Wednesday, November 28, 2007

US State Department. Slackers, plagiarists and... ohhh! Nice shoes Condi!


The US State Department produces the Iraq Weekly Status Report which is described, on Foggy Bottom's website in this way:
This comprehensive status report on Iraq provides weekly updates in the eight key areas identified as pillars of U.S. Government policy.
So one could visualize teams of people working diligently for hours each day, gathering in information from a variety of official sources in preparation for a complete, concise weekly briefing on all that is important in Iraq.

One could visualize that, but it would be wrong. You can read the Iraq Weekly Status Report for November 21, 2007 here, or you can go to the following sources and get the same information, virtually word for word:

- The Washington Post - Nov 15, 2007

- Associated Press - Nov 14, 2007

- United Press International - Nov 19, 2007

- Voices of Iraq - Nov 18, 2007

- United Press International - Nov 16, 2007

- The New York Times - Nov 16, 2007

- Reuters - Nov 16, 2007

- Yahoo! News - Nov 16, 2007

Interestingly, the State Department authors of this "report" didn't bother to footnote each article they plagiarized, although they do cite sources on the last page of the report.

Kind of makes moot the idea of posting any State Department personnel to Iraq. I mean, hell, the major media outlets are already doing everything the State Department can do. Why take the risk?

You must now go to AmericaBlog who is the sole origin of this story for more information and where you can see the word for word comparisons.

Condi. You go too. You'll learn something.

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