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:US puts Iraqi documents on the Web
Goal is to speed up translation of files
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 18, 2006
Joseph Shahda of Randolph earns his living as an engineer. But in his spare time, he's an intelligence agent, working to ferret out the truth about the regime of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
When the US government on Thursday began publishing captured Iraqi government documents on the Internet, Shahda eagerly began to translate the files into English and publish them on a conservative website.
''I feel a sense of duty," said Shahda, a native of Lebanon who supports President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. ''I think it's a duty for people who know Arabic to translate the documents."
US officials hope that thousands of other Arabic speakers feel the same. Goaded by Congress, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has begun to release millions of pages of captured files online in an unprecedented effort to harness the Internet to disseminate raw intelligence material. There, anybody with a knowledge of Arabic can download the files and translate them for the world.
It's the same ''open source" principle that drove the successful development of the Internet and of powerful free software like the Linux operating system. Instead of hiring a team of brilliant professionals to analyze Iraqi documents in secret, the open source systems will use hundreds of clever amateurs, who'll publish their work for anyone to analyze and improve upon.
''Workers control the means of production, but without all that tedious communism," said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and author of ''An Army of Davids," a book that shows how the Internet encourages public activism.
US intelligence officials say nearly all the documents released have been given at least a cursory reading by Arabic experts. Beth Marple, Negroponte's deputy press secretary, said amateur translators won't find any major surprises, such as proof Hussein hid stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Still, conservative bloggers, eager to bolster the case for going to war against Iraq, have long argued for release of the documents. They gained a powerful ally last month in Michigan Republican Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In an interview with blogger Andrew Marcus, Hoekstra called for Negroponte to release the documents online. ''Unleash the power of the Net," Hoekstra said. ''Let the blogosphere go." Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, backed Hoekstra's proposal.
Within hours of the first release of documents, Shahda posted his first translation on the conservative website Free Republic. It was an Iraqi intelligence report of an interview with an Afghan informant that suggests -- but does not prove -- agents of Al Qaeda and the Taliban were active in Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to an intelligence official who declined to be identified, Negroponte plans to release all documents that have no further intelligence value. Files that might help apprehend members of the Iraqi insurgency will remain under wraps. So will files that could violate the privacy or harm the reputations of innocent people. For instance, the Hussein regime used rape as a method of torture, and the government won't release documents containing the names of Iraqi rape victims. Nor will it release files mentioning Iraqi-Americans or other US citizens, such as journalists.
The remaining documents, the official said, will mainly provide insights into Hussein's rule. ''This stuff needs to be laid bare because it helps the democratic process in Iraq, like it did in South Africa, like it did in Germany," he said.
At least one Iraqi blogger agrees. ''We are currently trying to organize a network of bilingual Iraqi bloggers to translate as many of the documents as possible," said ''Omar," a Baghdad dentist who publishes IraqTheModel, which is widely read in the United States. Omar will not reveal his full name because his support for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein could put him in danger of death.
While conservative US bloggers, and some Iraqis, are eager to translate and read the Iraq documents, some prominent liberal bloggers scoffed at the release. ''To me, this is just more evidence that the Bush administration doesn't take national security seriously," wrote Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the popular Daily Kos website. ''Why doesn't our government have enough translators to handle this job?"
Jonathan Singer, weekend editor of the liberal site MyDD.com, was equally dismissive. ''The Hussein documents are not of great interest to me," said Singer, ''for the simple reason that they simply reinforce the notion that the Bush administration cherry picks intelligence to suit their needs."
Kathianne said:I understand that, but in this particular case, considering the nature of the work, an evaluation memo of insubordination would have done the trick and allowed necessary work to proceed.
Well in any case, it's now getting started. My guess is when there is something 'interesting' it will be re-translated by experts.nosarcasm said:in that case every gay soldier could sue for the right to stay since gay
translators dont destroy the troops. I am not a big lawyer guy but that is
my understanding.
Kathianne said:Well in any case, it's now getting started. My guess is when there is something 'interesting' it will be re-translated by experts.
March 18, 2006
More Connections Between Saddam And Al-Qaeda
Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard has long pressed for the release of millions of Iraqi intelligence documents captured by the US when Baghdad fell. He argued for years that the trove of correspondence would shed light on critical disputes about the Iraq war and the actual threat presented from Saddam Hussein and his genocidal regime. Hayes gambled that the IIS hid much more than the American media reported -- and it turns out that Hayes has won his bet.
