Lost in Non-Translation
By Callimachus | Related entries in The War On TerrorismThe Weekly Standard, a supporter of the Bush Administration, says that the slow plowing through documentary evidence captured since the fall of Iraq reveals Saddam’s Iraq was, in fact, training terrorists at three camps. Some were from North African groups allied with al Qaida.
But what’s most surprising in the article, to me, is the amount of captured material that still hasn’t been translated and analyzed. Once again, the Bush Administration seems to be overlooking a great oipportunity to affirm its case and put a sock in the “Bush lied” people.
The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.
Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million “exploitable items” have been thoroughly examined. That’s 2.5 percent. Despite the hard work of the individuals assigned to the “DOCEX” project, the process is not moving quickly enough, says Michael Tanji, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. “At this rate,” he says, “if we continue to approach DOCEX in a linear fashion, our great-grandchildren will still be sorting through this stuff.”
Most of the 50,000 translated documents relate directly to weapons of mass destruction programs and scientists, since David Kay and his Iraq Survey Group–who were among the first to analyze the finds–considered those items top priority. “At first, if it wasn’t WMD, it wasn’t translated. It wasn’t exploited,” says a former military intelligence officer who worked on the documents in Iraq.
As Iraq the Model and others from the liberated land remind us, there was an extremely dangerous WMD in the country: Saddam.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 7th, 2006 and is filed under The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 8th, 2006 at 12:48 am
The problem is that W has made such a mockery of the truth that even if he where to accidently tell the truth 50% of the country wouldn’t believe him
January 8th, 2006 at 2:18 am
Isn’t it possible to be smarter than that? Isn’t it important to?
January 8th, 2006 at 4:30 am
The administration has refused to release these documents to the public because of fear that some journalists will cherry-pick the information in a way that will hurt the administration. Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard has called for the release of these documents but to no avail. That’s important information to pass onto your readers, don’t you think? I don’t understand why you would pass on this information without giving it more context. But, you were also the chap who last week passed on the poorly researched story in the Chicago Tribune proving that Bush and Co didn’t lie about WMD leading up to the war. I would expect a little less propaganda and a little more analysis from a moderate site. Strike 2 Callimachus.
Rick
January 8th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
I wouldn’t say “no avail”. Rumsfield is now on the record saying he wants the documents released. My guess is they’ll be released, and the public will be able to judge the documents themselves without having to go through biased filters.
January 9th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I’m guessing that if they do release any documents, they will be heavily redacted to block off any “classified” information – in other words, any information the administration doesn’t want anyone to know.
January 9th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Actually no, that wouldn’t “put a sock in the Bush lied people” because Bush still lied about Iraq having WMD. Almost every Arab country had some ties with Al Quaida. Iran and Syria far more so than Iraq. Who cares. We were told Iraq was an imminent threat and had WMD’s. The fake Niger uranium reports, etc. Bush lied about intelligence and cherry picked only the miniscule amount of intel that supported the false story that he wanted to weave.
January 10th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Do you people even know what “lied” means anymore?