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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.'"
Maybe many eyes would make all dupes shallow too...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/19/203723 2
See, the story last time was that the Boston Globe was reporting it. Now MSNBC is reporting it. That's news, baby.
Tomorrow's Headline: The Poughkeepsie Herald reports that the US Government is using Open Source techniques to...
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Does anyone *really* think that there would be anything important in those documents? It's not like the location of Osams bin Laden or of Saddam's chemical weapons in Syria will be in these documents.
This particular arm of the government is not dumb enough to publicly release anything that has a remote chance of being important. After all, such documents likely show some of our wrongdoings too.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Some of that stuff may contain personal information. Such might end up backfiring worse than Abu Ghraib. I hope they black out names and addresses. However, that might make them harder to understand because you don't know if A is doing X to B in paragraph 1 and B is doing Y to A in parag 7, or if A does both X and Y to B. Perhaps they can pick out the names and assign them unique numbers over the blacked out name before making the docs public. However, it still might take a lot of labor just to identify the names.
Table-ized A.I.
The article says "There are up to 55,000 boxes, with possibly millions of pages. The documents are being posted a few at a time -- so far, about 600".
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.
For God's sake put the tinfoil hat conspiracies away. they arent needed and really only serve to turn this into a political crap flinging contest between the left and right.
Look at the facts:
The best translators the government has are probably at NSA, CIA and in the military services doing more important and urgent (real time) work, so thats why these "background" documents have been sitting for a few years. The shortage of these folks is well publicized, so they are a scarce resource and will not be allocated to a background task like this.
The simple truth is there are few Arabic translators that the government can hire permanently (and who would do this temporary?), and fewer still that can pass the background checks and get the requisite minimal security clearances needed for general employment in most of the usual places (Departments of Defense, State and the various Agencies). Not that they NEED the clearances and accesses (especially for documents that are now public domain apparently), but that such clearances have become almost ritual in nature and are part of the job requirements, usually at the DoD "Secret" level or above.
Add to that the general disinterest most people have in working for the government, then blend in the public law restrictions on the pay (GS scale precludes spending sprees on hiring), and you have a ready made "shortage", or at lesat an inaiblity fo the government to get the translators it thinks it needs.
And on top of that, add in the screwy contract rules and also consider that no congress-critter has a personal stake in a translation company, and you just about guarantee the inablity for much anything other than the titles to be looked at and a spot check done at random in almost all of these, they get scanned in to a PDF, then off to a box they go.
It doesn't take conspiracy, just the usual incompetence and common inability of big government agencies to get anything done quickly.
No political slant needed to left or right, just business as usual in the belly of the Leviathan.
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.
I don't quite get it.
Why would a person volunteer their time and energies into helping with this? As compared to something you (and possibly other people) would use with open-source software, I don't see anything gained by taking part in this. If a person is (a) fluent enough in both languages and (b) willing to do this sort of translation work, wouldn't they be able to find a job to pay them to do this? Or if they wouldn't want a full time job out of it, find something more people can use and translate that. There are doubtlessly scores of projects that would love someone to do a free translation for them.
Another related thought on this is how the government knows that the translations are accurate? Because of the relative anonymity provided through the internet, the government can't tell whether I really am an Arabic language teacher at a college or a disgruntled monoligual high-school dropout unless if I tell them. Which of these people is more likely to provide an accurate translation? And how can they tell whose translation is correct?
I dont see why it always has to be either an evil political move or an idealistically brilliant move. To me its just as possible that it was some decision made by someone with a mix of good intentions and laziness.
Some choice quotes to give you an idea of what I'm talking about here:
Err, shouldn't the Iraqi government have all these documents? You know, the democratically elected sovereign body which the US and its allies went to all that trouble of having installed, and who I gather has access to a large number of Arabic speakers.
I'm interested. If you think there were no weapons of mass destruction why do you suppose Saddam kept stalling the UN inspectors over all those years?
The whole charade reminds me of the "You haven't given us time to hide!" skit from Monty Pythons Life of Bryan.
