Seized Iraqi Documents Made Public on Web

[rushmc 18]

Reprinted on NewsMax from the AP. If someone knows of a site commenting and posting translations would you please post it? I have yet to find a site (and i haven't looked too much yet)

Should be interesting
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Seized Iraqi Documents Made Public on Web

The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded.

Republican leaders in Congress pushed for the release, which was first proposed by conservative commentators and bloggers hoping to find evidence about the fate of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, or possible links to terror groups.

Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto. The idea of the government turning over a massive database to volunteers is revolutionary - and not only to them.

"Let's unleash the power of the Internet on these documents," said House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. "I don't know if there's a smoking gun on WMD or not. But it will give us a better understanding of what was going on in Iraq before the war."

The documents' value is uncertain - intelligence officials say that they are giving each one a quick review to remove anything sensitive. Skeptics of the war, suspicious of the Bush administration, believe that means the postings are either useless or cherry-picked to bolster arguments for the war.

The documents - Iraqi memos, training guides, reports, transcripts of conversations, audiotapes and videotapes - have spurred a flurry of news reports. The Associated Press, for instance, reported on memos from Saddam Hussein in 1987 ordering plans for a chemical attack on Kurds and comments from Hussein and his aides in the 1990s, searching for ways to prove they didn't have weapons.

Hoekstra said it took months of arguing with intelligence officials before he and John Negroponte, the new Director of National Intelligence, agreed to make the documents public. None contain current information about the Iraqi insurgency, and U.S. intelligence officials say they are focusing their limited resources on learning about what's happening on the ground now.

There are up to 55,000 boxes, with possibly millions of pages. The documents are being posted a few at a time - so far, about 600 - on a Pentagon Web site, often in Arabic with an English summary.

Regardless of what they reveal, open-government advocates like the decision to make them available.

It's a "radical notion," said Steve Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists government secrecy project, which tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies. That "members of the public could contribute to the intelligence analysis process. ... That is a bold innovation."

Champions of the Internet as a "citizen's media" embraced the step, too.

"The secret of the 21st century is attract a lot of smart people to focus on problems that you think are important," said Glenn Reynolds, the conservative blogger at Instapundit.com and author of "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths."

"It's kind of like a swarm. It's a lot of individual minds looking at it from different angles. The stuff that's most interesting tends to bubble to the top," he said.

A self-described Iraqi blogger translated one of the documents for the American blog pajamasmedia.com - a Sept. 15, 2001, memo from the Iraqi intelligence service that reported about an Afghan source who had been told that a group from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban had visited Iraq.

Some remain doubtful, suspecting that the administration only releases information that puts President Bush and his arguments for war in a good light. The Iraq Survey Group found no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction after the war, and the Sept. 11 commission reported it found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaida.

"I would bet that the materials that they chose to post were the ones that were suggestive of a threat," said John Prados, author of the book, "Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War."

Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute, dismissed the documents: "The collection is good material for somebody who wants to do a biography of Saddam Hussein, but in terms of saying one thing or the other about weapons of mass destruction, it's not there."

One of several conservative blogs devoting attention to the release, Powerline.com, set up a separate page to catalog its findings and news reports on what the documents reveal.

"These documents are going to shed a lot of light on a regime that was quite successful in maintaining secrecy," said John Hinderaker, one of three men who run the site. "Before the first Gulf War, Saddam was perilously close to getting nuclear weapons and people didn't know it. The evils of the regime will be reflected."

But he also cautioned the optimistic. "When you're dealing with millions of pages of documents," he said, "it's a big mistake to think you can pull out one page or sentence out of a document and say 'Eureka, this is it.'"



© 2006 Associated Press.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[quade 3]

Am I reading this correctly?

The U.S. government is hoping that documents seized will be accurately translated by random internet users?

That's the f'in' stupidest idea I've heard in awhile.

"Hey, Osama, the stupid Americans want us to translate documents for them. We have this one titled 'Plan to Fuck Them Over' you want that translated to 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' yes?"

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[rehmwa 2]

You took the time to read it? It's from Newsmax.

Might as well listen to FOX.

freakin' fascist rags

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Jimbo 0]

Quote

The U.S. government is hoping that documents seized will be accurately translated by random internet users?

Translated accurately? Likely not all of them, probably not even a large percentage of them. However, if they do keep tabs on the various translations then perhaps the Internet community will help to locate the 'interesting' documents.

That's my take on things, anyway.

-
Jim

"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

[rushmc 18]

Quote

You took the time to read it? It's from Newsmax.

Might as well listen to FOX.

freakin' fascist rags

Nooooo, it is from the AP reprinted on NewsMax.

Now you can breath againsheesh...

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 18]

Why do you think I want to find a site doing some of this. the left right translation battle will be epic and fun to watch

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[jenfly00 0]

Quote

Quote

The U.S. government is hoping that documents seized will be accurately translated by random internet users?

Translated accurately? Likely not all of them, probably not even a large percentage of them. However, if they do keep tabs on the various translations then perhaps the Internet community will help to locate the 'interesting' documents.

That's my take on things, anyway.

-
Jim

I suspect the really 'interesting' ones were not released.

-----------------------
"O brave new world that has such people in it".

[robr 0]

I read another article saying that the documents were given a quick once over by government translators to see if they contained anything sensitive.

(the original article I read was from the Boston Globe but appears to be pay-per-view now; cnet has a summary article that mentions the 'cursory read' bit)

I get the feeling that if they hadn't released the documents, that they would just sit in a warehouse untranslated, and in theory, if enough people are reading the documents, anything that's truly wrong in a translation will be pointed out by someone else.

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/03/18/us_puts_iraqi_documents_on_the_web/
The above link might or might not work to get the original globe article.
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6051297.html
This link has the summary from cnet.

[kallend 1,623]

Quote

I read another article saying that the documents were given a quick once over by government translators to see if they contained anything sensitive.

(the original article I read was from the Boston Globe but appears to be pay-per-view now; cnet has a summary article that mentions the 'cursory read' bit)

I get the feeling that if they hadn't released the documents, that they would just sit in a warehouse untranslated, and in theory, if enough people are reading the documents, anything that's truly wrong in a translation will be pointed out by someone else.

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/03/18/us_puts_iraqi_documents_on_the_web/
The above link might or might not work to get the original globe article.
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6051297.html
This link has the summary from cnet.

I reckon they're using the "infinite number of monkeys" doctrine. I expect the outcome will be the complete works of Shakespeare.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 2,400]

>I expect the outcome will be the complete works of Shakespeare.

Or a vile plot to destroy the US with their arsenal of WMD's. Which Bush never claimed, of course, but which is 100% true.

[freeryde13 0]

i think the press conference is ready ...... who's gonna be the one that uncovers the smoking gun.... my moneys on a liberal for the innocence factor .

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