voxpopgirl
This Girl's Voice


Tuesday, February 11, 2003  

••speaking of smoking guns...••


Last Thurs. Feb. 6, the Guardian and the BBC online provided breaking news in the U.K, revealing that large parts of that U.K. intelligence dossier were totally lifted from:
[1] a 2002 academic thesis written by a post-grad student,
[2] a 1997 article by a journalist who works for military magazine Jane's Intelligence Review;

Both men said they were shocked their work had been used in the Government's dossier.

the Toronto Star reported that post-grad student Ibrahim al-Marashi said,
"The fact that they would have to turn to something in the open media reflects that maybe there is a deficiency in the intelligence gathering."

the Mirror in London wrote that Jane's Intelligence Review journalist Sean Boyne stated:
"I don't like to think that anything I wrote has been used for an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war."

now, how on earth could news like this remain under the radar in the U.S.? The U.K., Canada, and practically the rest of the world found out about it last Thursday and early Friday morning.

plus - in light of the around-the-world live coverage by all the U.S. cable news channels of last Tuesday's U.N. Security Council "smoking gun" presentation by Colin Powell, how is it that despite the actual smoking gun stunning revelation two days later about the U.K. intelligence dossiers' plagerism, those Sunday news politicos missed reporting it at all?

particularly egregious, was Tim Russert who's Meet the Press guest for the entire first half hour was none other than Colin Powell; how could he not have questioned him about the now-questionable integrity of the U.K. intelligence dossier? particularly in light of the fact that Powell refered to in glowing terms at the U.N. presentation as,
"the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."..?

the question is: if the U.K. government, with the acknowledgement and full support of the U.S. government, has so sloppily slapped together the "intellingence dossier", a dossier of which its primary purpose was to be instrumental in being a formative part in not only shaping public opinion, but in creating multilateral support for a pre-emptive war on Iraq because it supplied supposedly new incriminating evidence regarding Iraq, but has now been exposed to have been largely filled with dated information that has been public since 1997 and was plagerized from a post grad student and a journalist for Jane's Intellignece Review, then why should the intergrity of those responsible for it, be credible or trustworthy?

for your edification, this BBC article provides examples of the stunning similaries between the British Intelligence Dossier, and those presented in the post-grad students' thesis.





posted by voxpopgirl | 2/11/2003


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