The game's afoot now!

See my comments over at LGF

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From: Ron Wright
TO: Informed Source
CC:
Date: Mon Oct 11, 2004 12:00:22 PM PDT
Subject: ALERT - UPDATE ON CNS NEWS SVS' IRAQI INTEL DOCS

Hat tip to Charles at LGF.

Update to CNS News Svs story on intel docs delivered to them by "high level gov't intel source."

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CNS News Svs to its credit has decided to make the docs available to the Blogosphere supplied to them by a "high gov't intel source."

A lively discussion on this is currently taking place over LGF. Here's the link to my comment.

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Why hasn't the Bush Administration used this info? I think it's more a matter of them not knowing about them. How can this be?

Simple, the lack of linguists fluent in Arabic and Farsi and the mounds and mounds of docs seized from Iraq that weren't destroyed. We've probably only scratched the surface of this pile.

[...]

Link Here

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Stay tuned this could be a bigger story than Rathergate or at least provide some fun for the next few news cycles.

I'm sure Charles at LGF will keep us all informed.

Ron Wright, Moderator
HSPIG Forums Site
www.hspig.org

One of the big problems right now is the providence of the items in question. Several organizations right now are trying as hard as they can to prove or disprove them and at this point the original point of collection is unknown (i.e. where these found or given to US forces).
I have talked too a couple of people so far who have had access to these documents and they have all pointed out that very clearly that these may be forgeries. There have been allot of very good documents generated by people in Iraq who either worked with or where extremely familiar with Iraqi government memos as well as their own internal intelligence. It also important to note that early into the occupation the type faces for the
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iraq/mukhabarat.htm Mukhabarat where stolen and so anyone with access to them could fake the documents.
Hopefully people on the blogosphere can at least point out major issues with the translations, internal consistency, as well as where there maybe other problems that would prove that these documents are fake. Independent translators we are talking to are already point out issues with the translations but they are mostly minor such as words that are translated to 'book' that should be 'memo' or 'clerks' when it should be 'clergy'. Another big thing we are looking at right now are the names, places, and organizations mentioned in the document. If you find anything inconsistent post something and let us all know.

This is even more pathetic then the left-wing "Bush wore a transmitter" nonsense.

How could anyone possibly think that the Bush administration is covering up evidence of Saddam's WMDs?

Oberon, your contention is not even remotely hinted at in any of this. I don't know where this coverup thing came from, but it has no relevance.

A news organization claims to have some Iraqi documents. We're going to see what we can do to check them out, to the extent that we can (see Robi's stuff). That's it, and let's get on with it...

I can see where the Bush administration would be hypercautious about this sort of thing. If they latch on to anything that is later debunked, then they find themselves in Dan Rather's shoes -- protesting that "the underlying assertions are true even if the documents are false". The closer the election, the less likely they are to roll those dice.

Except maybe a day or two before ;)

Joe,

I don't think the Bush administration is really covering up the documents. That was a joke to demonstrate how ridiculous this is.

Why hasn't the administration used the documents? Either (i) they reviewed the docs, and they are fake, or (ii) they did not review the docs.

Maybe you think the Bush adminisration is so friggin' incompetent that despite throwing $100s millions of dollars and 1000s of people into finding WMDs after the invasion, they didn't bother looking at the CNS documents.

The Bush adminstration has demonstrated lots of incompetence by invading Iraq with a post-war plan consisting of "be treated as liberators", hiring partisan hacks to run the CPA, dismissing the Iraqi army without even the barest demobilization plan, etc., but it's hard to believe they are as incompetent as you imply.

Hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the massive investigation of Saddam's WMDs really did overlook the CNS documents. But right now I'm highly skeptical.

Umbriel:

If I understand, you just suggested the Bush administration is "hypercautious" about putting forward evidence of Saddam's WMDs.

Ha ha ha!!! Ha ha ha!!! Oh my goodness, that is darn funny.

Dude, there were/are MILLIONS of documents in Baghdad, and many were taken in the immediate aftermath when Baghdad fell suddenly post Thunder run, and the remainder cannot all be policed effectively, and the USA is short on translators, and the translators it does have are also needed for other things.

So yes, it is absolutely possible that the Administration does not have any given document found in Iraq. Welcome to reality.

It is also possible that the Administration is still evaluating the documents, and passed them on to CNS because it offers the prospect of a faster and more public process. We'd have to know more about their source to know. Many other things are possible as well.

Speculating about those possibilities isn't the issue we face at this point. The documents themselves are.

Contribute to that question in a useful way, or have future comments in this thread deleted. You're derailing this thread.

Joe -

Might you be interpreting the scope of argument a little to narrowly here? The provenance on the documents and the reason why they are on CNS, and not CBS (OK, not on Fox) are certainloy worth discussing while we wait for the few Arab-speakers we know to come back with comments...

A.L.

[JK: As the comments are an important workspace for this project, I'm enforcing relevance and contribution value tightly and seriously. Contribute useful information based on something substantial, or it will be removed.]

AJL concludes with: "More seriously, Oberon speaks for me. This looks like National Enquirer quality stuff."

[JK: Maybe that will be our conclusion. But to participate in this thread, you have to show concrete reasons why.]

A.L.... It might, if it was more than empty speculation. If people have details or leads or links re: the provenance of the documents, bring them by all means.

