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

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

[Silverlancer]

How ironically appropriate...

The deleted section from the sample

[morgan_greywolf]

Maybe I'm not paying enough attention, but I'm not sure why the musings about why attacks stopped in Al-Anbar in early 2004 are so particularly embarrassing. It seems to me that they were just trying to figure out what happened; I guess it might show some degree of cluelessness on the part of Intelligence, but, uh, they gotta figure stuff out at some point, right?

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Control Group]

That kind of defeatist attitude doesn't help anyone. We're trying to mock the government, here, and then you show up with your "logic." You're such a buzzkill.

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.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[CmdrGravy]

I think the embarrasment comes from the fact that the situation was handled incompetently.

Incompetently because the report writer doesn't appear to have a clue why the attacks in that province are decreasing which tends to suggest that the administration has no clear idea what is actually driving the attacks or why they're happening. It's possible that it's just the report writer who's in the dark about this but the complete lack of success in dealing with terrorism and insurgency in Iraq since then leads me to believe the problem was more widespread.

If you don't have the correct information or don't understand the situation on the ground then it's very hard to form any effective plan for reaching your goals which is what appears to have happened with Iraq. Given what we were told about how the war was to be fought beforehand and how everything was in place to address the aftermath I would say the handling of the situation which has led to the position we are in now speaks of great incompetence.

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

[Prysorra]

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

The level of utter incompetence w.r.t. "controlling the narrative" just terrifies me.

:-(

History repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when that Cat Schwartz girl from TV posted a cropped photo that accidentally had her boobs in the embedded Photoshop thumbnail? This is just like that, except Photoshop has been replaced with Word, the TV hostess has been replaced with the US Military, and the sweet sweet woman parts have been replaced with the absolute idiocy of those in charge of an ostensibly conquered nation.

I for one was happier about the tits.

A Good Book About the CPA

[eldavojohn]

Right now, I've taken a first glance but I don't even want to read this document as it'll just lead to a bad day (I'll read it all later).

But if you're interested in stuff about the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), I would highly recommend a book I read a few months ago entitled Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Pretty much details what's going on there, doesn't shove a lot of ideas down your throat but does do a good job of selectively relaying details that starts one thinking.

I could rant for hours on the information in this book but I'll try to relay one or two things that stuck with me. My biggest problem with how things were handled out there (one of the many issues the book covers) is that we had people more suitable for the job of handling post war Iraq but either sent them home or blocked their attempts to help because they didn't avidly support the person we wanted to take control of post-war Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi. If anyone was seen as competition for Chalabi, they were replaced with someone who was loyal to the American Republican party. The author reports that interview questions consisted of things like views on abortion or even your voting record. People with little or no past experience were put in charge of insanely high level authority.

We went into Iraq with the only plan to overthrow the government. In my opinion, we have the best army in the world and they did their job better than anyone else could. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we have some of the worst leaders in the world and, as a result, what ensued from overthrowing said government is a pretty bad debacle. I heard this author speak on NPR and was impressed so I hope you read this book to hear what Chandrasekaran experienced visiting Iraq. The information in this Word document doesn't even begin to describe what Chandrasekaran details in his book.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[symbolic]

Actually, it's a great reason to continue using Microsoft word.

Control the Metadata

[felixdzerzhinsky]

Try contoling the Metadata with a tool that even Microsoft provides for free. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA011400341 033.aspx It can happen with .pdf as well: http://news.com.com/U.S.+military+security+defeate d+by+copy+and+paste/2100-1002_3-5694982.html Not sure about .odf

Re:Same thing

[Farmer Tim]

Volume and quality of information is scarce, often due to decisions from people at the top. Support is never what you expect. Cost overruns across the board. Bloat. Local insurgencies.

So...Iraq has been invaded by MSCEs?

Re:yet another reason for published formats

[The MAZZTer]

The last time they tried PDF we just selected the text UNDER the black rectangles, remember?

The deleted text

[brian0918]

Here's the deleted text that was repeatedly copied/cropped in their documents. This shows how absurdly inept those in charge were. Note that the most likely theory is the one the administrator rebuts as "a boring theory".

Why are the Attacks Down in Al Anbar Province - Several Theories

1. Over the past month attacks against Coalition Forces in Al Anbar province have gone from over 20 per day to next to none. There are a number of theories for why this is. It is entirely possible that it is merely a blip on the screen or a statistical aberration and we will return to larger numbers of attacks, but it has held for nearly five weeks now and both military commanders and Anbar's citizens are starting to openly talk about it and offer their theories for why it is happening. Among the reasons given:

Rounding up the Bums: MG Swannack and all military commanders (as well as GC) believe that the many high yield raids of the past weeks have made a difference both in getting off the streets some of the leaders and financiers of the resistance and especially some of the technical experts that attackers rely on to carry out their attacks. This has had the spin off effect of causing others to go underground out of fear that they might be next. Most raids also leave in their wake a number of innocents who were either rounded up and detained or had their houses busted up. These can conceivably lead to bitterness over the occupation and spawn new attacks. But there appears to be sufficient care in how the attacks are carried out, adequate information in the community about the mild reality of detention, and sufficient civil affairs clean up afterwards that this has not been a major factor.

