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

[timeOday]

Why do you think it's supposed to have been embarrasing? It's just somewhat interesting. It's history. That said, I'm not sure how much new information it provides. The fact that America had no idea what we were getting into is as plain as a 50-foot banner stretched across an aircraft carrier.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Himring]

I take it you've never been in the military or worked in a large corporation. You NEVER write down anything that you don't want others to know. Malicious dealings are always done voice, behind closed doors. Motives are hidden. Orders are given that totally mask the real intent but achieves the result. The last thing they would do is actually write down something to damn them if for no other reason than what is going on right now on /. with these released documents. No, I have read TFA, but I doubt there's any real incriminating information. Or, if anything, they want your to believe they are incompetent. The rules are few: keep your enemies closer than your allies. Always compromise. Never show true motives. Appear agreeable. Appear incompetent if need be, but never malicious, gaming or ulterior.

This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[NeverVotedBush]

I don't even remember how many years ago that there were lots of news stories on how MS Word stores "deleted" text within documents. When the story originally broke, lots of people went looking at company/government Word documents and found all sorts of embarassing stuff.

Those who don't learn from history...

Anyone using Word in any kind of sensitive capacity needs to know how to make sure the changes are all really gone. Training should address this specifically. Other word processors also store deleted text within a document and users of those need to also know how to make sure deleted text is really deleted.

Perhaps it is time that word processors kept twin files - one the actual document, and if the user wants to track changes, another that stores deleted text. Or maybe encrypt the deleted text. It wouldn't keep everyone out of it, but it would keep most people from reading the deleted passages.

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

[smilindog2000]

The really scary ones aren't the idiots who support Bush... it's the genuinely intelligent ones. My extended family contains an inter-racial (Jewish, Asian) couple, both with advanced college degrees from great schools, and neither is religious. The absolutely love Bush, and are convinced that every Bush backed idea is the gospel truth (no global warming, the Iraq war is good, AT&T should be able to charge Google a toll to reach it's customers, etc). They also are convinced that Bush's Supreme Court will not reverse Rowe vs. Wade (oddly, my Republican friends who are very religious feel otherwise). They absolutely believe that all those terrible appointments, from Brown of Hurricane Katrina fame, to Wolfowitz, were great appointments, and that Democrats are to blame for their failures. They think Colin Powell was fired for his own incompetence.

In other words, they believe whatever Bush tells them, even though they are super-smart. It's a crazy world. A few such guys even seem to hang out here on /.