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US Declassifications Delayed. Infrastructure Classification to follow?
kiwimate writes "This article discusses an executive order issued yesterday which delays the release of millions of historical documents until the end of 2006. Apparently, the relevant agencies need more time to study the affected papers, even though it only affects papers more than 25 years old. Evidently a quarter of a century is not a sufficiently lengthy review period. For a slightly different version of the same story, see here." For further news on the classification of "critical infrastructure" see Declan's story.
In related news.. Phybersyko writes "Declan McCallagh at cnet.com(website) reports (story)that "President George W. Bush has signed an executive order that explicitly gives the government the power to classify information about critical infrastructures such as the Internet."
Do we chalk this up to the cost of "freedom" or are we repeating the same mistakes the Catholics made in the Middle Ages (keep em' ignorant and our rule is secured)...."
/. with "Fair and Balanced" reporting. Read the The Guardian for the Right and The New Zealand Herald for the Left. Read it at C|Net if you don't care.
Don't worry if you forget a secret Echelon knows it already.
Is this to bury information about the actions of the current administration's people that they carried out when they worked for the Reagan administration?
Nothing too new hear. It is just Bush protecting us from ourselves.
Some US code relating to this...
The President of the United States is authorized to designate and
empower the head of any department or agency in the executive
branch, or any official thereof who is required to be appointed by
and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to perform without
approval, ratification, or other action by the President (1) any
function which is vested in the President by law, or (2) any
function which such officer is required or authorized by law to
perform only with or subject to the approval, ratification, or
other action of the President: Provided, That nothing contained
herein shall relieve the President of his responsibility in office
for the acts of any such head or other official designated by him
to perform such functions. Such designation and authorization
shall be in writing, shall be published in the Federal Register,
shall be subject to such terms, conditions, and limitations as the
President may deem advisable, and shall be revocable at any time by
the President in whole or in part.
-SOURCE-
(Added Oct. 31, 1951, ch. 655, Sec. 10, 65 Stat. 712.)
-TRANS-
TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS
Functions vested by law (including reorganization plan) in Bureau
of the Budget or Director of Bureau of the Budget transferred to
President by section 101 of 1970 Reorg. Plan No. 2, eff. July 1,
1970, 35 F.R. 7959, 84 Stat. 2085. Section 102 of 1970 Reorg. Plan
No. 2, redesignated Bureau of the Budget as Office of Management
and Budget and Director of Bureau of the Budget as Director of
Office of Management and Budget. See Reorganization Plan No. 2 of
1970, set out in the Appendix to Title 5, Government Organization
and Employees.
-MISC5-
SIMILAR PROVISIONS; REPEAL; SAVING CLAUSE
For similar provisions contained in prior law, and saving clause
in connection therewith, see note preceding this section.
-EXEC-
EX. ORD. NO. 10250. DELEGATION OF FUNCTIONS TO THE SECRETARY OF THE
INTERIOR
Ex. Ord. No. 10250, June 5, 1951, 16 F.R. 5385, as amended by Ex.
Ord. No. 10732, Oct. 10, 1957, 22 F.R. 8135; Ex. Ord. No. 10752,
Feb. 12, 1958, 23 F.R. 973; Pub. L. 101-509, title V, Sec. 529
(title I, Sec. 112(c)), Nov. 5, 1990, 104 Stat. 1427, 1454,
provided:
1. The Secretary of the Interior is hereby designated and
empowered to perform the following-described functions of the
President without the approval, ratification, or other action of
the President:
(a) The authority vested in the President by section 1 of the act
of July 10, 1935, ch. 375, 49 Stat. 477 (see 16 U.S.C. 19e to 19n),
to appoint members of the National Park Trust Fund Board.
(b) The authority vested in the President by section 2059 of the
Revised Statutes (25 U.S.C. 62) to discontinue any Indian agency,
or transfer the same, from the place or tribe designated by law to
such other place or tribe as the public service may require.
(c) The authority vested in the President by section 6 of the act
of May 17, 1882, ch. 168, 22 Stat. 88, as amended (25 U.S.C. 63),
to consolidate two or more Indian agencies into one, to consolidate
one or more Indian tribes, and to abolish such agencies as are
thereby rendered unnecessary.
(d) The authority vested in the President by the act of March 1,
1907, ch. 2285, 34 Stat. 1016 (25 U.S.C. 140), to divert
appropriations made for certain purposes to other uses for the
benefit of the several Indian tribes: Provided, That the Secretary
of the Interior shall make to the Congress reports required in
connection with action taken by him under this provision.
(e) The authority vested in the President by section 5 of the act
of February 8, 1887, ch. 119, 24 Stat. 389, as amended (25 U.S.C.
348), by the act of December 24, 1942, ch. 814, 56 Stat. 1081 (25
U.S.C. 348a), by the act of June 21, 1906, ch. 3504, 34 Stat. 326
(25 U.S.C. 391), and by section 3 of the act of January 12, 1891,
26 Stat. 712, as amen
That's Weapons of Mass Distraction...
The war is providing great cover for domestic changes like this. Another example
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Do we chalk this up to the cost of "freedom" or are we repeating the same mistakes the Catholics made in the Middle Ages (keep em' ignorant and our rule is secured)...."
Good to see chrisd is still wearing his tinfoil hat. We'll get Mulder and Scully to investigate this ASAP!
Its bad enough that once a war is over we don't just declassify that war's stuff, but delaying this is ridiculous.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
At least in intelligence, the point of classification is to protect the source. For example, if the enemy knows that by using system X, we are able to gain insight into their operations, they will cease to use system X.
... OOPS!
While some things (like out military tactics and battle plans) are not really relevant 25 years after the fact, these documents should still be examined to make sure that they will not divulge a still valid source of valuable intelligence information.
It has happened in the past. Either through publication in the media or release of documents under FOIA, where later we went
Having worked in the Government (military), I can assure you the 25-years is NOT enough time for the government to determine the effects of releasing information. This is because the deadline probably crept up on the affected agencies and they hadn't made any proactive measures to insure the document's declassification.
Now that the deadline has actually approached, they have their pants down and don't know what to do.
we might be more than 25 years ahead of everybody else
Do people really think government agencies are sitting there for 25 years trying to figure out what documents to declassify? When a document is released, that someone gets assigned to it specifically to determine the precise point at which it can be declassified? Of course not - it'd be a complete and utter waste of resources. These reviews are done periodically and cover reams and reams of documents that can't simply be glanced at and passed through - they must be studied down to the individual words used. No doubt it takes quite a while.
But I guess, since we're dealing with Bush, there must be some nefarious governmental conspiracy behind it, right? It can't possibly be that it just takes a while to do the work properly, can it? "No more documents for oil!"
Maybe I've just been reading too much Noam Chomskylately, but they are some pretty interesting questions, with more than one logical explanation.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Apart from disco music? Are these George W Bush's lost years? When he wasn't really doing what he said he was doing? What did he have to do with the loss of the America's Cup?
Either that or the money that they would have spent properly reviewing (read shredding) sensitive stuff, is now being dumped from a great height on Iraq.
And do you think I can get google to tell me who was president in 1978? Google: President 1978 USA - gets me stuff on a maths club.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
The linked CNET article has a bit of a misleading title.
The title and by-line states: "Bush order covers Internet secrets" and "President Bush has signed an executive order that explicitly gives the government the power to classify information about critical infrastructures such as the Internet."
But the last paragraph states:
"Steven Aftergood, an analyst at the Federation of American Scientists who tracks government secrecy, says the change in definitions "creates an opening that could be exploited in the future, but in practice the previous policy would have permitted much of the same thing."
Meaning that the previous act (signed into law by President Clinton in '95) would have allowed the same thing as President Bush's re-do of the act.
Unfortunately, most people won't read the entire article to see what the real information is.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
Information will continue to be restricted, at an increasing pace, until the citizens know nothing..( except what they are *allowed* to know )
A govermnet cant control society if the citizens can learn from history, and think for themselves.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's an easy technical fix for this problem. Everybody out there mirror whatever info you can get your hands on, before they try to reclassify it!
My site: Free Nature Pictures
2003-25=1978
Everybody knows that 1978 was actually when the aliens arrived...how else could explain those afros, bell bottoms and all those trippy drugs? It was a cover up!!!! No wonder they want to delay releasing those documents!
-psy
In the past, the declassification of historical documents about American security activities has been damaging to the public perceptions of security agencies (mostly because it reveals them for the unscrupulous bastards they are, or at least were), and this is a time when the US government can hardly afford to risk further losses in public opinion.
They don't want you to know about this stuff because they are afraid you won't like it. It's that simple.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
In his own words....
the war on terrorism is an excuse for a power grab,
Hang Bush! (after a fair trial, of course!).
