This is all getting a bit farcical and Monty Pythonish!
NY Times: Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq Was Lifted from Magazines

Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq Came From Magazines
By SARAH LYALL

"LONDON, Feb. 7 — The British government admitted today that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic journals.

But while acknowledging that the 19-page report was indeed a "pull-together of a variety of sources," a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair defended it as "solid" and "accurate."
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The document, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," was posted on No. 10 Downing Street's Web site on Monday. It was depicted as an up-to-date and unsettling assessment by the British intelligence services of Iraq's security apparatus and its efforts to hide its activities from weapons inspectors and to resist international efforts to force it to disarm.

But much of the material actually came, sometimes verbatim, from several nonsecret published articles, according to critics of the government's policy who have studied the documents. These include an article published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002, as well as three articles from Jane's Intelligence Review, two of them published in the summer of 1997 and one in November 2002.

In some cases, the critics said, parts of the articles — or of summaries posted on the Internet — were paraphrased in the report. In other cases, they were plagiarized — to the extent that even spelling and punctuation errors in the originals were reproduced."

[ February 07, 2003, 10:46 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

Monty Pythonesque, fantomas. ("Run away! Run away!" Oh wait, that's France .)

I just hope there weren't any faux-Shakespearean web-quotes in that report. That kind of thing drives Republicans crazy.

Then again, is this any worse then Bush plagiarizing the Bible in his speeches?

You beat me to it, fantomas. Good show!...um, sorry.

Hear, hear! (oops!)

I meant: Right on, brother!

And our government expects us to risk our lives, hide our photos of BFs (as well as deny their very existence), and remain celibate - when they're in cahoots with politicians who can't even supervise a fake report?!?!?!?!?!? eek!

[ February 08, 2003, 07:50 AM: Message edited by: bluebird48234 ]

Careful Seph, remember:

"Thou shalt not criticize the president (that's ME.)"

Book of Bush 13:10

Britain is obviously succumbing to U.S. standards. It's becoming positively Bush-ish/Bush-esque (I'll use only the Anglo-Saxon and French endings--not the German one (isch) since they're utterly non grata these days.)!

BTW, how is Tony Blair going to stay in office when over 70% of the British public is openly against war, and most Labour voters are strongly against it? Not that I want to see a Tory takeover there, because Iain Duncan Smith has some real loonies (including racialist sympathizers) among his bedfellows, but at the same time, Labour's leadership can't keep up this rightward stance indefinitely, can it?

Have a care, FT! You're coming close to admitting the inanity of the American academy!

It gets worse, cos part of the report was taken from a university student's thesis!

Another funny incident was the decision (later rescinded) to ban a "Stop the War" rally in Hyde Park because it would damage the grass.

Tony Blair admitted on television the other night that the British people still needed to be persuaded of the case for war. Asked what the Iraqi regime would have to do to avoid war, he had no answer. So the decision has been taken and nothing is going to change our leaders' minds now. We have the biggest deployment of UK troops since WW2.

Politically though, the main issue of the moment here at grassroots level is immigration/asylum-seekers not the war. If Blair does lose popularity it will be because of a failure to reduce the number of refugees arriving over the next two years rather than Middle East policy.

(For the record, I'd be happy to see the end of Saddam Hussein but I don't trust the motives of the US Government over this)

[ February 08, 2003, 10:54 AM: Message edited by: jamesw ]

Spell me, dear, I'm missing you here. How's the American "academy" involved? I'm talking American politics.

BTW, a British government minister claimed last year that there were very few British universities up to par with the best American institutions, or even some of the best European continental research institutions, especially the ones in Germany. I think she was exaggerating (as a way of getting more £ out of the government) but even Oxford and Cambridge (Britain's science powerhouse) are experiencing budgetary struggles, and some of the best next tier universities would kill for the resources and research output of any of America's top 50-ranked research universities.

Veritas, Lux et Veritas, Dei sub numine viget....

FT, in writing that Britain is succumbing to US standards, in reference to the report that was culled from "magazines and academic journals" without any apparent original research, you impliedly admitted that US magazines and academic journals are not the best evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing but rather second rate research. Perhaps as best illustrated by the trend in academic, espacially legal, journals to publish apocryphal "stories" - some even admittedly fictional - instead of solid research, this has been a matter of concern about - if not in or among, as it should be - the American academy (i.e., our professoriat) for at least a decade. It represents just another example of the dumbing down of American academic standards - mainly in the social sciences, thankfully, to the apprent envy of the British, in the "real" sciences -fostered by the influx of "scholars" who were really doing nothing more than running from the draft - listening Reps. Rangel and Stark? - and who now exercise considerable control over the academy, particularly in the social sciences and administration.

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

[ February 09, 2003, 09:00 AM: Message edited by: gmginsfo ]

Impliedly? Eeeek.

QUOTE

\"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.\"

Ironically, the source of the title of a poem by Wilfred Owen on how it is no such thing.

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kf.../owendulce.html

>>
Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
First Published in 1921

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
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Don't blame me; I took Latin.