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

Something is Fishy about this Whole Story

[reporter]

The American government has an annual budget exceeding $2 trillion, yet according to MSNBC, the government cannot buy an adequate number of translators. (If Washington paid a translator salary of $200,000, hordes of translators would suddenly appear out of the woodwork.) Further, if these Iraqi documents are so vital, I would expect the American government to keep them under wraps. I would not want the enemy to know that we have them in the event that those documents tell us what the enemy's next move is.

This story simply does not add up.

The real story behind this story is that the American government is doing one of two things: (1) psy-ops (i.e. psychological warfare) against the enemy or (2) political games to improve support for the Iraqi war effort.

Washington knows that the Muslim fascists monitor worldwide news sources. Washington may be publicizing these documents in an effort to hint (to the fascists) that (1) these documents are just the tip of the iceberg and (2) there are additional documents (in our possession) that indicate where the fascists are hiding and what their next moves are.

Alternatively, Washington knows that some pro-war Republican/Democratic bloggers will scan these documents. Further, Washington knows that on, say, page 15 (of the documents), there is a tidbit or blatant statement asserting that Saddam Hussein had planned to create weapons of mass destruction all along. Washington hopes that the bloggers will find page 15 and will start hollering about how right we were to invade Iraq. In short, the bloggers are mindless automatons, and Washington has just skillfully manipulated public opinion.

P.S.
Another version of this story was already published by SlashDot on March 19.

Re:Something is Fishy about this Whole Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming that page 15, in an authentic document, says what you predict. That's not good enough for you? Who exactly is the automaton here? The blogger who finds something in a document or someone who has his hands over his ears?

What's your point? No matter what proof you're presented with you'll dehumanize the person showing it to you? (you know, that whole automaton thing...)

Re:Something is Fishy about this Whole Story

[bcbkhalision]

Our government has such a shortage of translators for structural reasons. Many people who do know the languages that our government needs cannot pass the security clearance process needed to grant access to classified information. Having family or significant contacts abroad almost always leads to disqualification. Extensive travel experience in certain regions of the world - such as the Middle East or China - weighs against you. Homosexuality is another deal-breaker. So is credit card debt and past drug use, even if it was a few times you smoked pot in college. If your clearance requires a polygraph, you are even less likely to pass - about 30% of all those who take the test are written off as deceptive, on the basis of a test which has not been statistically validated, and which has been rendered legally invalid as evidence in a court of law. Moreover, poor performance in one of many "interviews" with background investigators - even something as mundane as nervousness - is seen as an indication of potentially treasonous inclinations. Failing to pass one clearance makes it nearly impossible for a candidate to pass any such process in the future.

Because they are rewarded for "catches", investigators have an incentive to make candidates look as bad as they can - hence anything idiosyncratic or out of the ordinary is held under suspicion. This is reinforced by the fact that these investigators are not necessarily the most well educated people around - they only need to take a few month-long courses to qualify for their job.

As a result, the people who do make it through this process are often the more mediocre candidates, those who do not have the curiosity or drive to take risks, intellectual or professional.

The government, despite its grandiose rhetoric about hunting down terrorism, has no real incentive to change. When you are behind the fence, it is virtually impossible to fire you, which means that incompetence runs rampant. The fact that captured documents are being posted online for all the world to see is evidence of this.

I have a Masters in Arabic Linguistics from Georgetown. I am a US citizen. Alongside Arabic, I speak Farsi, Urdu, Spanish, and Chinese. I also work as a software developer developing machine learning technogy. I was turned down for a security clearance because I smoked marijuana in college, 8 years ago. I do not, and cannot work for the government.

When will they open the US records about the war?

[billstewart]

If the Bush Administration doesn't destroy their records of the decisions that led up to the war, it'll be real interesting to some future researchers to find out what really happened and when. There's so much evidence that they were planning for the war from the first few weeks after Bush took office, but it wasn't until after 9/11 that they had a story they could successfully sell to the public. They're doing the best they can to lock up records and intimidate leakers, but at least reasonable shards of the truth will gradually leak out.

