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Open-Government Technique Used on Iraqi Documents 243

stalebread writes "MSNBC has an article looking at an internet-based 'many hands make light work' approach to data sifting. From the article: 'The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded. Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto.'"
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Open-Government Technique Used on Iraqi Documents

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  • by P0ldy ( 848358 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @02:09AM (#15008824)
    Maybe many eyes would make all dupes [slashdot.org] shallow too...
  • by Myria ( 562655 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @02:12AM (#15008832)
    Does anyone *really* think that there would be anything important in those documents? It's not like the location of Osams bin Laden or of Saddam's chemical weapons in Syria will be in these documents.

    This particular arm of the government is not dumb enough to publicly release anything that has a remote chance of being important. After all, such documents likely show some of our wrongdoings too.

    Melissa
    • These documents won't contain any earth-shattering revelations, though they will be interesting for establishing details of the historical record. The first actual study [jfcom.mil] of some of them has already noted that the documents showed that Saddam's government was far weaker and more confused than we ever thought; that Saddam and his government were living in a dangerous fantasy world. It also noted that the documents established that much of what we interpreted as intent to hide WMD (esp the phone calls from P
      • ...that Saddam and his government were living in a dangerous fantasy world.
        Isn't that generally the case for opressive dictatorships? It's kind of an obvious progression: opress the people -> make enemies -> become scared -> "crack down" on enemies by opressing more -> make more enemies -> become paranoid and delusional because you're surrounded and can't supress them all.

        Ya know?
        • Agreed. But one of the study's conclusions is that the US Administration made many of its operational decisions based on the assumption that Saddam was conspiring to hide WMD, to work with al Qaeda, to prepare for an insurgency after a US invasion, etc., when the evidence shows that Saddam's government was unsure of its own capabilities, that Saddam not only did not plan an insurgency, but actually believed that France and Germany would prevent a US invasion, that Saddam made a lot of contradictory plans t
      • by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:48AM (#15009182)
        The first actual study of some of them has already noted that the documents showed that Saddam's government was far weaker and more confused than we ever thought; that Saddam and his government were living in a dangerous fantasy world.

        Putting aside the question of whether invading was morally right, and the abominable postwar planning and strategy (or rather, complete and total absence of any postwar planning and strategy), this raises a very serious question: was the invasion (as opposed to the occupation we now find ourselves mired in) a good decision from a military standpoint?

        The short, superficial answer is: yes, because we won. But the question is, did we win because the U.S. military is so much better than the Iraqi military, or because Saddam did some incredibly stupid things? Was Rumsfeld a strategic genius, or arrogant and stupid, and only saved by the fact that Saddam acted even more stupid- by hobbling his army, by not listening to his commanders, and worrying about coups and Shiite uprisings instead of the U.S. military?

        Anyhow, it's a bit academic at this point- we're stuck with the outcome, and we're not going to be invading anyone else for a long time. But I think it's worth thinking about, so we draw the right lessons from the war. Kaplan, Slate.com's military columnist, wrote a piece about how the U.S. offensive was just a couple weeks away from grinding to a halt due to a lack of spare parts and supplies. http://www.slate.com/id/2103552/ [slate.com] If Hussein had done a few things differently- blown up some of the bridges into Bagdad, followed the Russian model and ceded territory to attack the supply lines with guerillas- he might have been able to slow Rumsfeld's light and lean military and inflicted some serious casualties.

        • by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @05:19AM (#15009272) Journal
          Sure, Saddam got kicked out and lots of stuff got blown up and Bush declared "Mission Accomplished". But the war's still going on, Iraqis are still getting shot and American troops are still getting shot and the US is still spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on it and shows no sign of having an exit strategy. Your question that we might have won because of superior power or because of Saddam's incompetence or both might have been a reasonable discussion for Desert Storm - but Saddam's country has been under sanctions, no-fly-zones, and lightweight military attacks for a decade after his army was totally crushed.