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
I'm sure you aren't being anti-Catholic or anything here because of course at the time there weren't too many muslim goat-herders or Confucian? rice threshers with degrees in astrophysics let alone literate.
Your main error is in assuming that "'em" weren't happy being ignorant or at least ruled. People basically fear change and will accept restrictions if change can be avoided. At some stage the restrictions may become oppressive (which is why we no longer operate under feudalism) but it can take a lot to start off the revolution.
This administration has been really secretive with documents that should be released to the public. Remember couple of years ago Bush jr passed some executive orders preventing some of the papers of his fathers administration from being released.
Even looking at the way the present administration holds press briefings it is obvious that they want to completely limit and control information flow.
And yes 25 years is long enough. Remember if you go 25 years back you get smack in the middle of Reagan's time. Reagan is in the process of being turned into a living saint by the republicans, and it would be really inconvenient to provide some details about all the nasty things that happened during his presidency. Not to mention that some of these nasty things happened in Iraq, and would be really embarassing given the current reasoning for the war effort.
On top of everything, most of the powerful people of the bush administartion (such as Cheney, Powel and Rumsfield for example) were important people in the reagan administration. This decision shows that they are not quite eager to be judged for their actions back then. That is completely understandable. Powel, for example was implicated in transfering shitloads of anti air missiles to a certain "axis of evil" country.
So it is not surprising at all. But if we are to function as a democracy, these papers should be revealed. Politicians should be accountable for their actions, they should not be able to delay the release of truth indefinately. And who knows the papers may make the Reagan administration look good. Maybe there was a good reason for iran contra, and all the killing in south america. Dont know what that would be but it is possible, I suppose.
Uh, remember the last presidential election? Yeah, voting is the answer. Pfffft!
:q!
And now they want to enlengthen their cover-up period of nasty stuff onto end 2006. The year when they think they can be "home free".
its getting cold here suddenly.
Robert
I suspect the same thing will happen to the JFK assassination papers. I doubt they even still exist, but the gov't will likely claim they're being held for 'further study' - even though the gov't claimed back then that there was nothing to study, and the case was closed.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
So, lets see...
George HW Bush (Father of George W Bush) was head of the CIA from 1975-1980. And now 'W' wants to delay release of daddy's deeds until after the next election. Wonder what he was up to?
This has nothing to do with petty politics. It has to do with a federal government run-amok and lying to everyone to cover up that fact.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
What?? You mean that crap was due this year? SHHHIIITT! I havent even started..
Umm. can I have an extension?
Yes that's the one. They just reported it on our SBS TV too. And they reported a lot of disturbing stuff about Shi'ites and Kurdistan, ie the uprising that the USA is calling for now, is most likely to come from these people and yet USA doesn't want them to take over from Saddam at all. Interestingly in the marches/ceremonies there were massive numbers of women in black headscarves with no sign of their chaperone uncles or brothers, just hundreds and hundreds of women.
I remember being upset about the invasion of Afghanistan around 1980, but completely not interested in Iran and Iraq fighting each other or what weapons they are using.
When are the War Analysts going to tell us why Saddam has not used any of his weapons of mass destruction yet? I'd pay closer attention if I thought anyone was telling the truth.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
And while I'm certainly no fan of Dubya, drawing parallels between him and Hitler is just stupid.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It only makes sense that all the information intended for declassification does not contain a hint of what might be vital information to US secruity. For instance stuff that happened during the Cold War - tapping cables in the ocean, encounters with Russian subs and so on. Some information has been declassified about the Cuban missile crisis largely found here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/ . I sure this is not all the information on the CMC and some might still be "sensitive". It took the British at leat 25 years before they admitted they had cracked the Enigma machines presumably because the Germany military and embassies were using them after WW2 thinking they were impervious. The British wouldn't want the Germans to know what confidential information they new of thier military operations and political commniques. I just hope a lot of this information is declassified in the next 20 or 30 years. There are some great stories to be told and it would definately be of great historical importance.
One of the great things that Chomsky points out is that top secret actions of the US government are not so top secret to the subjects of that action. A classic example is the very under-the-table sale of arms and munitions to Indonesia during its brutal suppression of East Timor. Of course, those Indonesian troops were using shiny M-16s and getting air spotting from US-made Broncos. Something quite apparent to their victims. But this wasn't known to the US public, because, other than East Timor being fairly off-the-radar for Americans in general, every bit of information about American involvement in the actions of Indonesia was top secret, "didn't happen" type stuff. Why would the US care about half an island way off in the middle of nowhere? Lots of natural gas and oil just offshore....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
sbs dateline video of the shi'ite story from sbs... I guess since this is current affairs it will be here for a little while and then they'll move onto something else scary.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Like an Aussie has any business trying to keep tabs of which president was presiding when. I can tell you the Australian PM at the time, ie up to 1975 Whitlam, then Fraser (by some serious dodgy business for which he is still not forgiven), then 1983 - Hawke. Then Keating, 1991, then Howard from 96 sigh. At least I know how to find the info thats missing. Never was much of a history student. I am sitting next to a stack of punch magazines going back to 1880 - what they say about Lloyd George and Winston Churchill is less than flattering even during the wars.
Anyway Carter was only in till 1981, then Reagan got in. Sometimes it's hard to tell a donkey from an elephant.
I still think there is a close link to W. Bush's drunk years in there. Or something more juicy.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
When did the US start giving weapons and money to Iraq? I'm not sure, but I know they were helping out throughout Iraq's 1980-1989 war with Iran.
Seems like this could cover a bunch of info regarding what exactly the US did for Iraq back then. This might sour some of the home populance on the invasion.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
"Of the people, for the people, by the people" is great and all... but some of those people just might be terrorists! Therefore, it must be a reasonable idea to remove the people's abilty to review the actions of their government, in this best of all possible worlds.
Ryan Fenton
from the actual Executive Order:0 03/03/20 030325-11.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2
but http://www.fas.org/sgp/bush/eoamend.html formats it a little better.
Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations. (a) In no case shall information be classified in order to:
(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
(3) restrain competition; or
(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.
-- My Sig is a P228.
Does this mean the WAR will be over by 2006?
A blog I run for the wealth
We never get to see it....
For those who don't get it:
The law makers change the rules as they go along.
Once upon a time a copyright was only good for 17 years... now with the changing the rules as they go along.... a copyright can last forever....
And so it is with classified information........
The use of "scintilla" is what really sells this one.
The way things are going, I wouldn't think the government would need this executive order. After all, they've already been busy pulling back information already in the public domain.
Ah, I wasn't aware that you're an Aussie. My appologies. But the sad thing is, there are Americans that really wouldn't know who the president was at any given time in the past half century, which shouldn't be all that hard of a task since all of them (except maybe Ford) did at least something significant during their tenure. Well, Ford pardoned Nixon, so I guess that was his great act.
Pardon my saying so, but boo-fucking-hoo. Whatever moron was responsible for this deserves to be fired--immediately. I have lost a job for being too good at what I do (ie. being a threat to my boss' fat salary.) It makes me sick enough to spit when I think about some of the people I have dealt with inside the government who had jobs during my recent unemployment.
I read the sentence "Letting a deadline creep up on you" as "Failing to do even the bare minimum over the course of 25 years." In the real world, getting a project and doing nothing about it gets you fired. Shit, the morons who couldn't review these docs in 25-years probably got promoted to manager, since it was "their turn to be promoted."
Want better performance from your government? End the culture of lifetime employment "If you want it."
If the government employed anybody but the absolute bottom of the talent-barrel (there are exceptions) our country would have a better, more efficient government. First step? Fire your incompetents and bad-attitudes. In reality, there are many talented people in government whose achievments are being held back by the "stereotypical" government worker.
Make the "I'm 52, three years from a pension, and don't give a shit about you or your stupid problems" crowd a distant memory. Roll them right the fuck out the door.
This may sound cruel, but what fantasy world are these people living in? A paycheck is not a god-given right--it is something you earn through your performance in your field. In the real world, doing a shit-job consistently gets you fired. Why is the government any different?
The final irony here is how hard the Bushies have hammered the "Saddam had 12-years to disarm" spin so hard, and now they're failing to disclose information they've had TWENTY-FIVE YEARS to review. Makes you wish the internet supported "Smell-o-vision" so scientist could finally find out what hypocrisy smells like.
Who did what now?
I was talking to a Sr NASA engineer a few years ago and he told me about how parts of the space suits are still classified. He claims that the offical reason for that was that Russians hadn't figured out how to use peilter effect devices for space suit cooling and still use a compressed gas cycle. Until they publish a design using pielter effect devices, the US system will stay top secret and the offical reasons for the space suit temperature system will remain the false statement of keeping the astronauts warm. Maybe someone will review this and stamp it unclassifed. One advantage is that since this info is still classified, the data hasn't been trashed like most of the documents about Apollo. Now when it gets released, many people will store it for a very long time.
