credibility and spy dossiers

[svero]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993368

"A British government dossier intended to show how Iraq is obstructing of UN weapons inspectors via an "infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation" has been revealed to have lifted significant sections from academic papers. "

"The document was issued by the UK in January 2003 and described as drawing "upon a number of sources, including intelligence material". It aims to demonstrate "how the Iraqi regime is constructed to have, and to keep, weapons of mass destruction"."

[rikzilla]

Poor scholarship...and out and out plaigerism by the Brits is clearly beside the point. It's the old "poison well" fallacy. What I would be concerned with is the relevance and accuracy of the paper as concerns the subject of Iraqi deception and non-compliance.

A great deal of info from a variety of sources support the fact of Iraq's deceptive activities.

Fire the guy(s) who plaigerized the papers, get past the distraction. The only important issues are the facts as they relate to Iraq.

-zilla

[svero]

Well one thing about collecting *facts* is that you usually want to get them from *credible* sources. If I was trying to convince you that vitamin A could prevent cancer and I presented the latest evidence from my lab to you and later you found out it was somebody elses paper I think it's fair to say that you would start to doubt everything I told you from the get go.

[Jon_in_london]

This is already being discussed in the "Britain plagiarises latest Iraq dossier" thread

[demon]

"The only important issues are the facts as they relate to Iraq. "

Those "facts" being?

[ssibal]

Is the information that was plagarized not credible (i.e. the original papers)? If not then the fact that the information was plagarized is irrelevant.

[svero]

Originally posted by ssibal
Is the information that was plagarized not credible (i.e. the original papers)? If not then the fact that the information was plagarized is irrelevant.

It's relevant. It goes to the creditibility of everything else they've told us. Currently that's at 0% for me and I'm not sure if you can have negative percentages of credibility but bush/blair will probably find a way.

Anyhow here's an analysis of the plagiarism ...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/2003/0205plagiarism.htm

Some interesting bits quoted from the above article...

"The fact that the texts of these three authors are copied directly results in a proliferation of different transliterations (eg different spellings of Ba'th, depending on which author is being copied). "

"So, for example, the section on "Fedayeen Saddam" (pp.15-16) is directly copied from Boyne, almost word for word. The only substantive difference is that Boyne estimates the personnel of the organisation to be 18,000-40,000 (Gause similarly estimates 10-40,000). The British dossier instead writes "30,000 to 40,000". A similar bumping up of figures occurs with the description of the Directorate of Military Intelligence."

""monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq"
this becomes in the British dossier:
"spying on foreign embassies in Iraq". "

""aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes"
- the British dossier renders this as:
"supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes"."

"Finally, there is one serious substantive mistake in the British text, in that it muddles up Boyne's description of General Security (al-Amn al-Amm), and places it in its section on p.14 of Military Security (al-Amn al-Askari). The result is complete confusion: it starts on p.14 by relating how Military Security was created in 1992 (in a piece copied from Marashi), then goes onto talk about the movement of its headquarters - in 1990 (in a piece copied from Boyne on the activities of General Security). The result is that it gets the description of the Military Security Service wholly wrong, claiming that its head is Taha al-Ahbabi (whilst really he was head of General Security in 1997; Military Security was headed by Thabet Khalil). "

"Secondly, the information presented as being an accurate statement of the current state of Iraq's security organisations may not be anything of the sort. Marashi - the real and unwitting author of much of the document has as his primary source the documents captured in 1991 for the Iraq Research and Documentation Project. His own focus is the activities of Iraq's intelligence agencies in Kuwait, Aug90-Jan91 - this is the subject of his thesis. As a result, the information presented as relevant to how Iraqi agencies are currently engaged with Unmovic is 12 years old. "

[ssibal]

Originally posted by svero


It's relevant. It goes to the creditibility of everything else they've told us. Currently that's at 0% for me and I'm not sure if you can have negative percentages of credibility but bush/blair will probably find a way.

Anyhow here's an analysis of the plagiarism ...

...

