Blairs Geheimdienst-Bericht zu Irak ein verfälschtes Plagiat

egal 07.02.2003 11:14 Themen: Medien Militarismus
Der von Powell bei seiner Präsentation im Sicherheitsrat ausdrücklich gelobte und angeblich aktuelle, auf Geheimdienstquellen basierende Bericht von Toni Blair, basiert offensichtlich nur auf mehreren, im Internet frei zugänglichen Aufsätzen, die seitenweise, ohne Quellenangabe, eins zu eins übernommen wurden (sogar mit falscher Kommasetzung). Seite 6 - 16 des 19-seitigen Blair Berichts wurden z.B. aus Ibrahim al-Marashi's Artikel "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis" im Middle East Review of International Affairs vom letzten November übernommen.

Darüberhinaus wurden die Originale an mehreren Stellen verfälscht (aus "oppositionellen Gruppen in feindlichen Regimen helfen" machte Blairs Bericht z.B. "Unterstützung terroristischer Organisationen in feindlichen Regimen").

Ein weiteres Problem ist auch, dass Blairs Bericht vorgibt, die Situation im Irak im Jahr 2003 zu beschreiben, während das Original sich auf den Zeitraum 1990/91 bezieht und damit 12 Jahr alt ist.
 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=52774&group=webcast
British intel report quoted by Powell plagiarized from grad student

by Mike Ruppert 5:33am Fri Feb 7 '03

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/stories/20030206/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.

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02060...


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 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=52716&group=webcast
Government 'intelligence' report on Iraq revealed as plagiarism
by EzyPzy 1:44pm Thu Feb 6 '03 (Modified on 1:04am Fri Feb 7 '03)

Downing Street's "Iraq - its infrastructure of concealment,
deception and intimidation" released on Monday, is revealed to be not the result of hard work and special insight on the part of the intelligence services, but heavily plagiarised without attribution to their original sources.

Release: Government 'intelligence' report on Iraq revealed as plagiarism

for further information contact:
Mike Lewis

The British government's latest report on Iraq's non-compliance with weapons inspections, which claims to draw on "intelligence material", has been revealed as a wholesale plagiarism of three old and publicly-available
articles, one of them by a graduate student in California. The compiler did not even clean up the typos or standardize the spelling.

The dossier, released by the British government on Monday, is entitled "Iraq - Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation". It is reproduced online at
 http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp (references below to page numbers relate to the downloadable Word version).

The first sentence of the document claims that it draws "upon a number of sources, including intelligence material".

This is somewhat misleading.

The bulk of the 19-page document (pp.6-16) is directly copied without acknowledgement from an article in last September's Middle East Review of International Affairs entitled "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A
Guide and Analysis".

 http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html

The author of the piece is Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He has confirmed that his
permission was not sought; in fact, he didn't even know about the British document until Glen Rangwala, a Cambridge-based Iraq analyst, mentioned it to him.

Apart from the obvious criticism that the British government has plagiarised texts without acknowledgement, passing them off as the work of its intelligence services, there are two further serious problems. Firstly, it suggests that the UK at least may not have any independent sources of information on Iraq's internal politics - they just draw upon publicly available data. If they do have independent sources, their intelligence is not being used in the government's public 'case for war'. Thus any further
claims to information based on "intelligence data" must be treated with even more scepticism.

Secondly, the information presented as being an accurate statement of the current state of Iraq's security organisations may not be anything of the sort. Marashi - the real and unwitting author of much of the document - has
as his primary source the documents captured in 1991 for the Iraq Research and Documentation Project. His own focus is the activities of Iraq's intelligence agencies in Kuwait, Aug90-Jan91 - this is the subject of his thesis. As a result, the information presented as relevant to how Iraqi
agencies are currently engaged with Unmovic is 12 years old.

It's quite striking that even Marashi's typographical errors and anomolous uses of grammar are incorporated into the Downing Street document. For example, on p.13, the British dossier incorporates a misplaced comma:

"Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head"..

Likewise, Marashi's piece also states:

"Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head"..

The other sources that are extensively plagiarised in the document are two authors from Jane's Intelligence Review:

Ken Gause (an international security analyst from Alexandria, Virginia), "Can the Iraqi Security Apparatus save Saddam" (November 2002), pp.8-13.
Sean Boyne, "Inside Iraq?s Security Network", in 2 parts during 1997.

None of the sources are acknowledged, leading the reader to believe that the information is a result of direct investigative work, rather than simply copied from pre-existing internet sources.

The fact that the texts of these three authors are copied directly results in a proliferation of different transliterations (eg different spellings of Ba'th, depending on which author is being copied).

There are two types of changes incorporated into the British document. Firstly, numbers are increased or are rounded up. So, for example, the section on "Fedayeen Saddam" (pp.15-16) is directly copied from Boyne, almost word for word. The only substantive difference is that Boyne
estimates the personnel of the organisation to be 18,000-40,000 (Gause similarly estimates 10-40,000). The British dossier instead writes "30,000 to 40,000". A similar bumping up of figures occurs with the description of
the Directorate of Military Intelligence.

The second type of change in the British dossier is that it replaces particular words to make the claim sound stronger. So, for example, most of p.9 on the functions of the Mukhabarat is copied directly from Marashi's article, except that when Marashi writes of its role in:

"monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq"

this becomes in the British dossier:

"spying on foreign embassies in Iraq".

Similarly, on that same page, whilst Marashi writes of the Mukhabarat:

"aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes"

- the British dossier renders this as:

"supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes".

Furher examples from the section on "Fedayeen Saddam" include how a reference to how, in Boyne's original text, its personnel are

"recruited from regions loyal to Saddam", referring to their original grouping as "some 10,000-15,000 'bullies and country bumpkins.'"

becomes in the British government's text a reference to how its personnel are:

"press ganged from regions known to be loyal to Saddam" ... "some 10,000-15,000 bullies."

Clearly, a reference to the "country bumpkins" would not have the rhetorical effect that the British government was aiming for.

Finally, there is one serious substantive mistake in the British text, in that it muddles up Boyne's description of General Security (al-Amn al-Amm), and places it in its section on p.14 of Military Security (al-Amn al-Askari). The result is complete confusion: it starts on p.14 by relating how Military Security was created in 1992 (in a piece copied from Marashi), then goes onto talk about the movement of its headquarters - in 1990 (in a piece copied from Boyne on the activities of General Security). The result is that it gets the description of the Military Security Service wholly wrong, claiming that its head is Taha al-Ahbabi (whilst really he was head of General Security in 1997; Military Security was headed by Thabet Khalil).
For reference, here are a few other summary comments on the British document.

Official authors are (in Word > Properties) P. Hamill, J. Pratt, A. Blackshaw, and M. Khan.

p.1 is the summary.

pp.2-5 are a repetition of Blix's comments to the Security Council on the difficulties they were encountering, with further claims about the activities of al-Mukhabarat. These are not backed up, eg the claim that car crashes are organised to prevent the speedy arrival of inspectors.

p.6 is a simplified version of Marashi's diagram at:
 http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq/pdfs/iraqint.pdf

p.7 is copied (top) from Gause (on the Presidential Secretariat), and (middle and bottom) from Boyne (on the National Security Council).

p.8 is entirely copied from Boyne (on the National Security Council).

p.9 is copied from Marashi (on al-Mukhabarat), except for the final section, which is insubstantial.

p.10 is entirely copied from Marashi (on General Security), except for the final section, which is insubstantial.

p.11 is entirely copied from Marashi (on Special Security), except for the top section (on General Security), which is insubstantial.

p.12 is entirely copied from Marashi (on Special Security).

p.13 is copied from Gause (on Special Protection) and Marashi (Military Intelligence).

p.14 is wrongly copied from Boyne (on Military Security) and from Marashi (on the Special Republican Guard).

p.15 is copied from Gause and Boyne (on al-Hadi project / project 858).

pp.15-16 is copied from Boyne (on Fedayeen Saddam).

A final section, on the Tribal Chiefs' Bureau, seems to be copied from a different piece by Cordesman.


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 http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/stories/20030206/dossier.html
Downing St dossier plagiarised Iraq

Published: 6 February 2003
Reporter: Julian Rush

The government's carefully co-ordinated propaganda offensive took an embarrassing hit tonight after Downing Street was accused of plagiarism.

Read sample of the accused plagiarised text

The target is an intelligence dossier released on Monday and heralded by none other than Colin Powell at the UN yesterday.

Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student.

On Monday, the day before the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell addressed the UN, Downing Street published its latest paper on Iraq.

It gives the impression of being an up to the minute intelligence-based analysis - and Mr Powell was fulsome in his praise.

Published on the Number 10 web site, called "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation", it outlines the structure of Saddam's intelligence organisations.

But it made familiar reading to Cambridge academic Glen Ranwala. It was copied from an article last September in a small journal: the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

It's author, Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student from Monterey in California. Large sections do indeed appear, verbatim.

A section, for example, six paragraphs long, on Saddam's Special Security Organisation, the exact same words are in the Californian student's paper.

In several places Downing Street edits the originals to make more sinister reading.

Number 10 says the Mukhabarat - the main intelligence agency - is "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq".

The original reads: "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq."

And the provocative role of "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes" has a weaker, political context in the original: "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes."

Even typographic mistakes in the original articles are repeated.

Of military intelligence, al-Marashi writes in his original paper:

"The head of military intelligence generally did not have to be a relative of Saddam's immediate family, nor a Tikriti. Saddam appointed, Sabir Abd Al-Aziz Al-Duri as head..." Note the comma after appointed.

Downing Street paraphrases the first sentence: "Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head during the 1991 Gulf War."

This second line is cut and pasted, complete with the same grammatical error.

plagiarism is regarded as intellectual theft.

Sample text

Government dossier: (page 13), published Jan 2003

"Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head during the 1991 Gulf War. After the Gulf War he was replaced by Wafiq Jasim al-Samarrai.

After Samarrai, Muhammad Nimah al-Tikriti headed Al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya in early 1992 then in late 1992 Fanar Zibin Hassan al-Tikriti was appointed to this post.

These shifting appointments are part of Saddam's policy of balancing security positions. By constantly shifting the directors of these agencies, no one can establish a base in a security organisation for a substantial period of time. No one becomes powerful enough to challenge the President."

al-Marashi document: (section: "MILITARY INTELLIGENCE", published sept 2002 - relevant parts have been underlined

Saddam appointed, Sabir ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Duri(80) as head of Military Intelligence during the 1991 Gulf War.(81) After the Gulf War he was replaced by Wafiq Jasim al-Samarrai.(82)

After Samarrai, Muhammad Nimah al-Tikriti(83) headed Military Intelligence in early 1992(84) then in late 1992 Fanar Zibin Hassan al-Tikriti was appointed to this post.(85) While Fanar is from Tikrit, both Sabir al-Duri and Samarrai are non-Tikriti Sunni Muslims, as their last names suggest.

Another source indicates that Samarrai was replaced by Khalid Salih al-Juburi,(86) demonstrating how another non-Tikriti, but from the tribal alliance that traditionally support the regime holds top security positions in Iraq.(87)

These shifting appointments are part of Saddam’s policy of balancing security positions between Tikritis and non-Tikritis, in the belief that the two factions would not unite to overthrow him. Not only that, but by constantly shifting the directors of these agencies, no one can establish a base in a security organization for a substantial period of time, that would challenge the President.(88)
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Ergänzungen

!! Tja ja, die Geheimdienste

07.02.2003 - 13:19
1999 wußten sie nichtmal, wo sich in Belgrad die chinesische Botschaft befindet. Angeblich.

In zwei Wochen ist die deutsche Botschaft in Bagdad nur noch ein Haufen Schutt, wetten? Natürlich nur aufgrund eines "bedauerlichen Irrtums".

töglich Aktionen in Berlin

aktiv 07.02.2003 - 13:25
in Berlin täglich was los gegen den Krieg:  http://www.netdemo.de

das zwielicht 07.02.2003 - 16:59
laut SIPRI (stockholmer friedensforschungsinstitut) hat powell nicht nur informationen aus den 90ern verwendet, sondern auch zB einen film über ein irakisches kriegsflugzeug gezeigt, der schon 1991 aufgenommen wurde usw.. ( http://derstandard.at/?id=1204748)

!! Tja ja, die Geheimdienste! Der beste Kom.

Heinz 08.02.2003 - 16:20
!! Tja ja, die Geheimdienste
Der beste Kommentar den ich in den letzten 18 Wochen in Indymedia gelesen habe. Kurz, sachlich und zutreffend.