Ah, sorry for the misquote, and thanks for correcting me. I think you can still see what I am trying to say. And, as I said before, I do not remotely buy that this is being done for actual reasons of national security, and I am furthermore highly suspicious of anything done in the name of national security anyway.
It has come to my attention that many people in this debate are using arguments from authority, such as the quotes you have given. I have also noticed that most Americans at least claim to believe in either Science or Christianity or both. So, while we are exchanging quotes, allow me to make some official Arguments from Authority:
"Thou shalt not kill." --GOD
"If they slap you upon one cheek, turn to them the other also." -- Jesus Christ, the Messiah (who died on the cross rather than call down a legion of angels to smite his enemy, as he clearly claimed he could do)
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." --Albert Einstein (an ardent pacifist who spoke out against war on many occasions)
Now, would anyone like to try to be more authoratative than that?
My site: Free Nature Pictures
You make it sound like a single botched election is responsible for the current governemnt. You insult those of us who have been documenting the careers of the people currently in power, since the 1970's.
First of all, please realize that George W. Bush is not the only person in government who was placed there as the result of an election. Secondly, please consider that the current government is the result of decades of process. Are you suggesting that every local, state, and national election in the last 30 years has been botched or manipulated?
Voter apathy has placed the current government in power. The current government might not represent you individually very well, if at all, but it has not been placed in power by some conspiracy. Rather, it has been placed in power under significant support of the people who participate in the process of government, and enjoys adamant consent, in general, of the governed.
The voice of dissent seems significant if framed out of context. But considered against the voice of support, it is feeble and irrelevant. A few thousand protestors, standing down to police, will do nothing at all to deter the tens of millions who support the current administration.
Do you even realize how long it has taken the current government to form in its present state, or how long it will take to flush it through any process whatsoever? I believe it would take at least twelve years of a focused, well-supported campaign, to get Washington out of the current two-party system. Given the lack of support for a real opposition party, and given the overwhelming amount of apathy for the process, I have no confidence that any such changes are coming.
The impeachists don't even seem to consider that the government is more than one man in the executive chair. It takes a long time and a lot of work by a lot of people to affect the process, and the current government reflects the work and patience of the people who don't "pffft" the system.
Read the biographies of the people in the cabinet, and maybe a few senators.
I wonder how many slashdotters even realize that Jack Valenti worked for the Kennedy administration?
Rumsfeld was a congressman during Kennedy, Johnson, and a member of Nixon's cabinet, for instance. The botched election of 2000 didn't do all that, did it? How about Cheney as the White House Chief of Staff in '74? My point is that the current government didn't just spring up "in spite of" the American people have put this government in power, either by action or by apathy. By you "pfffting" the process, I believe you fall in the latter category. The government in power over you governs you by your consent. You helped put it there, and you suffer it to continue.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
He only won if you consider the incompetence of Gore's legal staff to be part of our electoral system. Lawyers hired by either Gore or Bush should not have been involved in the process at all. Once they're on the ballot, the presidency belongs to the people. It's not a pissing contest between two sheltered princes, it's an election for fuck's sake. It was the American people who were getting fucked around, not the incompetent candidates.
Bush came out on top, Gore asked for a recount, the state of Florida granted his request, Bush went to the Supreme Court, Gore recognized their jurisdiction, the Supreme Court took the oppourtunity to rework the Constition to give the federal government jurisdiction over the electoral process.
Bush probably would have won, but we never really got that far.
I have an idea... You know how copyright terms keep getting increasingly longer? Well... they should treat declassification the same way. First, they'll increase the time to 70 years... then 170... then 570... and finally, they'll realize that keeping track of the age of documents takes too much resources, so they'll make it an infinite time limit and simply destroy all classified documents, a la 1984.
Declan's story points to the Executive Order itself, and it only applies to information about the Federally owned parts of the infrastructure and things owned, built for, or under control of the Federal Government. The Internet doesn't fit into that, as much as ICANN might like. That fact re-does emphasize the importance of having critical infrastructure that's not owned by any single government or under the control of any single government - it's better off in the private sector, and distributed around the world. But if the Feds want to classify the details of the infrastructure of Milnet, fine, as long as they're not too mean to the next 14-year-old gamer kid from Seoul who cracks into it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is obvious...