New documents released show that the Iraqis funded the Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the Philippines, a band of bloodthirsty Islamists with strong ties to al-Qaeda:
ON JUNE 6, 2001, the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines sent an eight-page fax to Baghdad. Ambassador Salah Samarmad's dispatch to the Secondary Policy Directorate of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry concerned an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping a week earlier that had garnered international attention. Twenty civilians--including three Americans--had been taken from Dos Palmas Resort on Palawan Island in the southern Philippines. There had been fighting between the kidnappers and the Filipino military, Samarmad reported. Several hostages had escaped, and others were released. ...
The report notes that the Iraqis were now trying to be seen as helpful and keep a safe distance from Abu Sayyaf. "We have all cooperated in the field of intelligence information with some of our friends to encourage the tourists and the investors in the Philippines." But Samarmad's report seems to confirm that this is a change. "The kidnappers were formerly (from the previous year) receiving money and purchasing combat weapons. From now on we (IIS) are not giving them this opportunity and are not on speaking terms with them."
Samarmad's dispatch appears to be the final installment in a series of internal Iraqi regime memos from March through June 2001. (The U.S. government translated some of these documents in full and summarized others.) The memos contain a lengthy discussion among Iraqi officials--from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Intelligence Service--about the wisdom of using a Libyan intelligence front as a way to channel Iraqi support for Abu Sayyaf without the risks of dealing directly with the group.
At the same time that leftists would have us believe that Saddam was safely in a "box" and contained by UN sanctions, he had corrupted the UN's aid program and plundered his own nation for billions of dollars. Obviously, some of this went to Abu Sayyaf until they got a little too notorious and the Iraqis had to pull back. Before that, however, they showed some enthusiasm for not only giving the Islamists money but also smuggling arms into the Philippines for their use.
And these aren't just local Islamists, either, as the Center for Defense Information noted in March 2002:
Abu Sayyaf was founded by Abdurajak Janjalani, an Islamic scholar and mujahedin in the Afghan-Soviet war, after he, like the contemporaries that formed his initial recruiting crop, returned from studies in Saudi Arabia and Libya determined to fulfill the Muslim ideal of an Islamic state. ...
In its inchoate stages and while under Janjalani's leadership, Abu Sayyaf was plugged into the international network of Islamic militants that received the support of Osama bin Laden. Abu Sayyaf-al Qaeda links are strong. Many of its fighters claim to have trained in Afghanistan, including as many as 20 who were in the graduating class of a Mazar-e Sharif camp in 2001; the titular group leader, Janjalani's brother, refined his terrorist skills in Libya. Zamboanga City, a Mindanao Islamic hotbed, was frequented by members of al Qaeda. Yet the best indicator of al Qaeda's influence is the relationship Janjalani forged with Saudi Arabian businessman Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law. Khalifa's network of Islamic charities and university in Zamboanga were both used to bankroll extremists. His main organization, the International Islamic Relief Organization, has an office in Zamboanga, as does a bin Laden foundation. Abu Sayyaf received training and money funneled through Khalifa's network. It was during this time of close association with Khalifa and the al Qaeda network that Abu Sayyaf began plotting its two biggest endeavors assassination of the Pope during a visit to the Catholic Philippines, and a plan to hijack and blow up 12 U.S. civilian airliners in a single day. After these plans were foiled (by an accidental fire in Ramsey Yousef's apartment), authorities began to see Abu Sayyaf as a major threat to security in the Philippines and as a true threat to international security.
CNN also notes the AS/AQ connection in its section on Asian terrorists. Time reported it in November 2002 in a profile on Abu Sayyaf and its operations. Those connections between Saddam and Islamist terror, specifically al-Qaeda, look a lot more significant with this new information.
The people who argued that waging war on Saddam Hussein constituted a "distraction" from the war on terror will have a lot of backpedaling to do.
ADDENDUM: This also puts a much different light on the sudden decision by Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi to give up his nuclear program and start cooperating with the US and UK on fighting terrorism. The Libyans acted as Saddam's middleman on funneling arms and money to Abu Sayyaf, a fact which Gaddafi must have assumed we would discover as we exploited the IIS documentation -- and especially after we captured Saddam Hussein in his spider hole. Libya would have jumped to the top ranks of terror-enablers and would have provided an even less difficult target than Syria, especially given Abu Sayyaf's attacks on Americans in the Philippines.
When Gaddafi told Italy's Silvio Berlusconi that he didn't want to end up like Saddam, he wasn't just engaging in hyperbole.
