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there are also stories in the daily mirror and daily express http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12616651&method=full&; siteid=50143 DOWNING STREET REPORT IS 'RIP OFF' Feb 7 2003 Iraq report 'is a rip-off from the internet' By John Peacock And James Hardy A DOWNING Street dossier showing how Iraq has deceived UN weapons inspectors is partly based on a 12-year-old report, it was claimed last night. The Government is said to have used internet material from several sources, including a student in California, whose work was based on documents captured in 1991 following the first Gulf War. One expert said: "The Government is trying to build a case for war but, in view of this, what else can we believe? "Colin Powell used some of this in his publication to the UN. It has got to cast questions over his presentation." The dossier was branded "cut and paste plagiarism" and includes misquoted phrases, spelling mistakes and wrong punctuation. A Cambridge University student, who has studied the documents, said: "The Government's report 'Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation,' suggests the UK does not have available information of Iraq's intelligence services." Cambridge don Glen Rangwala, an expert on Iraq, said the bulk of the Government's 19-page document was copied, without acknowledgement, from an article in Middle East Review of International Affairs by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Dr Rangwala said the public had been led to believe the Government's report was a result of direct investigation, rather than simply copied from pre- existing internet sources. Examples of misquoting include the phrase "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes", which the Government report puts as "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes". Text from Sean Boyne's "Inside Iraq's Security Network" mentions "10,000-15,000 bullies and country bumpkins recruited from regions loyal to Saddam". The Government's version deletes "country bumpkins". Dan Plesch, from the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in London, told Channel 4: "This appears to be obsolete academic analysis dressed up as the best MI6...can produce on Saddam." A Downing Street spokesman said: "The report was put together by a range of Government officials. "It was drawn from a number of sources, including intelligence material, but it does not identify or credit any sources, neither does it claim any exclusivity of authorship." also report on their website today (not in paper)b GLENDA: DOWNING STREET LIED ON DOSSIER http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12618038&method=full&; siteid=50143 Feb 7 2003 Former Labour minister Glenda Jackson today accused the Government of lying to the public over its Iraq dossier. Ms Jackson said the file, which was supposed to prove Saddam's attempts to deceive the UN, is an example of how Downing Street is trying to mislead Britons. Last night it emerged the dossier was partly based on 12-year-old information and included chunks lifted from a thesis by a student in California. Ms Jackson told the BBC: "If that was presented to Parliament and the country as being up-to-date intelligence, albeit collected from a variety of sources but by British intelligence agents, and in fact as we now know they simply lifted it from a university thesis, it is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament on the issue of a possible war with Iraq. "And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying." The student who wrote the thesis, Ibrahim al-Marashi, is furious the British Government used his work without giving him credit for his efforts. "They never cited my article," Mr al-Marashi said. "Any academic, when you publish anything, the only thing you ask for in return is that they include a citation of your work. There are laws and regulations about plagiarism that you would think the UK Government would abide by." Downing Street today admitted it was wrong to produce the document without crediting Mr al-Marashi. But a spokesman for Tony Blair insisted the document was accurate. http://www.express.co.uk/story.html?story=2&r=31274820334166766 No 10 accused of plagiarising Iraq dossier Tony Blair is facing accusations that Downing Street had plagiarised its latest dossier of evidence against Saddam Hussein from out-of-date material. No 10 insisted the dossier released on Monday was "accurate" and had never claimed exclusive authorship. But the Tories said this explanation "utterly failed" to deny or excuse the allegations that the 19-page intelligence document was substantially plagiarised. The dossier was designed to help win over sceptics by outlining Iraq's alleged efforts to hide its weapons of mass destruction. The Downing Street notice introducing the document said: "Iraq's campaign of obstruction against United Nations weapons inspectors is set out in a new report released by the government". But experts dismissed the dossier as largely copied from three different articles, Channel 4 News reported. One article which the programme claimed was a major source for the Downing Street document was written by a postgraduate student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, from Monterey, California. He was researching material relating to the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War and not to the current situation, it was alleged. Channel 4 News reported that Glen Rangwala, an academic at Cambridge University, spotted that large chunks of the student's paper had been copied to form parts of the No 10 dossier, called, Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation. Dr Rangwala, a lecturer in politics, told the programme: "The British Government's dossier is 19 pages long and most of pages 6 to 16 are copied directly from that document word for word, even the grammatical errors and typographical mistakes." © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2003, All Rights Reserved _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk