Documents Reveal US Incompetence with Word, Iraq

notNeilCasey writes "The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word (.doc), the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation. Download the author's source document or look for more yourself. 'Presumably, staffers at the CPA's Information Management Unit, which produced the weekly reports, were cutting and pasting large sections of text into the reports and then eliminating all but the few short passages they needed. Much of the material they were cribbing seems to have come from the kind of sensitive, security-related documents that were never meant to be available to the public. In fact, about half of the 20 improperly redacted documents I downloaded, including the March 28 report, contain deleted portions that all seem to come from one single, 1,000-word security memo. The editors kept pulling text from a document titled "Why Are the Attacks Down in Al-Anbar Province -- Several Theories." (The security memo and the last page of the March 28 report can be seen here, along with several other CPA documents that can be downloaded.)'"

Comments

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[chrb]

For a start, one of the given reasons is that many Iraqis thought that the coming handover of authority meant US forces would be leaving Iraq. Hence no reason to attack them anymore. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what Bush has been saying would happen if US troops left. The other reason to be embarrassed is the misplaced optimism that rounding up suspects (including a large number of innocents), bombing towns, and the threat of massive, indiscriminate violence against the people was actually working.

Re:One has to wonder...

[PhxBlue]

Maybe our current administration should have thought of that before they went gung-ho into Iraq.

Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

[dbIII]

It just floors me they feel they have to cover up even the signs of progress.

I've heard that nearly all of Bagdad is under control now - an encouraging sign but there is still a lot to do. It really is a pity Bush, Cheney et al did not pay attention during the Vietnam war.

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[The New Stan Price]

1. You mean "invading a sovereign nation that invaded a sovereign nation, and then signed a surrender agreement with us after we kicked them out of that sovereign nation." One of the agreements was to show the world that they had dismantled their weapons programs. Twelve UN resolutions were passed and ignored. Bill Clinton had even ordered an air attack on Iraq prior to leaving office. Most Democrats signed the war resolution. Hillary Clinton was recorded saying to Code Pink that "she had done 10 years of research and that invading Iraq was the right thing to do." John Kerry, during the 2004 election run, said that he would have voted for the war even knowing what he knows now.

2. Democrats signed on to the Patriot Act. The Echelon spy program was a Clinton program. FDR had people's mail read during WWII, put Japanese in camps, etc. Al Qaeda beheads its prisoners, yet you don't seem to mind that they do not apply the Geneva conventions to our soldiers. Nobody seems to care if our borders are secure.

3. Tax relief was the only reason why the excesses of Clinton's dot com and Enron boom did not kill our economy. The government has been gaining tax revenue as a result. The top 1% foot over 60% of the bill, how much do you feel they should be footing?

4. The Taliban were defeated in days without the need for foot soldiers. It was brilliant. Kudos to Bush.

5. You mean "alienating socialist so-called allies that want to weaken us using the UN and EU."

6. George Washington was more religious than George Bush. If anything, others pander to the godless left, not the other way around.

7. The democrats are spending like drunken sailors now. Are you happy?

Those who do learn from history...

[mi]

In other words, they believe whatever Bush tells them, even though they are super-smart. It's a crazy world.

Has it ever occured to you, that — just maybe — they are right at least on some of the things you listed? Neah, can't be, can it?

Let me first comfort you a bit, though — it is not, that we believe Bush. It is that we agree with what he is saying (wherever he got the information himself).

Let me now infuriate you back again, by rephrasing your list of issues our way (and earning a couple more flamebait and troll moderations):

• we agree, that the concerns over global warming are frequently overblown;
• we agree, that showing the world, that despite the Vietnam catastrophe, America is willing and able to sometimes (not often enough, perhaps) go after vicious tyrants;
• we agree, that government should not be meddling in the market (including the for Internet Service Provision), even if some of us would accept such meddling given a compelling argument for it in a particular case;
• we are also convinced, any risk to Roe vs. Wade is worth the increased likelihood of preserving the integrity of Constitution, threatened by the Justices behaving like philosopher-kings finding new "laws" in the Constitution that the oafs in Congress should've passed (practice often derided as "legislating from the bench").