          Bamford's book "A Pretense for War" does some really good analysis of the events and decision-making processes that led up to 9/11 and to the Iraqi invasion, and even with the evidence available back when he wrote it, it's obvious that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Bush and Cheney were all bleeding incompetents.

          • the US is still spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on it and shows no sign of having an exit strategy.

            There *is* no workable exit strategy. The US can't leave, and won't be able to leave for many years yet. Compare this to the occupations of Germany and Japan. Those were very successful, and in the end produced stable, prosperous, democratic countries, but Allied forces (primarily US) were there for decades. Iraq will be the same, and leaving too soon will compound the initial error of t

            • Leaving too soon will create a civil war, and it will be 100% our fault.

              Until we leave, every misfortune that Iraq suffers is and always will be our fault. Once again, we have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam. And we are hearing precisely the same arguments for staying in Iraq.

              Creating democracy...

              !? You mean like we did in Syria in 1949 and Chile in 1973? Of all our interests in the region, democracy is not one of them. We will stay in Iraq until we can place a new Saddam, just like the old one. And
              • Until we leave, every misfortune that Iraq suffers is and always will be our fault.

                And after we leave, every misfortune that Iraq suffers will be our fault, for quite some time. The difference lies in the type of misfortune that can be expected.

                Once again, we have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam.

                Vietnam was an entirely different situation. For starters, in Vietnam we never actually removed the North Vietnamese government. The differences vastly outnumber the similarities.

                And we are hear

          • Which book is this? I'm not finding it on amazon or google books; what is the ISBN?
        • The short, superficial answer is: yes, because we won.

          The invasion was, as advertised, a very successful 21st century Blitzkrieg. The objective of a Blitzkrieg is to bypass and isolate pockets of resistance while making a dash for the capital city. The major danger of the strategy is that of outrunning your supply lines and leaving them relatively unprotected. Saddam's regime was toppled in only three weeks and most of his military didn't even fight.

          However, as you indicated, the occupation was poorly pl


    • I would guess that this is being used for several issues;
      1. I could see this as a way to validate what CIA/NSA interpretters have done. Keep in mind that sibel edmunds was claiming that the agencies were full of spies who were mistranslating docs.
      2. A input translating DB. To train an AI takes a lot of work to get it right. Specifically, it needs to understand the various nuances. It is only by obtaining a large sample with an even larger number of interpretations that a good training can occur.
      3. This could als
    • It's not like the location of Osams bin Laden or of Saddam's chemical weapons in Syria will be in these documents.

      Maybe this is a ploy to allow the public to read about the dirty deals between Iraq and France & Russia.
  • Privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @02:20AM (#15008841) Journal
    Some of that stuff may contain personal information. Such might end up backfiring worse than Abu Ghraib. I hope they black out names and addresses. However, that might make them harder to understand because you don't know if A is doing X to B in paragraph 1 and B is doing Y to A in parag 7, or if A does both X and Y to B. Perhaps they can pick out the names and assign them unique numbers over the blacked out name before making the docs public. However, it still might take a lot of labor just to identify the names.
             
    • you don't know if A is doing X to B in paragraph 1 and B is doing Y to A in parag 7, or if A does both X and Y to B.
      That sounds like some crazy wild stuff. Any chance you have a link to the video?
    • Some of that stuff may contain personal information. Such might end up backfiring worse than Abu Ghraib

      Yeah, I'm pretty sure that to Joe American, it's worse to disclose the home address of some Iraqi dude that he doesn't know from Adam than it is to compel a dozen Iraqis to strip naked and form a human pyramid.
  • Very tiny subset (Score:3, Informative)

    by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @02:28AM (#15008865) Journal
    The article says "There are up to 55,000 boxes, with possibly millions of pages. The documents are being posted a few at a time -- so far, about 600".
  • by reporter ( 666905 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @02:31AM (#15008871) Homepage
    The American government has an annual budget exceeding $2 trillion [cia.gov], yet according to MSNBC, the government cannot buy an adequate number of translators. (If Washington paid a translator salary of $200,000, hordes of translators would suddenly appear out of the woodwork.) Further, if these Iraqi documents are so vital, I would expect the American government to keep them under wraps. I would not want the enemy to know that we have them in the event that those documents tell us what the enemy's next move is.

