of State cites said speech as evidence! I think this is an incredibly disturbing and downright scary piece of news.

Basically, if this is all we and the UK can muster as evidence at the critical juncture, then I am forced to conclude that we have NOTHING on Hussein. Zilch. We are resorting to plagurizing 12 year old student term papers????????? Jesus F Christ we are talking about WAR. People are going to die, and this is the best our government and our biggest ally can come up with?

You are really more concerned with calling the initial poster unpatriotic than with the information reported in the CNN article? I am far less concerned with inflammatory rhetoric and unfounded statements from an anonymous poster than I am with inflammatory rhetoric and unfounded statements coming from our President.

[MMMMMM]

Even if sections wrere plagiarized, does that mean that the US has no significant evidence on Iraq now? Does it mean that Powell presented nothing new in terms of circumstantial evidence? I don't think so, although I haven't yet analyzed the report (and the reports on the report) in sufficient depth to say for sure.

Recently the Australian Prime Minister came out and said his country had clear intelligence information absolutely linking Iraq to al Qaeda. The intelligence services of other countries have provided knowledge of Iraqi violations of the resolutions prohibiting WMD.

If sections of Powell's report were plagiarized, that may indicate bad judgment, or overhaste in preparing a presentable overview--or even, more disturbingly, perhaps deliberate deception to some degree. But it doesn't necessarily mean that Powell's entire presentation was a farce or contained nothing new or important.

[Jimbo]

In typical conservative fashion, you ignore the thrust of his message ("This is some pretty scary [censored] they found in the UK") and find a pretext to personally attack the poster and obfuscate the issue.

Clarkmesiter this poster I "attacked" called me a facist in another thread with no provacation. After that any manner I might use to respond to him is tame.

His inflammatory rhetoric isn't intended to "incite a rebellion", its intended to highlight just how disturbing the revelations in those links really are.

Are you taking over as the resident psychic? I read his words as inciteful and dangerous.


Seriously Jimbo, you don't find the fact that the UK is using a 12 year old student paper as the basis a public speech disturbing? That they are using 12 year old allegations as "evidence" supporting war, and by extension the death of tens of thousands of human lives disturbing?

Clark I do not find the facts in this 12 year old fiasco as being any less relevant today than then. Do you?


And even worse, our Secretary of State cites said speech as evidence! I think this is an incredibly disturbing and downright scary piece of news.

How so? Facts do not become irrelevant with age, in fact they often become more meaningful with some time to see how they still apply today.


Basically, if this is all we and the UK can muster as evidence at the critical juncture, then I am forced to conclude that we have NOTHING on Hussein. Zilch. We are resorting to plagurizing 12 year old student term papers????????? Jesus F Christ we are talking about WAR. People are going to die, and this is the best our government and our biggest ally can come up with?

No Clark, this is the best they are willing to provide publicly without compromising crucial intelligence sources. Just because portions of Tony Blairs report were written by a college student does not make them automatically incorrect. What fuzzy logic you are using here Clark. I do believe the BBC reported that the information from that paper was accurate. The only mistake was not giving proper accreditation, this does not make the accurate information inaaccurate.


You are really more concerned with calling the initial poster unpatriotic than with the information reported in the CNN article? I am far less concerned with inflammatory rhetoric and unfounded statements from an anonymous poster than I am with inflammatory rhetoric and unfounded statements coming from our President.

If that was the case I would agree with you Clark but I believe our Presidnt has better information than you or hundi36. Does this surprise you that national security may be at stake and you do not get all the details? I certainly hope not .

[nicky g]

"Recently the Australian Prime Minister came out and said his country had clear intelligence information absolutely linking Iraq to al Qaeda. "

I'll believe the Australian intelligence when I see it. Tony Blair and George Bush have said the same thing and yet come up with zero convincing evidence, while leaked intelligence reports from the CIA and MI6 contradict their political paymasters over and over again. Jimbo says he believes George Bush is supplied with better intelligence than the posters here, which is obviously true, but the people supplying him with that intelligence clearly don't agee with his interpretations (I'd say outright fabrications, but never mind) of it.
I also serisouly doubt that George Bush is gifted with more personal intelligence in te sense of intellect than the average poster here (at least the non-anonymous regulars) but that's a different matter I suppose [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] .

[Clarkmeister]

"Clarkmesiter this poster I "attacked" called me a facist in another thread with no provacation. After that any manner I might use to respond to him is tame."

OK, maybe I jumped in out of context. If you two have your own personal flame war going on, then by all means have fun.