Okay, but is the original unaltered material credible? That is what I am concerned with. The British plagarizing and even exaggerating the original material does not invalidate it. From what I can gather, the same regime that was operating when the original papers were written is still operating today. I do not believe that they have changed their ways.

[svero]

Originally posted by ssibal


Okay, but is the original unaltered material credible? That is what I am concerned with. The British plagarizing and even exaggerating the original material does not invalidate it. From what I can gather, the same regime that was operating when the original papers were written is still operating today. I do not believe that they have changed their ways.

It may or may not. It puts into question anything that can't be easily verified. It also puts into question their assertion that this material is a good reason for a war. If the level of integrity used to compile these documents is low then maybe the level of integrity used to ensure that the documents are factual is also low.

[subgenius]

Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq Came From Magazines
By SARAH LYALL


LONDON, Feb. 7 — The British government admitted today that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic journals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/europe/08BRIT.html?th
--------------
:eek:

[Megalodon]

Originally posted by ssibal

Okay, but is the original unaltered material credible? That is what I am concerned with.

For what I've seen it's credible (for a civilian author) but out fo date. You should also be concerned with a government trying to get support for A WAR, where PEOPLE are bound to DIE, with a cut and paste job from magazines.

The British plagarizing and even exaggerating the original material does not invalidate it.

The original matterial was from civilian authors. Civilians don't have access to the same kind of information that military inteligence has. So, the report is almost criminally inadequate for the intended use of fueling a war.

From what I can gather, the same regime that was operating when the original papers were written is still operating today. I do not believe that they have changed their ways.

Belief means nothing... We are talking about killing people, destroying houses, ending families... If you want to do it based on an uninformed belief, then you are a criminal also...

[ssibal]

Uhm, I am not opposed to this war and it has nothing to do with that plagarized document. I already had come to a conclusion on the matter before Powel made his speech and before I even heard of this document. I am just saying that just because the document was plagarized does not mean that the information is invalid, that is all.

[Megalodon]

Originally posted by ssibal
...I already had come to a conclusion on the matter before Powel made his speech and before I even heard of this document.

You already had a conclusion before the evidence. So why are you concerned with the validity of it. Your mind is made up, shoot away :rolleyes:

I am just saying that just because the document was plagarized does not mean that the information is invalid, that is all.

I'm terribly sorry, but in this case, your premise is wrong. And since Powell's evidence was not much better than Blair's, The motives for this war are, at least, dubious...

[ssibal]

Originally posted by Megalodon


You already had a conclusion before the evidence. So why are you concerned with the validity of it. Your mind is made up, shoot away :rolleyes:

Before the evidence? There was plenty of evidence before Powell's speech. Maybe you do not think it justifies war, I do.



I'm terribly sorry, but in this case, your premise is wrong. And since Powell's evidence was not much better than Blair's, The motives for this war are, at least, dubious...

So, if I were to plagarize from Einstein's theories of General and Special Relativity that would mean that his work is invalid?

[subgenius]

Originally posted by ssibal
So, if I were to plagarize from Einstein's theories of General and Special Relativity that would mean that his work is invalid?
It would not, but it would damage your credibility, which is everything in international affairs, and thereby weaken your ability to garner support.
It would also lessen the chance that others would trust your judgment regarding the course of action to be followed based on the data.
Isn't it somewhat embarassing that powerful nations with every resource at their disposal aren't doing as good a job of information gathering as reporters?
Or do we know exculpatory things and want to hide them? Once you cheat (plagiarize) it allows your opponent to challenge everything you assert.

[svero]

Originally posted by ssibal
So, if I were to plagarize from Einstein's theories of General and Special Relativity that would mean that his work is invalid? [/B]

There's a big difference between a mathematical proof and some blurry satellite images and conjectures from unnamed sources. Plagiarism in this work sheds doubt on the information. You see I wouldn't put it past them to say.. gee this is completely wrong today, but what the hell we'll include it because it makes our point. This is a case where we can't know all the details, and so the credibility of the people is what we assess. If the boy who cried wolf says "WOLF!" I take it with a grain of salt.