    This story simply does not add up.

    The real story behind this story is that the American government is doing one of two things: (1) psy-ops (i.e. psychological warfare) against the enemy or (2) political games to improve support for the Iraqi war effort.

    Washington knows that the Muslim fascists monitor worldwide news sources. Washington may be publicizing these documents in an effort to hint (to the fascists) that (1) these documents are just the tip of the iceberg and (2) there are additional documents (in our possession) that indicate where the fascists are hiding and what their next moves are.

    Alternatively, Washington knows that some pro-war Republican/Democratic bloggers will scan these documents. Further, Washington knows that on, say, page 15 (of the documents), there is a tidbit or blatant statement asserting that Saddam Hussein had planned to create weapons of mass destruction all along. Washington hopes that the bloggers will find page 15 and will start hollering about how right we were to invade Iraq. In short, the bloggers are mindless automatons, and Washington has just skillfully manipulated public opinion.

    P.S.
    Another version of this story [slashdot.org] was already published by SlashDot on March 19.

    • They're on to me, so I'll have to be quick! But I've learned the location of the religious fascists, and the american people must know! They're in the White House!!!
    • You have sound reasoning, but I think it relies on the government being almost too competent..... I found this article (and that woman's story) to be a good basis to think otherwise:

      http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/25/60minute s/main526954.shtml [cbsnews.com]

      What I think is up with those documents is that they got filtered, anything important taken out beforehand, and these are the scraps given to the public. If nothing comes out of it - they can say "Hey, we tried." If anything actually comes out of it, that's
      • What I think is up with those documents is that they got filtered, anything important taken out beforehand, and these are the scraps given to the public.

        Possibly other things have been added. Especially if the deletions would otherwise be too obvious.
    • Another thing you are underestimating - how many good arabic speakers do you think there are in the US? I heard this statistic a while back - in the US, a country of 300 million people - how many PhDs were awarded in 2004 for Arabic? 10,000? 1,000? No - 6. Arabic speakers are not exactly a dime a dozen, and I suspect a good portion of the ones that do aren't keen to work for the US government.
      • Another thing you are underestimating - how many good arabic speakers do you think there are in the US? I heard this statistic a while back - in the US, a country of 300 million people - how many PhDs were awarded in 2004 for Arabic? 10,000? 1,000? No - 6.

        Not exactly a useful metric. Would you estimate the number of people literate in English by the number of English PhDs or Spanish according to the number of Spanish PhDs?
        It would make more sense to look at the number of Americans who are Arabs (especiall
      • So, one needs a PhD in a language, in order to properly read it. I must be illiterate.

        There are plenty of Iraqi, Israeli, and other nationalities that have exposure to that language living in the US. It is well within the realm of possibility that one of the Iraqi resteraunt owners has web access, an interest in the whole thing, and is very able to read those documents.
      • I've met a fair share of Middle-eastern cab drivers who spoke fluent English -- of whom I would assume most spoke Arabic -- that are of above average in their support for this country and the war in Iraq. I'm sure most of them would be happy to receive the same pay as they do for cab driving to sit in an office (or at home for the matter) translating. Sweeten the deal with some type of resident visa and I am sure many of the translation difficulties would be eliminated.
      • how many PhDs were awarded in 2004 for Arabic? 10,000? 1,000? No - 6.

        I suspect that there are more than six people in the US who are fluent in Arabic.
    • (If Washington paid a translator salary of $200,000, hordes of translators would suddenly appear out of the woodwork.)