" I read his words as inciteful and dangerous"

Oh come on now. Really. Dangerous to whom, exactly? Are the 20 people who read this forum going to go blow up a post office now? Other than Zee, I don't know that anyone who reads this is capable of anything dangerous. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] (Though I suppose HDPM could arm his neighbors if needed) [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]

"Facts do not become irrelevant with age, in fact they often become more meaningful with some time to see how they still apply today"

And sometimes they become irrelevant. You know, our country once had legalized slavery. How meaningful is that today? Only slightly more meaningless than pre-gulf war intelligence detailing Saddams infrastructure before we dismantled it.


"I do believe the BBC reported that the information from that paper was accurate"

Actually, there is a quote on the BBC stating that some of the numbers were "slightly exaggerated"

"Just because portions of Tony Blairs report were written by a college student does not make them automatically incorrect"

Those "portions were about 60% of the report. And while it doesn't make them incorrect, the fact that the information is 12 years old certainly makes them close to irrelevant IMO.


"Does this surprise you that national security may be at stake and you do not get all the details? I certainly hope not "

No, of course not. It does surprise me that of all the mountains of irrefutable evidence we supposedly have, the best we can do publicly is to plagurize a 12 year old document. Since we (and our allies) are willing to lie and misrepresent it makes me question our motives. Particularly when I already think its fairly obvious that this war is about more than just Saddam and WMDs. In short, the arguement that our president is "acting on sensitive intelligence that is not suitable for public consumption" only flies when I trust the president and think he is being honest with the American people. And at this point, I don't.

[andyfox]

"I believe our Presidnt has better information than you or hundi36."

-On what do you base this belief, Jimbo? In the past, presidents of both parties, both liberal and conservative, have claimed they had information which necessitated military action. All too often, they were lying. President Kennedy told us we were defending freedom and democracy in the country of South Vietnam. But there was no freedom there, no democracy, and, in fact, no country of South Vietnam. President Johnson told us we were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. We were not. President Nixon told us he had a secret plan for peace. The only thing he had was a plan to drop more bombs than had been dropped in the history of the world. President Reagan told us that Nicaragua was a totalitarian dungeon and that the murderers who opposed them were the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers. President Clinton's record of pathological untruth telling stands as an exemplar par excellence of the fact that all government officials are liars and nothing they say should be believed.

Now we find out that one of the bases for the U.S. and Great Britain's evidence against Saddam Hussein is, at the least, somewhat suspect. I believe we have reason to doubt not only that President Bush has more and better information than he has revealed, since what he has revealed is itself suspect information. When we're talking about having sex with someone in the White House, not all that much harm is done. When we're talking about dropping missiles on civilians, that's another story.

[John Cole]

M,

I have failed students when one, yes one, word has been plagiarized. Intellectual dishonesty is just that, and I don't make a distinction between just a little plagiarism and too much plagiarism.

The greatest threat to national security is, in my estimation, a government that lies and purposely withholds information from its citizens. The foundation of a good government should be an informed citizenry that trusts the people it has elected. Our spiralling distrust of government has been the result of our own government's distrust in us and our ability to process and understand critical information.

John

[Chris Alger]

Was this before or after he suffered the first no-confidence vote by Australia's upper house in 102 years as a result of his support for US war efforts? Anyway, I read that he simply repeated the claims Powell made at the UN, which impressed no one. (Remember the Atta meeting in Prague with an Iraqi intellgence official? Guess that one never took off).

http://216.239.39.100/custom?=cache:...n&ie=UTF-8

In the meantime, British intelligence asserts that no such connection exits. According to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News, there are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network. The classified document, written by defence intelligence staff three weeks ago, says there has been contact between the two in the past, but it assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2727471.stm

In Canada, people get to see reports like this one:

"There's only one problem with the ties the White House alleges between Saddam and al-Qaeda. According to most experts on Iraq , those ties barely exist, if they exist at all. "While there are contacts, have been contacts, there is no co-operation. There is no substantial, noteworthy relationship," said Daniel Benjamin, former terrorism adviser to the U.S. National Security Council. "Experts point out that Saddam, a secular Iraqi nationalist who refuses to rule by the Muslim religious law of Sharia, is a natural enemy of Osama bin Laden.

As for bin Laden, he has vowed to topple Arab leaders like Saddam who don't embrace Islamic fundamentalism. "Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein and considers him an infidel," said Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds . He says bin Laden was even ready to help liberate Kuwait when it was invaded by Iraq in 1990. ...

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counter-terrrorism, says the Bush administration is putting fierce pressure on the CIA to produce evidence about the Iraq al-Qaeda link that it doesn't have. "They are not getting it from the CIA because the CIA, to its credit, is telling it the way they see it, which is what they should be doing, describing the world as it is, not as policy-makers wish it to be, or hope it to be, but as it is." CBC News, 11/2/2

http://216.239.39.100/custom?q=cache...n&ie=UTF-8