by Anai Rhoads

Prime Minister Tony Blair was confronted yesterday evening regarding accusations that the recent nineteen page dossier on the case for war against Iraq was riddled with plagiarised material. It was said that Downing Street had taken key material from previous articles written by others to compile the latest evidence against Saddam Hussein.

The discovery was made by Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer of politics at Cambridge University, after reviewing a copy of the dossier that was posted on the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (CASI) web site.

During our phone interview, Glen expressed surprise at such a bold attempt to reproduce partial documents disguised as intelligence data in the dossier. "In the previous dossiers, the public truly believed what Blair said. The credibility certainly was there. Now, I think people may treat the British and American intelligence much more cautiously." He added, "I think they need to provide substantial information rather than solely relying on intelligence services, especially when those services are dishonest."

Sections from three different articles were duplicated via a cut and paste method. An article specifically pointed out by Rangwala was originally written by the post-graduate California student Ibrahim al-Marashi.

This document, from which a six paragraph block was copied, revolved around information obtained during the first Gulf War. Detailing Saddam's special security organisation, it had been copied word for word, including original typographical errors. If it were not for these errors, verification of the plagiarism may not have surfaced.

"The information he was using is over twelve years old and al-Marashi acknowledges this in his article. The British Government. failed to make that acknowledgement in the dossier itself," Rangwala pointed out. "Instead, it is passed on as current material in order to plead a case for war against Iraq. I really must reconsider all that we've been told so far by the U.S and U.K. govenernment, for this has built the necessary skeptism."

The dossier dealt with a repeat of Dr. Hans Blix's claims to the Security Council regarding Iraq's non-compliance, followed by a detailed report on Iraq's infrastructure of concealment that had portions of al-Marashi's paper within it. The third part of the dossier listed a set of allegations that Iraq is attempting to mislead the media.

When I asked Rangwala his personal feelings on the discovery of the plagiarised dossier, he responded, "My first thought was - where is the intelligence in this document? This is supposedly based on the intelligence information. I had not found anything in the dossier that I had not read before."

This is the most damaging "evidence" against the U.S. and U.K.'s claims of WMD. Colin Powell himself quoted from the dossier during his speech to the United Nations this past Wednesday, assuming it was intelligence information without fully considering what he was endorsing.

Channel 4 conducted a question and answer panel to discuss the dossier. Afterwards, Blair was asked to express his opinion on the situation and explain why the dossier was passed off as legitimate intelligence data. Blair maintains that the information is "solid".

While Britain's newspapers and radio programmes are discussing it openly, the media in America have ignored the publicity surrounding this issue.

More about Dr. Rangwala:

Dr. Glen Rangwala is a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, UK with training as an international lawyer. His work allows him to bridge the gap between the UK and Iraq with regards to legal affairs. He has also contributed to the Middle East Reference. He can be reached at - gr10009@cam.ac.uk

© Copyright 2003 Anai Rhoads.