Crossed the Line: Violence in Iraq is a form of political discourse as well as being culturally acceptable for settling disputes and scores. Thus for a people which is nearly universal in its opposition to being occupied, attacking the occupier is a natural reaction and is widely accepted, even by those who are friendly to us. "It is nothing personal," one businessman told me, "I like you and believe you could be bringing us a better future, but I still sympathize with those who attack the coalition because it is not right for Iraq to be occupied by foreign military forces." Thus a low level of violence has been widely accepted in Al Anbar and those carrying out the attacks have even been the recipients of admiration and praise. But with the spate of attacks in mid to late November, culminating with the shootdown of the Chinook, there may have been a sense that the insurgents had crossed a line. This was reinforced strongly by General Abizaid when he came here on the heels of that incident and told some 70 Sheikhs and community leaders that he planned to unleash hell if they kept it up. It was further reinforced by the dropping of several JADMs which may have served to get the attention of the province. It is possible that Anbar's leaders realized they had crossed a line and reeled the attacks in.

Operational Pause: A boring theory is that the terrorists are in an operational pause, needing to regroup after the recent spate of roundups. There are very few persons we have met who subscribe to this.

Occupation Ending: A number of individuals have expressed satisfaction at the announcement of the new political calendar, although they don't appear to fully understand it. What has caught their attention is the simple expression that in June a sovereign Iraqi government will be in place. What they have gotten wrong is the idea that the military will be leaving Iraq in June, which one individual said he was sure was a major factor in the diminishing attacks. Oh well, this is one time it might be best that folks don't fully understand things. By June, when there is a transition of the force rather than a pullout, we will have a new set of challenges anyway, but if this bought us some months of peace it will be worth the confusion.

Project Money Flowing: Some individuals have expressed satis

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[ohzopants]

That pdf link is very interesting. But it's a bit hard to take a document seriously when the ms word screenshots they used have the animated cat (for help) turned on.

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:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Jeremi]

The Germans were denied their right to own weapons near the beginning of Hitler's reign.
Americans have no such limits on their capabilities.

If only that were so.... I tried to buy a simple tactical nuke the other day (just to defend my family against burglars, of course), and you wouldn't believe the paperwork you have to fill out! Then after all that, my application was denied. Land of the Free, my ass!

Those who don't learn from history...

[benhocking]

Those who don't learn from history...

Are loyal Bush supporters!

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 /.

Close, but no cigar.

[replicant108]

So...Iraq has been invaded by MSCEs?

Actually, it was liberated by MBAs.

Re:Those who do learn from history...

[smilindog2000]

Sorry to have caused any infuriation. I don't easily get upset over posts on /. Please don't consider my following comments as an attack or meant to upset you:

- "Concerns over global warming are frequently overblown" - To me, the scary part about global warming is the massive and highly successful campaign by Bush and friends to convince us that it's a) not happening, and b) we're not causing it. For example, his efforts to corrupt and/or bury the results of his own scientific inquiry scare the heck out of me. Humans making the Earth warmer is just one of the truly scary hurdles in front of us. The Middle East building nukes is another one, as is controlling the world's population before we strip it of all it's resources. From that point of view, I agree, it is sometimes overblown. If that's you're position, it's reasonable. If you think we're not causing it, you should become better informed.

- Almost nobody at this point that I run across thinks that things are rosy over in Iraq. Anyone who thinks we've handled Iraq well should become better informed. If you hold out hope that the world will be a better place than if we'd not invaded Iraq, then I'd say your an optimist, though not unreasonable. If you feel we should stay and try to complete the mission, even if Iraq is a mess, then you agree with many other reasonable people, just not most.

- All the government has to do to keep the Internet neutral is nothing. Even better would be a law enforcing no change. If it meddles with what has been working for over 10 years, the value of the Internet could drastically fall. In particular, we need to insure that ISPs do not discriminate against packets based on their origin. That's all. They can still do traffic shaping, charge more for higher levels of service, etc. But, if they want to block all the Democrat web sites, and only allow through the Republican ones, that's a problem. That's exactly what will happen if Murdoch gets control, and packet origin discrimination is allowed. I find that a compelling argument for keeping the status quo, which has been working so well.

- Are you also upset that the Supreme Court ended segregation? It's the court's job to fill in context when laws are unclear. In Rowe v Wade, they tackled the toughest issue: defining when human life begins. It's a slippery area to rule in, and highly contentious, since many of us believe God gives us a soul at conception, while others of us believe that we gain our humanity as our brain develops and we become conscious of our environment. Jews traditionally believed that God gives us a soul at the quickening. I believe life begins when my kids go to college :-) I bet we would agree that having the Supreme Court rule correctly about when human life begins would be a good thing. We just may not agree about what that correct answer is. Unfortunately, it's not an easy area to find agreement, and it's probably more productive to collaborate on reducing unwanted pregnancies, which is probably common ground.

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

[Simon Garlick]

It really is a pity Bush, Cheney et al did not pay attention during the Vietnam war

Oh they paid attention all right, they did everything they could to ensure they didn't get sent to serve there.