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RE: Resources
--is probably pretty small.
Again, there are Iraqi expats here in the US who are definitely for what we did in Iraq. There are also the Kurds and other groups, not to mention official translators who work for us. Not to mention non-Arab Arabic speakers.
but if the administration had enough people kicking around to sort through it, they wouldn'be be putting this stuff online, would they? (unless, of course, the intent of this program is to play catchup all the time, which is insane.)
That's exactly what they are trying to do--play catch-up. They did a cursory overview with the translators to try to screen out anything obviously hot and classified and then re-tasked all the translators to current working intel rather than this stuff, which is OBE (overcome by events for the non-military readers here).
say, muqtada al-sadr's newspaper, this is a win-win situation. if they find something that says we're bad, they can run it--if they find something which says we're not bad, they can say it's bullshit and pull up another three documents which say we're bad.
I think that is brilliant! There's another danger I don't think they've forseen when they did this. You are absolutely right here, but they won't say they found something in a document that's already there, because then everyone will slew to that target and check it out and decide Sadr is full of crap (the ones who can read, that is, only 70% of Iraqi males are literate in Arabic). The real danger is that Sadr or someone (Iranian intel?) will claim they found a hot document that indicts us in a really bad way, but when everyone goes to check it out, it's not there. We can't refute it, because it doesn't exist, but they claim we pulled it to hide it after it was exposed. They produce a forged copy saying "we printed it off before you pulled it off your server"! The conspiracy theories would fly.
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RE: Resources
i think the population of people that
-can read arabic
-and translate it into english fluently
-_and_ that are willing to read through documents online and translate them
-_AND_ that are willing to either say nice things about the bushies or contradict the bad stuff (either directly, through accurate translation, or indirectly, through finding documents which contradict the damning documents)--
--is probably pretty small.
two broad generalizations:
1. as i understand it, the majority of arabic speakers in the world are muslim. the majority of muslims in the world are, at best, neutral, in terms of their actions, to the US's occupation in iraq... but not disinterested.
there's lots of muslim folks that don't care enough or aren't fanatic enough to go and blow up people because of it, but an infidel power (us) occupying a muslim land (iraq) is one of those things that the koran says you gotta pull the red alert lever over. (i posted on this a couple months ago, talking about the differences between defensive and offensive jihad. i could find more info on it if anyone's interested.)
2. there's also a very strong sense of common ethnicity in the arabic world, far more than there is in the west, particuarly america--a lot of arabs, particuarly in the middle east, feel like saddam, even if he was a dickhead, was an arab problem. sort of the creepy uncle that no one likes because he beats his wife, but who you'll always go bail out of jail...
and so... there's not much public outcry in the arabic speaking world about attacks on US troops, particuarly if you're talking about troops in iraq.
and so... i question the wisdom--in terms of gaming the outcome--that the administration has shown by putting all this stuff online. unless it IS all a plant.
out of forty-eight thousand documents, there's a pretty big pool to find something which sounds "damning." (think of what happens every time the media gets their hands on an FOUO doc saying that a shipment of armored humvee doors got delayed at some plant in michigan, or that there was a riot at a military prison and an MP punched an inmate in the eye.)
sure, there's also lots of documents that could work as a rebuttal--but if the administration had enough people kicking around to sort through it, they wouldn'be be putting this stuff online, would they? (unless, of course, the intent of this program is to play catchup all the time, which is insane.)
keep in mind, too, that from the viewpoint of a lot of arabs, everything the US puts out is crooked, anyway. in terms of arab political and religious leaders we don't like, this isn't pouring gasoline on the fire, but it's putting the can pretty close to the flames isn't it? for, say, muqtada al-sadr's newspaper, this is a win-win situation. if they find something that says we're bad, they can run it--if they find something which says we're not bad, they can say it's bullshit and pull up another three documents which say we're bad.
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