British Intelligence on Iraq

Hey Phat_Penguin,

The document plagiarised was written by Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi when he was a student in 1991.It doesn’t matter what he is now / / how much he knows now or what he needs in order to be a Research Associate or the job he is doing now.

You are right it's gone off topic, some of you are trying turn this thread into America – Iraq support thread.

I fully support negative for this thread because it highlights:-


What I am worried about, the state of our secret service and information gathering. It failed during September 11 and now, plagiarism?

Common even a kid can do a better job at copying!!! Not word for word copying (including mistakes).

American and British people deserve a better service than that!!!

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But it emerged that some of the document was copied from three different articles, including one written by a postgraduate student.

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taken from:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2735031.stm

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But it has emerged 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.

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taken from:-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030207/4/dsp4v.html

We trust on our secret service and information gathering :-

- On how to protect our Country

- When we make political decisions

- When we send our soldiers to war

:confused:


Dr_Evil

Dr Evil

Sorry but you may be wrong, I believe it was written in 2002 - but you are correct, data seized in 1991 was used in its findings, an article titled "British Government Plagiarizes MERIA Journal: Our Response" gives a fuller explanation.

<snippet>

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As some of you may have heard, a major scandal which has received global media coverage erupted over the British government’s plagiarism of a MERIA Journal article.

In brief, the story is as follows. Ibrahim al-Marashi wrote a fine article in our September 2002 issue entitled, “Iraq’s Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis,” which looked at that country’s secret police and other such forces in detail. He used captured Iraqi documents from the 1991 Kuwait war but updated it to cover later developments, power shifts, and personnel changes among these agencies.

... and further ...

The fact is that the articles by Mr. Marashi and our other authors are highly accurate, insightful, original, and extremely timely.

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</snippet>

Link to the article here.

This Journal is published from an Israeli domain (.il) .... so does the plot thicken ??? - food for thought, eh !!! ..... think this brings this back right on track with Negative's original post.

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone over the rights/wrongs of using of the article, just the author being quoted as a student, he was a post-grad student when he first studied the documents, I believe - but apparently fully qualified when he wrote the article.

I appreciate your links but having dealt with journalists I tend not to trust things written by them on face value, they sometimes tend to use a little "journalistic licence" to somewhat sensationalise the story - for obvious reasons - it sells papers and air time.

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We trust on our secret service and information gathering :-

- On how to protect our Country

- When we make political decisions

- When we send our soldiers to war

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Absolutely .... but never trust a journalist to let the truth get in the way of a good story :)

Regards,

PP.

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A student ? Where did it say he was a student ?

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You're right, it doesn't say that. I have my info from a Belgian newspaper where he was being called a student. I saw the part where it says that he is a research associate/lecturer, but that didn't ring a bell (I still don't even get the difference between high school/college and what not ;) ). I checked the info on numerous other website (BBC, CNN,...)... they all mentioned 'a student' (I just now saw that CNN titles "The British government has been accused of basing its latest Iraq dossier on old material, including an article by an American post-graduate student. ", while further on in their article they talk about a research associate).

The article indeed was written in September 2002, based on facts from 1991 (as acknowledged by our dear 'student', but not mentioned in the British report).

Here's what a spokeswoman for No. 10 Downing Street said about the plagiarism:

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Section Two dealt with historical background on Iraq, and some of it was based on material written by Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi. In retrospect we should have acknowledged any references to material we used that had been written by Dr Ibrahim. We have learnt an important lesson.

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You're right about journalists hardly ever letting the truth get in the way of a good story, but the facts still stand: Dr. Ibrahim al-Marashi has been plagiarized. Can't blame him for journalists reporting about him not getting their facts straight ;)

Ok here is another fake information used by the states:

taken from: http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/1526

AMERICAN JOURNALIST POSES AS TERRORIST GROUP, FOOLS U.S. GOV
Posted 9 Feb 2003 19:55:55 UTC
An American journalist named Brian McWilliams fooled his fellow journalists on Wednesday, by posing on the Internet as the terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM). He also fooled the U.S. Government.

McWilliams registered the domain HarkatUlMujahideen.org in early 2002, as part of a plan for investigating radical Islam. The domain pointed to a counterfeit HUM web site created by the journalist. The site successfully attracted terrorists to the reporter, who says he intended to compile and report on his findings. The real HUM has been on the United States' list of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997.

Then, last weekend, nearly a year after the birth of his web site, McWilliams took his illusion one step further. He took on the identity of a fictitious HUM terrorist called "Abu Mujahid." He claimed that HUM was responsible for the recent Microsoft SQL "Slammer" worm, and that it was part of a new wave of "cyber jihad."

A reporter and former U.S. military intelligence analyst named Dan Verton was quick to contact "Mujahid" about his claims. Despite the fact that Mujahid's emails came from the United States, and that McWilliams had written openly about the domain before, Verton decided that he had found a credible source. Credible enough that on Wednesday he published a story in Computerworld called "Terrorist group claims responsibility for Slammer worm." (The article has since been removed from Computerworld.)

The National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), the United States' supposed first line of defense against cyber-attack, also analyzed McWilliams' terrorist ruse. Like Verton, they too concluded that the phony HUM was real.

Verton told the Associated Press that he had fallen victim to "an elaborate scheme to dupe security companies and journalists."

McWilliams has now apologized to his colleagues, but his point is clear. "As my bungled experiment proved, even Verton... can apparently be fooled by fake e-mails, phony web sites, and wild claims, in a desire to get a big scoop on a hot topic," McWilliams wrote.

In the biggest scoop of all, the United States' Homeland Security Advisory System was upgraded on Friday to Threat Level Orange.

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Originally posted here by nabylbt
FOOLS U.S. GOV

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Er..... Could we all agree that fooling any government in most things technical is not exactly reason to throw a huge piss-up...... I mean, they have proved time and time again that technology is far from something they should be dabbling in..... They should stick to piling up those nice colored blocks and knocking them down again..... You know, keep them gainfully employed and off our backs.......