Friday 7 February 2003

UK war dossier a sham, say experts

I saw Phony Tony being ripped to pieces by Jeremy Paxman and a studio audience on BBC 2 last night, it was an absolute classic! One questioner even referred to Phony as "the Right Honourable Member for Texas North" and Mr. Vice President (although I suspect Dick would take issue with that last one!). Anyway this just proves it, Phony and the Cronies are such accomplished spinners that they probably can't think of things in normal terms anymore anyway. This government is a government of liars, con-men, warmongers, assholes and idiots - can we please stop this madness before these asinine violent little men lead us straight into the most obscene internecine conflagration our arrogant species has ever had the misfortune to endure.

WOULD EVERYBODY STOP GETTING SHOT!?!


Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old.

Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein, Whitehall's dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on Wednesday.

Citing the British dossier, entitled Iraq - its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation in front of a worldwide television audience Mr Powell said: "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."

But on Channel 4 News last night it was revealed that four of the report's 19 pages had been copied - with only minor editing and a few insertions - from the internet version of an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi which appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last September.

Though that was not the only textual embarrassment No 10 seemed determined to tough it out last night.

Full story...

MORE NEWS:
The British Government Dossier cited by Colin Powell
One of the articles the dossier is plagiarized from, complete with typos and grammatical errors.