Powell used plagiarized 12yr old Iraq data to push UN for war

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07159462

07 Feb 2003 21:26
U.S. scholar surprised his work in Britsh dossier

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By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 7 (Reuters) - A 29-year-old U.S. scholar who unknowingly was a major source for a British government dossier on Iraq said on Friday that he based his findings on public information and 12-year-old captured Iraqi documents.

The British "intelligence" dossier published this week on a government Website said Iraq had mounted a massive campaign to deceive and intimidate United Nations inspectors hunting for banned weapons.

On Friday, embarrassed officials admitted entire passages were lifted word for word, complete with grammatical errors, from an article written last year for a journal on the Middle East by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, as well as from other public sources.

"I am surprised, flattered as well, that this information got used in a U.K. government dossier," Marashi, whose parents immigrated from Iraq to the United States in 1968, said in an interview with Reuters. He added that while he had never visited Iraq, he wished the British government had contacted him before using the document.

"Had they consulted me I could have provided them with more updated information," he 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."

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[LittleApple81]

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