      I expect the majority of Arabic speakers are a) not interested in working for this particular administration and b) unable to pass the rigorous security checks required for access to top secret material. Take a look at the SF86 sometime. It's not trivial.

    • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @08:43AM (#15009747) Journal
      While it's really, really fun to play "tinfoil hattery", think for a second.

      I'm pretty sure that budget of $2 trillion isn't just lying around, money waiting to be used. It might be paying for things like, oh, highways, medicare, aircraft carriers, bridges to nowhere, etc. Could $2 billion probably be "found"? Sure, but it's not like it's manna from heaven.

      Secondly, you can't just haul any dude off the street with a knowledge of Arabic, and have him start translating documents. In just about every case, a document has to be translated from the original by TWO different translators, and then the two translations refined together by a third (government can't afford to trust mistranslations either by accident or on purpose). All of these official translators must have an adequate security clearance, which takes 6 months or more.

      And as far as "telegraphing" our next move, most of these docs are government docs (probably worthless) at elast 4 years old. I don't think there's a lot of danger in this.

      Somehow, people who personally hate George Bush manage to simultaneously believe his government is capable of staggering stupidity (didn't they see a hurricane coming?) and simultaneously amazing subtlety like this.

      If there were statements about WMD in these docs, wouldn't the administration simply, I dunno, PUBLICIZE IT?
      • Somehow, people who personally hate George Bush manage to simultaneously believe his government is capable of staggering stupidity (didn't they see a hurricane coming?) and simultaneously amazing subtlety like this.

        One: why not? Even an ideologically consistent group like the Bush administration is made up of individuals, each of whom is of their own mind. It's entirely possible (for example) that the individuals in charge of hurricane relief are morons, and those in charge of the War On Terror are genius
    • If Washington paid a translator salary of $200,000, hordes of translators would suddenly appear out of the woodwork.)

      That's it! They're in the woodwork! Gas 'em outta there!
    • I figure since you reposted your message, I probably should as well :-)

      It is extremely naive to think that you can solve a problem like this by throwing warm bodies at it. Translator salaries ARE very high (100-150k), and you can verify this with 5 minutes of google time. And there still aren't enough - there just aren't that many Arabic lingusits in the US. There are two knock-on problems:

      1. Most of the time the government requires linguists that can be cleared at a very high level. Obviously this isn
    • I'll bet you anything that the evidence for our next war comes from citizens translating these documents.
    • The American government has an annual budget exceeding $2 trillion, yet according to MSNBC, the government cannot buy an adequate number of translators.

      You've obviously never worked for the government. It ain't that simple. Nothing they do is simple.

      If Washington paid a translator salary of $200,000, hordes of translators would suddenly appear out of the woodwork.

      Would they? Are you going to quit your job to make $200K for one year, maybe two, then be out of a job once this big translation job is done?

    • Our government has such a shortage of translators for structural reasons. Many people who do know the languages that our government needs cannot pass the security clearance process needed to grant access to classified information. Having family or significant contacts abroad almost always leads to disqualification. Extensive travel experience in certain regions of the world - such as the Middle East or China - weighs against you. Homosexuality is another deal-breaker. So is credit card debt and past drug u

    • The real story behind this story is that the American government is doing one of two things: (1) psy-ops (i.e. psychological warfare) against the enemy or (2) political games to improve support for the Iraqi war effort.

      Um, you do realize that #2 amounts to "psy ops" against the American People, don't you?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:07AM (#15008934)
    For God's sake put the tinfoil hat conspiracies away. they arent needed and really only serve to turn this into a political crap flinging contest between the left and right.

    Look at the facts:

    The best translators the government has are probably at NSA, CIA and in the military services doing more important and urgent (real time) work, so thats why these "background" documents have been sitting for a few years. The shortage of these folks is well publicized, so they are a scarce resource and will not be allocated to a background task like this.

