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US puts Iraqi documents on the Web ~ MSM acknowledges ...Goal is to speed up translation of files
Boston Globe ^ | March 18, 2006 | Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff

Posted on 03/18/2006 10:24:23 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach

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.

(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: documents; iraq; iraqiintelligence; prewardocs; saddam; waronterror
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To: backhoe

Here is the lefts attempt to discount the docs:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/18/153949/649


81 posted on 03/18/2006 4:33:48 PM PST by woofie
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To: jveritas

I read that also in Paul Sperry's "Infiltration".


82 posted on 03/18/2006 4:48:26 PM PST by angcat
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To: woofie

Thanks for the link- I'll look as soon as the house settles down.


83 posted on 03/18/2006 4:50:32 PM PST by backhoe (Just an Old Keyboard Cowboy, Ridin' the Trakball into the Dawn of Information)
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marking


84 posted on 03/18/2006 5:04:14 PM PST by infidel29 ("We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." --Benjamin Franklin)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Here's the one huge questions that keeps roaming in my mind.

And I ask it quietly, exasperatedly, with no anger or rancor.

"No weapons of mass destructions" has become the mantra of almost everybody. Just the other day I heard a female reporterette talking about some news item and she said, with no forethought, "of course we now know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq".

I wanted to scream that WE KNOW NO SUCH THING!

Here's my question: Why, dear Lord WHY, did President Bush let all this happen? Why weren't these documents released sooner? Why did he make his work more difficult by allowing the traitors gain such a traction on this?

Well I've got a thousand more questions but I'm betting plenty of you understand my complete exasperation. Rush Limbaugh, the blogosphere, FreeRepublic, have all been carrying water for the administration, for the Iraq war, and we're all tired. What we're discovering now, we all knew it. We knew that Saddam was the baddest player on the planet and we knew he wanted America out of the way.

Why, dear Lord WHY, was that 9-11 commission allowed to pretty up the truth? Why, at first notion that Iraq was involved in all this terrorism, did the concept that secular Saddam would never associate with Islamofacists allowed to be repeated endlessly?

That "no weapons of mass destruction" phrase has become knee-jerk part of the national lexicon. Why wasn't the President defending himself? Because they've managed to drive the poll ratings down to the lamestream's great glee and us peons who fought desperately to get out the truth are just plain weary. And now all this proof dumped onto the blogosphere and this story ain't going away. Meanwhile the 9-11 commission's report is part of history and my granddaughter will learn this skewed version of history.

I'm bitter. Just bitter as hell. All this stuff should have been released while that 9-11 commission was prettying up history for Hillary's presidency.

Forgive me. I am just so tired.

85 posted on 03/18/2006 5:38:19 PM PST by Fishtalk
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To: jveritas
I think this has been a big problem among the "hired" Arabic translators who work for the government. I read last year that the government found out that some Arabic translators were either translating wrongly or emitting some parts in the translations and they were doing it on purpose.

Yes it's a real problem with those hired Arab translators;


86 posted on 03/18/2006 5:43:22 PM PST by FreeReign
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To: jveritas

You are Joseph Shahda?


87 posted on 03/18/2006 5:44:49 PM PST by FreeReign
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

It would take a lot of work to digitize 48 thousand cases of documents.


88 posted on 03/18/2006 5:46:43 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: Freee-dame

As Rush says sometimes, you're falling into a Radical Left trap: bottom line, this Kossak is not offering an idea or a message to be debated or refuted -- the message is simply "I hate George Bush".


89 posted on 03/18/2006 6:48:16 PM PST by jiggyboy (Ten percent of poll respondents are either lying or insane)
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To: eyespysomething

Please add me to the ping list.


90 posted on 03/18/2006 7:00:48 PM PST by Reborn
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To: jveritas
PS: The two documents that I have translated so far are handwritten.

That's gotta be tough. My handwriting is a mess, and it almost needs someone to translate it from "scribble" to English, LOL. Thank you for caring enough to do these translations. All who love the truth appreciate what you are doing. THANK YOU!!

91 posted on 03/18/2006 7:10:30 PM PST by Reborn
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Hmm, this IS interesting.

First, it makes me wonder if Bin Laden is actually dead, therefore there is no downside to exposing some documents that may connect him to Iraq. (Not sure what the downside would have been, except for possibly exposing a source.)

Second, I wonder if this is a Karl Rove rope-a-dope coming off the ropes. The docs will be translated just in time to contradict the far left as they swing at pro-Iraq war republicans. If so, pretty good strategery.


92 posted on 03/18/2006 7:19:24 PM PST by ko_kyi
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; potlatch
WMD and al Queda in Iraq...Hmmmm. Notice how the MSM has turned into turtles. Horrors, democrat horrors and nightmares, could Bush have been right all along? The Main Liners have absolutely hit a dead spot on the subject and are walking around like zombies.

93 posted on 03/18/2006 7:47:42 PM PST by Smartass (Si vis pacem, para bellum - Por el dedo de Dios se escribió)
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To: FreeReign
I am your humble Joseph Shahda :)

Indeed the Boston Globe journalist is the one who initiated the contact with me via a "Freep Mail" and then later on he asked me for an interview as part of the article he was working regarding the pre-Iraq war documents that are being published on the web by the Pentagon. Yesterday I did a phone interview with him over the phone and he included me in his article today.

94 posted on 03/18/2006 7:47:42 PM PST by jveritas (Hate can never win elections.)
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To: Reborn

Thank you very much my fellow freeper.


95 posted on 03/18/2006 7:49:44 PM PST by jveritas (Hate can never win elections.)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks; Dog Gone
I suspect the WH knows what is in most of this stuff.

Given that optical scanning of the documents has been done, to get them onto the www, it's not so difficult to screen them by keywords.

Of course, this is the Administration that was caught flat-footed by the reaction to the UAE port terminal deal.

96 posted on 03/18/2006 7:53:36 PM PST by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: Gondring
I'm not giving a pass to the Administration on the ports deal, but the Executive Branch is huge. Enormous beyond any of our comprehension.

We tend to think that everything that becomes news was known by the Bush team in advance, but that's just not physically possible.

The best than can happen is that good people are put in place within the lower levels of the Administration and that they do a good job.

It's impossible to micromanage the Executive Branch. The last idiot who tried was named Carter.

97 posted on 03/18/2006 8:16:07 PM PST by Dog Gone
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To: jveritas
I am your humble Joseph Shahda :) Indeed the Boston Globe journalist is the one who initiated the contact with me via a "Freep Mail" and then later on he asked me for an interview as part of the article he was working regarding the pre-Iraq war documents that are being published on the web by the Pentagon. Yesterday I did a phone interview with him over the phone and he included me in his article today.

Remember that long vanity thread of yours? To think they questioned your patriotism.

Regards.

98 posted on 03/18/2006 8:19:49 PM PST by FreeReign
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To: FreeReign

I remember but I also forgive my fellow freeper.


99 posted on 03/18/2006 8:30:27 PM PST by jveritas (Hate can never win elections.)
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To: jveritas
I am your humble Joseph Shahda :)

Oh wow. I saw the name in the Globe article and I had read your Frrep post with the translation. I was hoping that that Freep poster and the Globe guy were the same.

Thanks so much. I am much impressed.

100 posted on 03/18/2006 8:52:40 PM PST by Fishtalk
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