But idly questioning any examination of the documents, with no back-up other than bombast, contributes nothing. That's just cluttering up the thread and attempting to derail it, and will be treated accordingly.

After I read the first few comments, I did not think you were strictly limiting the thread to "readers with expertise in Arabic, Iraq, military matters, weapons inspection, document authentication, et. al. ".

My apologies.

To be honest, I can't imagine what sort of document authentication (especially pro) could be done with the resoures we have available. Genuine comparison signatures? Ink and paper tests? On a screenshot??

It's sometimes easy to detect badly-done fakes like CBS-TxANG and yellowcake-sale memos (do you remember there were totally-bogus "Let's buy yellowcake for our WMDs" memos in the immediate fall of Baghdad?), but the argument the other way just can't be done at a distance. It doesn't help that our old buddy Ahmad Chalabi has known talents as a forger.

All that bloggers can say in favor of these documents is that they are consilient with their pre-existing otherwise-unsupported beliefs.

I'm cautiously on Andrew's side on this, I think.

Without clear provenance, it will be hard to judge these one way or the other. And I say that as someone who takes seriously the likelihood that portions of the WMD programs (and the small number of WMD probably saved from earlier) probably did pass through Syria and either stay there or (more likely by now) migrate to Sudan and similar places.

Oberon:

Laugh away, but we've already heard references to assaults on the strongest insurgency strongholds probably being delayed until after the election. That indicates to me that the Bush administration is in a very cautious PR mode. inasmuch as it seems currently to be focusing on justifying the Iraq campaign on grounds other than WMD stockpiles anyway, I can see where it would be averse to risking its own "Rathergate" so close to the election.

That might very well change after the election, or, as I said, a day or two prior, if they think there's too little time for it to blow up in their faces in the worst case.

The Bush administration is keeping 90% of relevant details related to Iraq quiet, and allowing the media to have the other 10%. Of course, the media invents another 90% fiction, to make up for what the administration withholds.

What a contrast, to read the Iraqi blogs or the military blogs from Iraq, and then to turn to the media reports. One might almost suspect an active bias on the part of the media? But that couldn't be, could it?

You're joking, right?

"The Bush administration is keeping 90% of relevant details related to Iraq quiet, and allowing the media to have the other 10%. Of course, the media invents another 90% fiction, to make up for what the administration withholds."

When Dave Barry offered statistics like this he said he got them from a little voice in his head that tells him "official sounding statistics". You are both very funny!

This administration has never held back using anything that could back up their claims against Saddam.

Vincent Cannistraro is the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence. He said, "Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA."

Read the article

Can you name one occasion they held back information that supported thier cause because they were unsure of it?

Dave

Dave Kees, readers should by all means click on your hyperlink to a 2002 Guardian article. Does providing that link to that particular newspaper in this thread (on the uncertain reliability of information from certain sources) rise to the level of irony? Perhaps so. We could discuss the article's jumble of truth and falsehood, but that would be off-topic.

On-topic, the continuing silence here and elsewhere on the verifiability of the CNS documents is lending further weight to Andrew J. Lazarus' assertion that they are not to be trusted. He's right, there have been numerous instances of high-quality forgeries of Ba'athist documents post April '03. Worse, this batch seems to lack a chain of custody.

Amac,

In part it is also beacuase this takes time and many of us have stressful day time jobs. When I can I want to write something which I will pass to Joe but at this time there are a lot of issues with the documents. Some of this issues are the translations which are not the best. Some of these issues relate to how the documents are strucutred and a lot of other things. Anyways I think people should be skeptical and one of the points of putting this up is that we where hoping more people with expertise would join the fray.

Anyways I hope to have something to Joe by Friday. I applogize for us taking so long.

It's interesting to look back at these posts, now over 2 years old.

We see the old arguments and justifications for the war.

And today we see the current news of how the facts and evidence to support the Iraq invasion were either dead wrong, distorted, mistaken or downright deceptions.

May God help us to never go into a war so lightly again.

(Will you publish this?)

Dave K and Andrew,
With all due respect you are doing exactly what you accuse those of the other side of the argument of doing. Believing or disbelieving documents based on previous beliefs.

Regarding the CNS docs I can say that I've had someone from deep in the intel community recently tell me they were legit and one that they were BS. Either way, the substance of these documents has a better chance of being checked against the testimonies of not only the hundreds of Baathists in custody who have been caught colluding with al Qaeda (a short version of a list I am working on is up at www.regimeofterror.com), George Tenet's testimony on the subject (now says multiple al Qaeda detainees testified to Iraq-al Qaeda cooperation) but also the dissenters that have been featured in the Senate reports.

My guess is the answer will be somewhere in the middle. Conflicting testimony from detainees likely as if there were any cooperation it would have certainly been kept secret and compartmentalized and those involved are dead in many cases (not this guy though http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/05/the_missing_link.php).

In the case of these particular documents they may be legit but there are a TON of fake documents on this topic and al Buratha news may have produced another one recently. There's been enough put out there that are so easily identified as phonies that it's possible someone was using them as disinformation.

Anyway, I hope this topic gets a serious revision where the politics of the war and the case for or against the invasion can be kept out of the discussion and the merits of the topic (Hussein's terrorist links) can be focused upon.