    The simple truth is there are few Arabic translators that the government can hire permanently (and who would do this temporary?), and fewer still that can pass the background checks and get the requisite minimal security clearances needed for general employment in most of the usual places (Departments of Defense, State and the various Agencies). Not that they NEED the clearances and accesses (especially for documents that are now public domain apparently), but that such clearances have become almost ritual in nature and are part of the job requirements, usually at the DoD "Secret" level or above.

    Add to that the general disinterest most people have in working for the government, then blend in the public law restrictions on the pay (GS scale precludes spending sprees on hiring), and you have a ready made "shortage", or at lesat an inaiblity fo the government to get the translators it thinks it needs.

    And on top of that, add in the screwy contract rules and also consider that no congress-critter has a personal stake in a translation company, and you just about guarantee the inablity for much anything other than the titles to be looked at and a spot check done at random in almost all of these, they get scanned in to a PDF, then off to a box they go.

    It doesn't take conspiracy, just the usual incompetence and common inability of big government agencies to get anything done quickly.

    No political slant needed to left or right, just business as usual in the belly of the Leviathan.
    • fewer still that can pass the background checks and get the requisite minimal security clearances needed for general employment

      And yet the documents are being released to the public? Why can't the translators be employed by a contractor or a low security department?

    • by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) * on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @05:40AM (#15009316)
      Why are people crying "conspiracy theory" here? It is public knowledge that the government has already given these docs the once over and determined that translation was a low priority; they mined them for gems already and the Pentagon has already released a study on a few hundred of the documents that were considered worth translating. About the rest they were not going to release them at all until Rep Hoekstra, under the influence of Stephen Hayes, put intense public pressure on Negroponte's office; Negroponte finally relented and allowed them to be put on the internet. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is published in the Congressional Record.
      • It sounds like Hoekstra wasn't the only one annoyed with Negroponte [nationalreview.com].

        The consensus on NR about releasing the documents is "It's about damn time, and please post the rest of them". I would speculate that the usual TLA's didn't want to give up control over "their" intel and Bush displayed his usual aversion to firing people. He really needs to get over that.

        There are an awful lot of Arabic speakers who would never consider working for the government but would likely look through the documents out of curiosit
  • I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gzearfoss ( 829360 )
    I don't quite get it.
    Why would a person volunteer their time and energies into helping with this? As compared to something you (and possibly other people) would use with open-source software, I don't see anything gained by taking part in this. If a person is (a) fluent enough in both languages and (b) willing to do this sort of translation work, wouldn't they be able to find a job to pay them to do this? Or if they wouldn't want a full time job out of it, find something more people can use and translate
    • Another related thought on this is how the government knows that the translations are accurate?

      This is just as much (if not more) of a problem with governments (who invariably have political leanings) doing the translations. Consider the "Bin Laden Tapes", where other people found the translation put out by the US Government to be at best misleading.
      Where you have the possibility of many translators you'd need a vast conspiracy to ensure consistent mistranslation. The larger the number of people involved
  • Can't it be gray? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by manchld ( 936052 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:38AM (#15009023)
    I dont see why it always has to be either an evil political move or an idealistically brilliant move. To me its just as possible that it was some decision made by someone with a mix of good intentions and laziness.
    • Because grey is boring.

      And, it makes you have to think. It's so much easier to work in binary.

      And, if you're really clever, you can score points with your social group by restating what they already believe in some humorous or new way.

      Or, you can come up with some faux insight that seems to show that your in group were the smart and good ones, and that the evil Group Y people were really the stupid bad ones all along.

      Black and white are exciting and give your heart a work out by raising your blood pressure
    • America has probably a dozen large political groups, philosophically. Mix any of (authoritarian, libertarian, fascist, anarchist, communist, socialist, religious, atheist, diest, capitalist, jeffersonian, wilsonian, jacksonian, emotional, logical, etc.) and shake. Most people wouldn't believe they can all co-exist happily.

