The “intelligence” dossier that Tony Blair revealed on Monday, to which Colin Powell referred to thus: “the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities” turns out to have been largely copied, verbatim, from a PhD thesis that is 12 years old.
Other information is copied verbatim from a 6-year-old article in Jane’s Fighting Review.
Why the hell didn’t the UK government, with its intelligence networks, GCHQ surveillance, and US-shared intelligence, use data from its own intelligence sources?
Because suprise!, private industry and private citizens are generally better then public gov’t at most, if not all, things. Intelligence gathering and analysis is by no means exempted.
I saw that on Channel Four news last night. It is an absolute thundering scandal. Check out the Channel Four News article. It details some of the “cosmetic” changes, which turn out be typical spin-doctoring :
This is just unbelievable. There is certainly no hard evidence for the spying or terrorist support … all they’ve done is stick their insinuations over existing copy they stole over the internet. And these people are running the country!
To paraphrase Tallyrand, its worse than immoral, its stupid. How did it happen? Simple. Intelligence is the rumor you already believe. Some low lever cipher cobbled this together, stamped “Top Secret” on the cover page, and handed it up to his supervisor. The supervisor added “Eyes Only - Need to Know Basis” and handed it to his boss, eliding all references to sources. His boss said “Splendid work, Philby! Bloody good show!” and passed it to Tony the Poodle. He looked at it and thought “Well, here it is, the gospel truth” and handed it to whomever. By now, it had taken on a life of its own. Euros to doughnuts, Tony had no clue as to its ultimate sources.
In the words of St. Robert of Dylan, “Don’t follow leaders”. Amen, brother, amen.
In my view this is a very serious scandal. The document is effectively a pack of lies, and it was intended to be used to attempt to justify killing thousands of Iraqis. Doubtless, though, as there is no prurience involved, it will drop off the headlines very quickly.
I suppose that there’s an outside possibility that it’s a deliberate attempt to prevent war by undermining the credibility of the warmongers. I know it sounds a bit stupid, but if I thought of it surely Tony Blair could have. Maybe I’ve been too influenced by that Jeffrey Archer programme though.
There is one more - the possibility that our leaders have such a low opinion of our intelligence that they think they can pretty much get away with anything. They are probably right. I wouldn’t be surprised if the dossier continues to be held up by Powell as evidence supporting his viewpoint. Blair will certainly disassociate himself from it though.
By the way, is anyone else getting slightly irritated with the BBC’s news management tactics?
The BBC’s take is that it’s OK because “everybody does it” and they don’t even touch on the horror of the piece, which - as if I had to point it out - isn’t the plagiarism (which is bad enough) but that they have been caught with their pants down bending the facts to suit a pro-war agenda.
And why on earth aren’t the Tories and the Lib Dems absolutely shredding the gov’t front bench? Why such political apathy?
I am so definitely joining the protest on Saturday week. The lot we have in power now, I wouldn’t follow any of them round the corner, much less into armed conflict. :mad:
May I play devil’s advocate, and suggest that this sounds more embarrasing than it is.
For starters, the sources do seem reasonable - Jane’s Intelligence Review and International Affairs’ Middle East Review. Secondly, the sources have actually come forward to say the dossier is accurate and fair.
If we look at the Internal Affairs content, it’s original author Ibrahim al-Marashi gave the following description of his work:
Now isn’t this sort of combined review of military intelligence and available information the sort of dossier they should be giving us? Isn’t this more believable than completely government sourced information and military intelligence?
We are about to go to war based upon 12 year old information?
I don’t care how valid the information was, or was not, it is utterly irrelevant.
God help the frontline troops whose lives may depend upon accurate information!
Would you send your son to war, possibly to die, on a 12 year old rumour, and would you be prepared to kill another person based upon 12 year old lies?
Remember that we could end up stuck in a volatilve region for many years, we will all be paying taxes for it, and our enemies have just been handed a superb recruitment tool.
All plagiarised from a freakin student, not even from 12 year old CIA documents.
Don’t you think that intelligence information should be gathered and used by those paid very highly to carry out nothing else but this task, not a student.
Finally, why am I being heavily taxed to provide funds for various intelligence agencies when all that is needed is a student with a little initiative ?
Indeed, as casdave points out, this is an embarrassment that borders on the dishonorable. There can be no graver undertaking than advocating war. We have honorable men and women sworn to our protection, by the same token, we owe them our unalloyed honesty and candor. Whether it is worse to send someone to die for an ignoble cause, or to send them to kill for it, is a question for theolgians.
Worse than the implications of dishonesty is the implication of incompetence. Some cipher passes the report to Blair, who passes it to Powell, and no one, no one bothers to make the effort to ensure its reliability: it sings the song that they wish to hear, and hence, they believe it. It would appear that to these men “intelligence” means nothing more than the rumor you are already inclined to accept.
It is, perhaps, a relatively minor disgrace. It is a disgrace, nonetheless.