OOPS! Prime Minister Tony Blair and his staff seem to have made the mother of all mistakes. Namely, the document released last Monday entitled “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation” seems to have been plagarized. To make matters worse, the article was plagarized from a work from Mr. Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate who published his article “Iraq’s Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis” in September 2002.

Now in all seriousness, the claims of both the British government and Mr. al-Marashi are well documented. But someone in at Downing Street needs their clock cleaned. Thankfully, al-Marashi is not upset that he was used as a source, he only wished that the British and (and by virtue of Colin Powell’s use of the document on 05 Feb) American governments simply gave credit where credit is due.

Material from Jane’s Intelligence Review was also scammed for the article without citation, and they are much less forgiving than al-Marashi. Give credit to al-Marashi though, he’s being very respectable about the entire thing, if not somewhat amused.