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by The US government released 48,000 boxes of captured Iraqi documents onto the web, hoping that Arabic readers would translate them and report their findings while government translators focus on current intelligence. They are hoping to uncover more information on what happened to Saddam's WMD programs, and to what extent Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda. Some groups hailed this project as 'open government,' while others are skeptical and say they believe the Bush administration only posted documents that support their view. Is this project the wave of the future? Is this a boon for historians, who are able to study the Iraqi government and its actions leading up to the war in depth so soon after the war and a revolutionary step toward open, more transparent governance? Or were the documents cherry-picked to ensure nothing contradictory is discovered by the public?
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I can't seem them being good material for either side of the war discussions, unless or until their veracity has better foundings. It'll be very interesting to see what comes of it. I wonder how far back the documents go?
I'm somewhat curious what would happen if a certain strain of documents arose that legitimately exposed illegal actions conducted by the United States, Britain, etc. Would the project:
- shut down mysteriously
- sigh and keep going
- inject 'counter' documents right away
Now I'm not saying it's a bad idea. It really is revolutionary and a monumental step forward in terms of public information. But in light of intelligence failures and national security, is it a good idea?
You know, that is an interesting question, and I can't see them sneaking out of it with any kind of grace if something like that happened. I have to wonder how many people around the world right now are going "Damn, damn, damn!!!" and trying to figure out how to slip out of the country quietly.
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Resources by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 28 March 2006
I think the motivation behind this move is obvious:
Personally, I think it's a great idea. Assuming the logistics are reasonably well organized, they stand to speed up the translation process and inform the public simultaneously. I wouldn't be surprised of some of those helping with the translations even opened up blogs to report their activities. Once again, much like the experiences of soldiers in Iraq, there will be an opportunity to skip the hype-injecting media and get closer to the source.
If this is met with even moderate success, I can see it being done increasingly when the government (or even a high-profile business or organization) wants to improve public relations and weed through large amounts of information at the same time.
RE: Resources by PowerPointSamurai :: NR7 :: on 28 March 2006
Once again, much like the experiences of soldiers in Iraq, there will be an opportunity to skip the hype-injecting media and get closer to the source.
Yeah, and that's precisely why I personally think some of the sources I linked went out of their way to discredit this program. I mean, come on. 48k boxes of documents in Arabic and the Bush administration is going to cherry-pick documents to justify their reasons for going to war!? There was also a lot of repeating the slogan "If they knew where the WMD were or that al Qaeda was involved, they'd be shouting it from the rooftops".
I also like the "open source" aspect of this. Many people think translation is a straight forward process, that A=>B. There are a lot of subtleties and nuances to translating some languages, and some things do not translate well and are open to interpretation. Things like body language, tone, etc. play a factor in the spoken word. Translators can also screw you over if you trust them without verification. The US (and other countries) have had problems, notably in Bosnia, Somalia, and in Iraq, with heavily biased translators lying to us or to the locals because they were from a group the translator opposed. This will be more like scientific method at work here. So if person A makes some fantastic claim as to what document #41446BAQ says, then all the other readers can shift to that document and verify what it says to confirm or deny. It's not at all like Rush Limbaugh's or Al Franken's personal Arabic translator is going to be doing the translating without someone checking behind them, as one of the articles implied.
RE: Resources by nickfranklin :: NR5 :: on 28 March 2006
they should get the wikipedia people to moderate...
this is somewhat reminiscent of a story i read a long time ago--one of those science fiction day-after-tomorrow kind of deals--where the UN put webcams all over an Iranian nuclear reactor, or something to that effect, and volunteers all over the world peeked in on it during their lunch breaks to make sure that nobody was breaking the seals.
here's a question: out of a sample of people
1. fluent in both arabic and english
2. with internet connections
3. with enough interest in the topic at hand to participate
are there more:
1. people with an interest in supporting the bush administration
2. people with an interest in giving it a black eye
3. people out for the truth, and nothing more?
RE: Resources by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 28 March 2006
Admittedly, I also thought of Wikipedia when I read this story. It still amazes me how many people participate in that site completely voluntarily. Perhaps the government could use the wiki infrastructure to allow everyone to collaborate on an "unofficial translations" of each document. The "Iraq Document Wiki" ...
RE: Resources by PowerPointSamurai :: NR7 :: on 28 March 2006
are there more:
1. people with an interest in supporting the bush administration
2. people with an interest in giving it a black eye
3. people out for the truth, and nothing more?
It really doesn't matter. If someone makes some kind of claim as to what something says, there are official intel translators, academics, etc. to confirm or deny. I guess if the documents are damning enough, how many people with what level of credibility are willing to put their reputation on the line swearing to something when anyone who reads Arabic can decifer the truth? Heck, you or I could find some books on Arabic, and though it would be pretty much impossible for us to learn Arabic ourselves, we could figure out a word or phrase here or there well enough to figure out if that person is full of crap or if the document generally says what they say if we wanted to badly enough.
Moreover, there may be Arabic speakers out there that hate Bush, but there are also a LOT out there, probably more, that hate Saddam Hussein.
RE: Resources by nickfranklin :: NR5 :: on 28 March 2006
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.
RE: Resources by PowerPointSamurai :: NR7 :: on 29 March 2006
--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.
RE: Resources by Anonymous :: NR0 :: on 29 March 2006
Franklin learning Arabic? That's like Bortnyk learning how to Tank.
RE: Resources by LordDilly :: NR8 :: on 29 March 2006
Hey, just because Bortnyk is an officer (and for some reason they like to give fire commands that sound a lot like "gunner...uh, big bullet...uh, shoot, or something...") doesn't mean he doesn't know how to tank. Mostly because he started out enlisted. I don't think OCS can scrub out all common sense and technical know how...can it? (Note: I love and respect all officers, NCOs, and some warrant officers.)
RE: Resources by romanizzo :: NR6 :: on 29 March 2006
Actually, Franklin speaks Arabic, and Bortnyk, despite all his flaws, is a pretty damn good tanker. Anonymous coward, mind your tongue when talking about your betters.
RE: Resources by PowerPointSamurai :: NR7 :: on 29 March 2006
If that's the case, then he's the man (Franklin). Arabic is one of the toughest languages on the planet for a Westerner to learn--especially the reading and writing part. Let's not even talk about dialects... That's part of the reason they did this project in the first place, was because of a shortage of trained translators with a clearance to go through all this stuff, and they needed to shift those guys to current, actionable intel.
As for Bortnyk, anyone who's a tanker can't be too bad either.