|
pattern
multiplayer
Registered: 07/19/02
Posts: 2,185
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 4 years, 6 days
|
British "Intelligence"
#1289687 - 02/07/03 06:46 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
-------------------- man = monkey + mushroom
|
Xlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
|
Re: British "Intelligence" [Re: pattern]
#1289730 - 02/07/03 06:58 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
You're right to be disturbed.
The revelation that great chunks of this dossier were simply lifted from a Californian's post graduate thesis won't do much to build up confidence in the government at a time when it desparately needs to build up trust.
And it probably won't do much to build up trust when people discover that some of those working on this report were not the Iraqi experts at the Foreign office or MI6 but Downing street staffers, including those that work in Alastair Campbell's department of communications in no.12 Downing street.
Among the four names credited with working on the document is Alastair Campbell's own personal assistant Alison Blackshaw, a junior no.10 press officer Murtarza Khan, one other no.10 official and a foreign office official.
Unaware that it was a straight lift from a PHD thesis both Tony Blair and US Secretary of State Colin Powell this week paraded the dossier as quality research and a searing indictment of Saddam's regime.
This saga is already being pointed to as further evidence that the government's communications efforts are out of control. An inquiry into government media relations begins its work next week, and now added to its in tray is just how a government dossier on Iraq turned into such a propaganda own goal.
http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/stories/20030207/dossier.html
-------------------- Don't worry, B. Caapi
|
Xlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
|
Re: British "Intelligence" [Re: pattern]
#1289788 - 02/07/03 07:18 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
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
-------------------- Don't worry, B. Caapi
|
|