Recall that Clinton bombed Iraq in '98 for not letting the UN inspectors in. Is he part of this grand right-wing conspiracy, do you think?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Bamford's book "A Pretense for War" does some really good analysis of the events and decision-making processes that led up to 9/11 and to the Iraqi invasion, and even with the evidence available back when he wrote it, it's obvious that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Bush and Cheney were all bleeding incompetents.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And there is another aspect: Saddam Hussein had to keep the image of strongman at least for his people, his supporters and the neighbouring countries to stay in power. So in all official documents he was probably correct (as far as a giant bureaucracy can be correct about reality), but in his speeches he hinted that there might be something hidden no one knows about. Unluckily for him, not only the local people felt for the bluff, the George W. Bush administration did also.
They're trusting the medium that spawned SomethingAwful, GNAA, goatse, tubgirl, etc.? That's... not very reassuring. :P
And INTERESTING stuff has come out. For example, ABC News found documents that seem to show that the Russian ambassador gave the US war plans to Iraq.
Individuals are looking too. Here is a link from an Iraq blogger who blogs from Baghdad. This document suggests that members of Al Qaeda met with Iraqi intelligence.
I just find it really cool that enterprising people can go in and look at ORIGINAL documents, and that we don't have to purely rely on what the government says they say. Pro-war, anti-war, historians, anyone can go in and look at what was going on inside Iraq.
Leaving too soon will create a civil war, and it will be 100% our fault.
Until we leave, every misfortune that Iraq suffers is and always will be our fault. Once again, we have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam. And we are hearing precisely the same arguments for staying in Iraq.
Creating democracy...
!? You mean like we did in Syria in 1949 and Chile in 1973? Of all our interests in the region, democracy is not one of them. We will stay in Iraq until we can place a new Saddam, just like the old one. And when he turns on us, just repeat. The "democracy" we put into Iraq is pure show. Only American/British approved candidates can run.
There is a viable exit strategy. Just walk away. Don't look back. We can come back when they ask. However, that would put a huge crimp into a certain party's/company's/people's cash flow. And that's what this war(and many others) is about.
What?
Until we leave, every misfortune that Iraq suffers is and always will be our fault.
And after we leave, every misfortune that Iraq suffers will be our fault, for quite some time. The difference lies in the type of misfortune that can be expected.
Once again, we have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam.
Vietnam was an entirely different situation. For starters, in Vietnam we never actually removed the North Vietnamese government. The differences vastly outnumber the similarities.
And we are hearing precisely the same arguments for staying in Iraq.
We are? Who was arguing that we had to ensure a peaceful transition of power to a stable government before we could leave Vietnam?
You mean like we did in Syria in 1949
Yet another invalid comparison. What we did in Syria in 1949 wasn't to invade and (attempt to) establish a democratic government, what we did was semi-covertly support a military coup as a preparatory step to forcing Syria to absorb the Palestinians. Exactly where is the parallel with Iraq?
Chile in 1973
And yet another. Again, the US covertly supported Pinochet's coup, overthrowing democratically-elected Allende because Nixon didn't like his Socialist politics. Chile is exactly the sort of thing the US is known for due to our "anything-is-better-than-communism" policy of the Cold War, and that's the reputation we have to live down by ensuring that we *don't* leave Iraq (and Afghanistan!) worse off than before we stuck our nose in.
I even think that the Cold War policy made sense at the time, but it has created problems for us now around the world and we won't fix those problems by doing it again.
There is a viable exit strategy. Just walk away. Don't look back.
That is certainly what we've done in the past, and it's created much of the ill will we deal with now. I'm not in favor of going around the world and pushing our form of government on others, but the US has a 30-year history of destroying governments and leaving a horrible mess caused by the resulting vacuum of power.
Since the US toppled the old regime, we have a responsibility to ensure that something viable is in place before we walk away.
However, that would put a huge crimp into a certain party's/company's/people's cash flow. And that's what this war(and many others) is about.
I think this supposition fails Hanlon's Razor.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-docex/I raq/Released-20060317/CMPC-2003-012666-Translation .pdf
This document I found is an executive order from Saddam telling the army to put Kuwaiti POW's in buildings that will be targets of US air strikes. This is Dated March 14, 2003.
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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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.