Let's see... what could possibly be an embarrassing issue 25 years ago that would almost certainly make the current political regiem squik?...
Oh, yeah... Daddy Bush was head of the CIA, putting Saddam Huz(in)sane in power and arming him to the freakin' teeth so he could shoot the crap out of Iran (or in other words, the hated middle eastern country of that month.) Those are very likely documents that might get DUHbya kinda squirmy in the ol' shorts... he's not gonna let toilet paper out for public inspection until every squeezable sheet has been sanitized (for TP that's prolly a good idea), filtered, censured, and make safe for those who did dirty deeds cheap during the last 50 or so years. I mean we've protected the Nazis we brought back from Germany after WWII to help us fight the communists, shouldn't we show our own home grown fascists the same kind of gratitude and courtesy?
Anyway, between the Patriot Act (talk about an Oxymoron minus the "Oxy") gutting the Bill of Rights, and DUHbya's own handy hatchet job gutting the Freedom of Information Act, this is just another way for our Executive Branch to say "You nosy bastards, if we wanted you to know what your government was doing, we'd have called your silly ass up personally and told you!"
Genda Bendte
"It is appaulingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity..."
--Albert Eistein
This may be setting a precedent for upcoming documents. Later documents may show what dealing the US and its allies had with Iraq . As you can see below Sadam came into power in 1979 and documents due to be released would have been 1978. Maybe they are getting too close to revealing the nature of the wests early dealings with Iraq.
:)
Maybe they just cant be bothered, who knows
History of Iraq
1975 March - At a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Algiers, Iraq and Iran sign a treaty ending their border disputes.
1979 January 16 - Islamic Revolution ousts the Shah of Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini, who had lived in Iraq from 1964-1978, returns to Tehran in February.
1979 July 16 - President Al-Bakr resigns and is succeeded by Vice President Saddam Hussein. Within days, Saddam executes at least 20 potential rivals, members of the Ba'th Party and military.
1979 September - Military skirmishes and propaganda war increase between Iraq and Iran.
Iran-Iraq War
1980 September 4 - Iran shells Iraqi border towns. On September 17 Iraq abrogates the 1975 treaty with Iran.
1980 September 22 - Iraq attacks Iranian airbases.
1980 September 23 - Iran bombs Iraqi military and economic targets.
1981 June 7 - Israel attacks an Iraqi nuclear research center at Tuwaythah near Baghdad.
1986 March - UN Secretary General reports Iraq's use of mustard gas and nerve agents against Iranian soldiers, with significant usage in 1981 and 1984.
1988 February-September- Iraq military operation "Anfal" results in 50,000-100,000 deaths throughout northern Iraq. Iraq uses chemical weapons, mass executions and forced relocation to terrorize the area.
1988 March 16 - Iraq attacks the Kurdish town of Halabjah with mix of poison gas and nerve agents, killing 5000 residents.
1988 August 20 - The Iran-Iraq war ends in stalemate; an estimated 1 million soldiers are killed in eight years of fighting. A ceasefire comes into effect to be monitored by the UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG).
1989 - Iraq sends military hardware to Lebanon in a proxy war with Syria.
If you want to tease an Aussie about being patriotic, or being ignorant, ask him/her to recite the words to the second verse of our National Anthem. It's probable they won't be able to do the first verse either. (OMG - I found a lyric site with five gawd-awful verses)
Most of us like Waltzing Matilda about the sheep stealing tramp better than stuff that includes lyrics like "our land is girt by sea". Girt???
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
lol I didn't say great, I said significant. Sad when that's the highlight of your presidency.
The point of my statement was to draw emphasis to the absurdity of the previous poster's claim that WWII weapons during the middle ages would have won the Crusades for Europe.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Can someone post some currently available links to online declassified resources like those mentioned? I have at home lots of these relating to the US's involvement in the 1973 military coup in Chile - but they are paper based and it would be better to know about online links.
For people like me who oppose the war, these documents are extremely important in refuting people's arguments about how "we have to take out saddam because he's such an evil guy".
If the average pro-war person gave this as reason for the war after reading this kind of information - then it would be an informed perspective on it, and I would take you seriously.
Pretty much every new administration issues an Executive Order about the (de)classification of documents, usually as soon as they take office. Sometimes it's a big deal but most people usually don't notice.
