Nicked from autopope's blog

[akicif]

Government plagiarised Iraq allegations from student essay

A rather interesting press release from CASI, the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq, is circulating in the UK today and really bears reading. In particular, it looks as if the British government's dossier on Iraq, "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation", cites as "intelligence material" -- and indeed uses for the bulk of its contents -- text copied (without permission) from a paper in last September's Middle East Review of International Affairs entitled "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis" written by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Even his typos and grammatical errors found their way into the Downing Street dossier

It'd be funny if it wasn't so damn' serious...

It's just a pity this didn't get brought up during Paxman's audience with Blair last night.

Comments

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

It's just a pity this didn't get brought up during Paxman's audience with Blair last night. Only because the interview had clearly been recorded before Channel Four broke the story. But while Blair was clearly nervous -- he gulped water at almost every pause -- I thought Paxman treated him rather more lightly than he could have done. Further, one whole topic -- the potential destabilising of the rest of the Middle East -- was completely missed. (Not that the invited audience was much help. Apart from the chap who labelled Blair "the Rt Hon Member for Texas, North", they seemed to have some trouble framing direct questions, which merely allowed Blair to avoid whatever points they wanted to make by rambling on about what a monster Saddam is.)