      For the current power base to maintain their positions they need to convince people that there are people on their side and people on the other side - see, all you need is "me" and "not m
  • by Y-Crate ( 540566 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:18AM (#15009119)
    Meanwhile, The New York Times has come across a memo of their own [nytimes.com]...from Britain concerning a meeting between Bush and Blair in early 2003. It's probably far more interesting than anything these amateur translators will find. Needless to say, this was stamped with "Extremely Sensitive" and was never supposed to get out.

    Some choice quotes to give you an idea of what I'm talking about here:
    During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

    "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides....

    The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

    ...The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
  • Iraqi Government? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by adnonsense ( 826530 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @05:09AM (#15009237) Homepage Journal

    Err, shouldn't the Iraqi government have all these documents? You know, the democratically elected sovereign body which the US and its allies went to all that trouble of having installed, and who I gather has access to a large number of Arabic speakers.

    • Not the first time. The US brought home millions of documents from Germany and Japan at the end of WWII. Truman set up the "Publication Board" in 1947 with the aim of making the documents and the technology in them available to US business as a way of transferring that technology to the US economy.

      Today, the PB has become the National Technical Information Service [ntis.gov]. These days, NTIS collects S&T information from US agencies and makes it available. They charge a fee since they don't get tax payer's

  • Right... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Jeian ( 409916 )
    They're trusting the medium that spawned SomethingAwful, GNAA, goatse, tubgirl, etc.? That's... not very reassuring. :P
  • by fortinbras47 ( 457756 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @07:50AM (#15009627)
    This is to intelligence as open source is to programming. Anyone on the Internet can go in and do analysis based upon these original documents. I would have thought Slashdot people would love something like this.

    And INTERESTING stuff has come out. For example, ABC News found documents that seem to show that the Russian ambassador gave the US war plans to Iraq. [go.com]

    Individuals are looking too. Here [blogspot.com] is a link from an Iraq blogger who blogs from Baghdad. This document suggests that members of Al Qaeda met with Iraqi intelligence.

    I just find it really cool that enterprising people can go in and look at ORIGINAL documents, and that we don't have to purely rely on what the government says they say. Pro-war, anti-war, historians, anyone can go in and look at what was going on inside Iraq.

    • I just find it really cool that enterprising people can go in and look at ORIGINAL documents,
      How do you know these "ORIGINAL" documents are all original or IOW authentic? I'm sure the Bushies find it really cool that people are going to root through all the administrivia about Saddam's paranoia and find planted "evidence" that he supported 99% of world-wide terror. "But it's open source, right? And open source is good, right? So it must be true."
    • It's not the same as open source programming at all. With programming, everone involved has access to the whole project and can see quite clearly how each piece fits. This, on the other hand, is 600 documents, selected by a government whose policy is on the skids, out of millions, tossed to the blogosphere with absolutely no context whatsoever. This is not calculated to generate real intelligence -- it's an attempt to muddy the waters in the hopes of creating enough popular doubt to allow the Bushies an esc

  • It's really easy to "open" another government's secret documents, much harder to "open" one's own. It would be much more interesting, and much more unlikely, to see entire U.S. government documents that have only previously been released full of blank-outs. Or that have not been released at all.
  • Alan Friedman, in his 1993 book Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq [amazon.com] describes and documents how US taxpayer dollars paid for, designed and shipped components for those WMD's you keep hearing about. That's why Bush kept thinking there were WMD's -- his fambly'd bought 'em, gol dang it! (With my money, in part, and without my permission, might I add.)

    The most shocking and disgusting things are not how Bush Sr. helped Saddam Hussain build a nuclear arsen

  • http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-docex/I raq/Released-20060317/CMPC-2003-012666-Translation .pdf [army.mil]

    This document I found is an executive order from Saddam telling the army to put Kuwaiti POW's in buildings that will be targets of US air strikes. This is Dated March 14, 2003.
  • I have long thought this is a great idea. I am however shocked that the current US administration would agree to an idea like this.

    Wired did an article last year on how this type of idea has helped in finding missing persons.

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