Did anyone notice the new "Restore FOIA" Act being proposed? Here's something from the H-NET mailing lists:
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On 12 March 2003, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Carl Levin (D-MI), James Jeffords (I-VT), Joseph Lieberman (D-C T), and Robert Byrd (D-WV) introduced the "Restore Freedom of Information Act" (S. 609), legislation that would replace the broad FOIA exemption for "critical infrastructure information" presently included in the charter for the new Department of Homeland Security. The Restore FOIA bill is designed to protect Americans' "right to know" while simultaneously contributing to the security of the nation's critical infrastructure. The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration.
According to the bill's sponsors, the legislation embodies the compromise that senators Leahy, Levin, and others reached with the White House during the Senate's earlier work on the homeland security bill. Last November, a bipartisan compromise was stripped out of the underlying bill and House language was enacted.
The Restore FOIA legislation would limit the FOIA exemption to relevant "records" submitted by private entities, so that only those records
that actually pertain to critical infrastructure safety are protected. The bill also seeks not to limit the use of such information by the government, except to prohibit disclosure where such information is appropriately exempted under FOIA. It also seeks to protect the actions of legitimate whistleblowers, rather than criminalizing their acts. The measure does not forbid use of such information in civil court cases to hold companies accountable for wrongdoing or to protect the public. Another provision seeks to respect, rather than preempt, state and local FOIA laws. For more information about the bill, tap into:
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Having had to take time from my normal duties to address the declassification of old documents when I was in the military, I can tell you that it shouldn't be automatic and it can take a lot of time. The issues around 25 year old documents are nowhere near as straightforward as they appear. First of all you have to look at the originial classification guidance to determine what in the document is classified then you have to look at the current classification guidance to see if there are any relevant changes in 25 years. Some things are still sensitive after 25 years. Their are still weapons systems and intelligence gathering systems in operation that are well over 25 years old (the B-52, F-15, F-14, F-16, USS Nimitz, etc...). Much of what was originally available for classification is now certainly declassifiable. Much of it isn't. Plus many documents concerning these systems get updated, but still have the original publication dates on them. Sometimes the reason a document is classified hasn't changed and still can't be released because it reveals some form of capability or asset that is still important. The original security guidance prior to the Clinton Administration was that documents were to be REVIEWED after 25 years for declassification, not be automatically declassified. There's good reason for this, we really don't want to be telling the whole world how to build a Mark XXX nuclear weapon or how to defeat a certain weapon system. The volumes of material that the government has produced over the last century are huge. When I got a request under the Freedom of Information Act to release previously classified documents it would take up to a week of my time away from my normal duties to review the appropriate security guidances sift through the document for classified information, sanitize it, then coordinate the result through the public affairs and security offices. The worst part is that when you got requests for these things, you didn't get a request for one document, you got a request for every document you had on XYZ topic! With the current manpower being tied up in ongoing conflicts and restructuring of the government for Homeland Defense, I can understand instituting a 3 year delay. The manpower just isn't there to review the documents and declassification shouldn't be automatic.
Does it ever occur to people that the government is not doing this to keep secrets, but that there just aren't enough resources to get it done? Anyone who has done classified work for ANY government knows that there is always a shortage of individuals cleared to do anything. Civilians contractors for this sort of work do not come cheap, because they know how hard it is to find people. Many government documents are hundreds if not thousands of pages long, and to understand a document, many other relevant documents may need to be consulted.
Is this really a wise use of tax dollars? Paying people to sit around and declassify old documents to satisfy FOIA demands from conspiracy theorists? I can think of better uses for all that money, especially if I got to keep it.
Every time you get paid and see those huge missing chunks of money that go to taxes, think of things like this, where piles of money is flushed away to shut up people who cannot let old documents die.
Oh yeah, like any USA citizens even KNOW there's more than one verse to our anthem (I do, but certainly don't know the words to the later verses).
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Reagan came into office in 1980
1980 + 25 = 2005
Reagan left office in 1988
1988 + 25 = 2013
Nice consipiracy theory, but, probably not. The release in question will contain documents from the Carter administration.
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
I'm sure we sung two verses on july 4 years ago to celebrate for our foreign exchange student at school. Unfortunately we all cracked up when we got to the bit about Freemen, because that was our teacher's name.
And lo and behold the version I looked up, the Freemen bit is in verse 4 and I'm sure we never got through that many.
Could be worse, ie the Canadian national anthem.
dammit the dog farted again - argh.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.