Documents Reveal US Incompetence with Word, Iraq

notNeilCasey writes "The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word (.doc), the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation. Download the author's source document or look for more yourself. 'Presumably, staffers at the CPA's Information Management Unit, which produced the weekly reports, were cutting and pasting large sections of text into the reports and then eliminating all but the few short passages they needed. Much of the material they were cribbing seems to have come from the kind of sensitive, security-related documents that were never meant to be available to the public. In fact, about half of the 20 improperly redacted documents I downloaded, including the March 28 report, contain deleted portions that all seem to come from one single, 1,000-word security memo. The editors kept pulling text from a document titled "Why Are the Attacks Down in Al-Anbar Province -- Several Theories." (The security memo and the last page of the March 28 report can be seen here, along with several other CPA documents that can be downloaded.)'"

"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

[Silverlancer]

How ironically appropriate...

Microsoft fanboys

[Pig Hogger]

Here are the elusive Microsoft fanboys. We don't notice them because they are so insignifiant and incompetent and unglamorous and dull.

Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

[parvenu74]

This is outstanding news for the F/OSS community! My hope is that the "there's got to be someone else I can blame this on" politicians file charges against Microsoft under provisions of the Patriot Act for leaking vital government secrets. The irony in such a case would be delicious: charges without real justification leveled against a monopolistic company who markets software that doesn't really work. With each side forced to disprove a negative proposition, this should give the F/OSS community a little more time to charge forward while MS pukes all over themselves.

History repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when that Cat Schwartz girl from TV posted a cropped photo that accidentally had her boobs in the embedded Photoshop thumbnail? This is just like that, except Photoshop has been replaced with Word, the TV hostess has been replaced with the US Military, and the sweet sweet woman parts have been replaced with the absolute idiocy of those in charge of an ostensibly conquered nation.

I for one was happier about the tits.

Re:The deleted section from the sample

[Control Group]

That kind of defeatist attitude doesn't help anyone. We're trying to mock the government, here, and then you show up with your "logic." You're such a buzzkill.

Silly Bureaucrats

[killmenow]

Whenever I want to publish something in redacted form, I just change the color of the redacted text to black on black, then export to PDF. Duh!

Re:A Good Book About the CPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprising.

The republican party weekly newsletter has been renamed Pravda.

Re:Same thing

[Farmer Tim]

Volume and quality of information is scarce, often due to decisions from people at the top. Support is never what you expect. Cost overruns across the board. Bloat. Local insurgencies.

So...Iraq has been invaded by MSCEs?

Summary

[N8F8]

I hate (US/Bush/Republicans/US Military) and I'll believe anything (Iran/Chirac/Democrats/Liberal Reporters) say they reinforces my beliefs without questioning anything. Lots of pinheads write lots of reports for other pinheads while other people do real work.

Re:Silly Bureaucrats

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you by chance work for the Justice Department?

Re:Can we charge MS under the PATRIOT Act yet???

[lilomar]

NOOO! Then I would be morally obliged to take Microsoft's side in a battle! I don't think my poor brain could handle that.

Move along. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[PHAEDRU5]

Obviously the *entire* US is incompetent, the evidence being (a) its use of Microsoft Word, and (b) Iraq, *or* (c) both.

Thanks. I understand. Thanks. No need to keep beating the drum. Thanks.

(Where would I be without /.? The mind boggles.)

Summary of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

9/11 scared me shitless and I'll believe anything (The Bush administration/DOD/GOP/Rush Limbaugh) says that reinforces my beliefs without questioning anything.

Re:I learned a long time ago...

[ohzopants]

That pdf link is very interesting. But it's a bit hard to take a document seriously when the ms word screenshots they used have the animated cat (for help) turned on.

Re:Disallow MS Word

[MazzThePianoman]

The government should fear its people, not its software.

Those who don't learn from history...

[benhocking]

Those who don't learn from history...

Are loyal Bush supporters!

Re:History repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, in a sense you can say that this mistake exposed some tits as well.

Remember this folks,

[Anonymous Coward]

The next time the extremist right wingers get all wordy about how incompetent the United Nations is.

Re:And this is why...

[Glowing Fish]

Unless...they are just pretending to be incompetent to lull you into a false sense of security?

Re:This "Feature" Has Been Known For Years

[Jeremi]

The Germans were denied their right to own weapons near the beginning of Hitler's reign.
Americans have no such limits on their capabilities.

If only that were so.... I tried to buy a simple tactical nuke the other day (just to defend my family against burglars, of course), and you wouldn't believe the paperwork you have to fill out! Then after all that, my application was denied. Land of the Free, my ass!

Re:Those who don't learn from history...

[N3wsByt3]

"It seems rather foolish to think that ignorant people are all bush supporters."

I agree. Let's say the vast majority of the most ignorant people are Bush supporters.

Re:Silly Bureaucrats

[killmenow]

That sound you hear is the clue train. You just missed it.

Interesting with OpenOffice

[jgoemat]

A company I worked with had decided to switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice to save money instead of upgrading to the new version of MS Office. A week later everyone was running MS Office again. Apparently one of the executives sent out a Word document that had some embarrassing comments he made "deleted", but they were still there because of "Track Changes". When you opened up the document in OpenOffice, you could see them easily. I was just a peon, or I would have tried to explain that if he had been using OpenOffice himself it wouldn't have happened, and that someone knowledgeable could have viewed them in MS Office anyway. Instead they decided to spend tens of thousands on new licenses to go back to MS Office...