Open-Government Technique Used on Iraqi Documents

stalebread writes "MSNBC has an article looking at an internet-based 'many hands make light work' approach to data sifting. From the article: 'The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded. Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto.'"

Comments

Re:Make no mistake...

[commodoresloat]

That's correct. Intel expert Steven Aftergood called this an attempt by the right wing to find "a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq." The bloggers have made some interesting finds, it's true, but so far the ONDI's warning that "amateur translators won't find any major surprises, such as proof Hussein hid stockpiles of chemical weapons" has turned out to be true. They have also given us some bizarre misinterpretation too, such as some bloggers' belief that one document (CMPC-2003-006430.pdf) is a manual for the Mukhabarat even though it is clearly a printout of a webpage by the Federation of American Scientists from 1997 (complete with FAS logo!). Another supposed "smoking gun" was a document that had pictures of Zarqawi, cited as "proof" that Saddam trained him -- when in fact the documents clearly show that the Saddam regime is on the lookout for Zarqawi and his group, and, according to Associated Press, "Attached were three responses in which agents said there was no evidence al-Zarqawi or the other man were in Iraq." There is a lot more misreading and jumping to conclusions from this document dump. It's interesting, and I think it is good to have these documents made public, for historical reasons mostly, but the idea that these documents are where we should look for justification of Bush's war effort just shows how desperate Pete Hoekstra and other Republicans who pushed forcefully for this move really are.

While the real news falls under the public's radar

[Y-Crate]

Meanwhile, The New York Times has come across a memo of their own...from Britain concerning a meeting between Bush and Blair in early 2003. It's probably far more interesting than anything these amateur translators will find. Needless to say, this was stamped with "Extremely Sensitive" and was never supposed to get out.

Some choice quotes to give you an idea of what I'm talking about here:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides....

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

...The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.