UK's Iraq dossier copied from thesis

AFP - A California-based scholar says the British government lifted and distorted passages from a report he wrote on Iraq's illegal weapons program, according to a news report.

"They even copy my grammatical mistakes," said Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, near San Francisco.

While the British document's wording of certain passages was "extremely close" to his, Marashi told the San Francisco Chronicle that some parts of his report had been substantively changed, "distorting" certain figures.

He cited a passage in the British report that said Saddam Hussein's private militia contained "30,000 to 40,000 members", while al-Marashi's own report estimated the number at 15,000.

The British report was praised by US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN Security Council as a "fine paper ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."

A comparison of the online version of the British document, posted on a British government website, and al-Marashi's original article showed a near-precise repetition of certain paragraphs.

The British government admitted on Friday it had made a mistake in failing to credit a large section of its dossier to al-Marashi.

"In retrospect, we should, to clear up any confusion, have acknowledged which bits (of the dossier) came from public sources and which bits came from other sources," British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said.

The report, published on Monday, was drawn up by London, Washington's chief ally in seeking to disarm Iraq by force, to help win over sceptics by outlining Baghdad's alleged efforts to hide weapons of mass destruction.

I have been around academia enough not to defend plagiarism...It should not have occured...however Powells citing of it does not mean Powell is wrong or lying or anything else...Here is another cut and paste job (duly cited) :

It's not nearly as bad as you are trying to make it seem.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=524&u=/ap/20030206/ap_wo_en_po/eu_gen_britain_iraq_dossier_2&printer=1

Britain's Iraq dossier was a cut-and-paste job: report
50 minutes ago

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - A dossier released by the British government purporting to show how Iraq is deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors was based on old information, including an article by an American university lecturer, a British news program said Thursday.

Channel 4 News said the 19-page report — entitled "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation" and posted Monday on Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s Web site — contained large chunks lifted from other sources.

Channel 4 said the "bulk" of the document was copied from three articles, including one in Jane's Intelligence Review and another by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, that appeared last September in the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

In response to the Channel 4 report, Blair's 10 Downing St. office said the dossier had been "put together by a range of government officials." The office said, "We consider the text as published accurate."

Julian Rush, a Channel 4 reporter, compared a six-paragraph passage from al-Marashi's article with an identical passage in the government's dossier. Other passages contain very minor alterations, and typographical errors in al-Marashi's article are repeated in the dossier.

Al-Marashi said he had not been approached by the British government about using his research,

"It was a shock to me," he told The Associated Press.

The article looked at Saddam's security apparatus over the past three decades, and drew on a range of sources including information that was recent at the time of publication in September, al-Marashi said.

The government's dossier purported to detail ways in which the Iraqi regime has blocked the work of weapons inspectors currently in Iraq. The government said it was based on "a number of sources, including intelligence material," but did not give details.

The dossier said that while the United Nations (news - web sites) has only 108 inspectors in Iraq, Saddam has 20,000 intelligence officers "engaged in disrupting their inspections and concealing weapons of mass destruction."

Among its claims, it said Iraqi security agents had bugged every room and telephone of the weapons inspectors in Baghdad and hidden documents in Iraqi hospitals, mosques and homes.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) cited the dossier on Wednesday as he addressed the United Nations with evidence of Iraq's weapons programs.

Chris Aaron, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, told Channel 4 he had not been asked for permission to use material from his article in the dossier.

Al-Marashi said he was not angry at the copying, but hoped the British government would now credit his work "out of academic decency."

"I hope they do the right thing," he said.

11 posted on 02/06/2003 2:02 PM PST by finnman69
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