Re:Stop making political hay - here are the facts

[commodoresloat]

Why are people crying "conspiracy theory" here? It is public knowledge that the government has already given these docs the once over and determined that translation was a low priority; they mined them for gems already and the Pentagon has already released a study on a few hundred of the documents that were considered worth translating. About the rest they were not going to release them at all until Rep Hoekstra, under the influence of Stephen Hayes, put intense public pressure on Negroponte's office; Negroponte finally relented and allowed them to be put on the internet. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is published in the Congressional Record.

Re:Make no mistake...

[Alsee]

There's still a big mystery about the WMDs. We know Saddam had a bunch in the 90s - what happened to them?

No, no mystery. The US Senate published a report on it ages ago, that Saddam had indeed ordered stockpiles destroyed and all programs shut down. That Saddam had in fact wanted to return to the "good old days" when the US was actively supporting Iraq and Saddam as an ally of political convience, as Iraq had the most secular government in the region and as a counterbalance to the religious fundamentalist Iran. There were no WMDs and no WMD programs. That there was zero credible evidence of WMDs prior to the invastion. The single human intelligemce source we had... well he was an Iraqi that the Germans had and the German Intelligence agencies told us that he was a drunk and unreliable and EXPLICITLY told us he fabricated information. The South African Yellocake uranium stories... that was investigated and found to be fradulent and US intelligence explicitly told the administration NOT to use it and then Bush knowingly went and used it anyway. The aluminum tubes... all of the US nuclear enrichment experts (DOE and State Department) said that the tubes were completely unsuitable for uranium enrichment, that the tubes would have to be re-machined to even attempt such use and that Iraq had no capability for such remachining, and that the tubes were in fact an exact match for Iraq's ordinary conventional rockets. That conclusion of the actual enrichment experts was ignored and overruled by the non-expert intelligence agencies, intelligence agencies scrambling to supply the sorts of intel pointing to WMDs that the administration was repeatedly demanding.

There wasn't a single peice of credible intelligence pointing to WMDs because there were no WMDs. The media campaign for WMDs was a pasted together collection of known crap.

Saddam's continuous games with UN weapons inspectors

No mystery there. Saddam was a petty dictator of a sovereign nation. He did not exactly appreciate foriegn intelligence agents coming in and stomping around sensitive facilities and even around his private palaces at will. Aside from his personal ego, petty acts of defiance were played up as a big deal with the local population. Saddam ruled with an iron fist and utimate authority. Being seen to completely bend over and take the inspections up the ass with zero resistance would have been suicide to both his ego and to his political authority. To save face the inspections had to be a something he permitted them to come in and do, something that he agreed to and something that he set the boundries upon. There inevitable squabbles over those boundries. And while there were certainly conflicts and delays, it is signifigant to note that the head UN inspector report always clearly stated that they always did ultimately get all of the access that they needed. The UN inspector complaint was merely that they sometimes had to squabble push pretty hard in order to stretch the boundries of the inspection in every way that they wanted. And while Saddam certainly sometimes complained and resisted about certain issues, we always ultimately gave in and allowed the UN inspectors to stretch the limits define the limits wherever the inspectors wanted them.

For his ego and for his political authority, he had to be granting the inspectors permission to go places and do things, he had to have the authority to stop the inspectors if they crossed the boundries of what they were permitted to do (the various conflicts that arose), and he then had to be the one to grant the inspectors increased permissions to do what they wanted (every conflict was resolved by him choosing to grant the inspectors what they wanted).

No mystery there at all. Just picture Saddam as a petulent child putting up a show of defiance every step of the way (eat your dinner I don't wanna!, do your homework NO!, brush your teeth I want to watch TV!, get into pajamas I'm not tired!) until the parent ultimately tucks him into bed.

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