27 Comments

1. Sissy Willis:

Credit where credit is due. Congratulations and good night.

Mar 17, 2006 - 4:18 am 2. Clioman:

This ought to be interesting. My guess is that by about this time next week, Kos and DU will be all over their latest meme: Karl Rove instructed Chimpy Bushilter to stonewall on releasing any Iraqi material. Why? The Israeli Intelligence Service needed more time to forge the ’smoking gun’ documents that Right Wing Nuts will be encouraged to find by the Halliburton-controlled Secret Fascist Blogger Corps. The ‘proof’ of this scheme will involve something about how arabic superscripts couldn’t be done on Iraqi typewriters, or some such…

Mar 17, 2006 - 5:15 am 3. David Thomson:

Pajamas Media introduced the ìblogosphere for translationî concept to some key Washington players. That most assuredly did a lot of good. Finding translators probably slowed down the original process. If nothing else, the play-it-safe-at-any-cost bureaucrats were left with one less valid objection.

Mar 17, 2006 - 5:16 am 4. Steve White:

Problem is, there just aren’t that many Arabic-speakers in our country who are able/willing to do the translations. Perhaps the Pajamas folks would be so kind as to talk to our universities about instituting more foreign language programs?

Seriously, this is good, but I wouldn’t expect lots of goodies quickly. It’s going to be difficult, tedious work.

Mar 17, 2006 - 5:34 am 5. jd:

Clioman:

One thing Kos and DU won’t be “all over:” these new documents.

It seems that Stephen Hayes is, other than a couple bloggers, the only person to have persisted in getting these documents released AND in tying Saddam to Al Qaeda. Kudos to Stephen Hayes. Now the media and Kos and DU can ignore him and the documents that prove how wrong they have been.

Mar 17, 2006 - 5:42 am 6. David Thomson:

ìSeriously, this is good, but I wouldn’t expect lots of goodies quickly. It’s going to be difficult, tedious work.î

Totalitarian regimes are infamous for detailed record keeping. Dictators like Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein believed that their regimes every word and action should be recorded for posterity. No, I expect immediate results.

Mar 17, 2006 - 5:47 am 7. Mark Poling:

Quick prediction: the most interesting translations will come fastest out of the Islamofascist-leaning world, where the armchair mujahadim will start analysing where Saddam went wrong.

Mar 17, 2006 - 6:14 am 8. Jeff M:

‘Just a suggestion, Roger: It seems to me that there needs to be a central weblog established to aggregate and colate the translations of these documents. Without such an entity this whole affair is at risk of running wildly out of control, with contrdictory translations and interpretations obscuring an overview of what these documents mean in total.

Mar 17, 2006 - 6:23 am 9. TallDave:

Cry havoc, and let slip the digital brownshirts of the blogosphere!

Mar 17, 2006 - 6:33 am 10. Evil Pundit:

I have a suggestion, which I lack the ability to implement myself.

There should be a central collecting point for any information and conclusions gained from these documents.

I think something based on the Wikipedia software would fulfil this role admirably.

Mar 17, 2006 - 6:46 am 11. Evil Pundit:

And another suggestion: where better to find translators, than Iraq itself?

Perhaps some friendly Iraqi bloggers and milbloggers in Iraq could find some volunteers to help with translation.

Mar 17, 2006 - 6:51 am 12. Sandy P:

I’m willing to hit the translation tip jar.

Mar 17, 2006 - 7:21 am 13. Clark:

Did anyone read the translated document from the Iraq The Model link update???? In part:

“Our Afghani source #002 (info on him in paper slip ‘1′) has informed us that Afghani consular Ahmed Dahistani (info on him in paper slip ‘2′) had spoken before him of the following :

1-That Usama Bin Ladin and the Taliban group in Afghanistan are in contact with Iraq and that a group from the Taliban and Usama Bin Ladin’s group had conducted a visit to Iraq .

2-That America possesses evidence that Iraq and Usama Bin Ladin’s group had cooperated to strike targets inside America .

3-Incase Taliban and Usama’s group are proven involved in those sabotage operations, it will be possible that America directs strikes at Iraq and Afghanistan .

4-That the Afghani consular had heard about the Iraq connections with Usama Bin Ladin’s group during his presence in Iran .”

Mar 17, 2006 - 7:44 am 14. Jeff M:

This could well be the Blogosphere’s finest hour. An Army of Davids indeed!

Mar 17, 2006 - 7:51 am 15. jaafar:

I want to echo the other people saying that this whole effort will work much better with some minimal coordination and cooperation. For example, don’t have five competent Arabists working on the same memo.

If all two million of these documents are going to be released, the new website should be designed with scaling in mind. I have something in mind like a parallel to the Leavenworth web site, but with a Pajamas Media check-out, check-in service, just like the one programmers use. (”I am working on this one right now.”)

My own insights so far are not very plentiful. but here goes:

Document CMPC-2004-002219-0 , “Usage of Special Equipment,” confirms George Sada’s claims about the Hussein regime’s use of the term “special equipment.” This document, already Englished, is a collection of interoffice memos discussing chemical attacks on Iran in 1987.

Document AFGP-2002-600048, “Al-Qaeda Bylaws,” originally alarmed me because I could see entire paragraphs which were untranslated! I worked on the stuff myself, and then finally understood that the OPENING paragraph, which does NOT use the words “Al-Qaeda” but is all about “The Military Committee/Organization,” had been moved from the top of page 1 in the Arabic, to somewhere around page 11 in the “full translation.” In addition, the translator had added some “feel-good” comments about the term “jihad.” He claimed it could just mean “strife.” Well, the section immediately following made it abundantly clear that, for Al-Qaeda, “jihad” means KILLING IN WARFARE. Maybe that’s why the dude shuffled it off to page 11.

All my best,

Amateur Arabist Jaafar Abu Tarab

Mar 17, 2006 - 8:37 am 16. Barbara Skolaut:

Sandy P has an excellent suggestion – a tip jar for a translation website.

I don’t know how such a website would be set up, but I’d love to help pay for it.

Roger, please keep us informed – I’m sure there are many people worldwide who would love to chip in on this project. Math may not be my best subject, but I can figure out that $5 each from 20,000 people (from a population of close to 300 million in the US alone – and who knows how many others around the world) would probably pay for such a website, and someone to do some part-time work coordinating it.

Thanks again to you, Roger, and all the PJ Media folks for giving us access to the raw truth – god knows the BSD-affected MSM wouldn’t know the truth, raw or otherwise, if it bit them in the ass.

Mar 17, 2006 - 9:33 am 17. Michael McCullough:

Thanks, Roger. This is just more proof that we cannot trust the alliance between the American mainstream media and the American left.

Mar 17, 2006 - 10:16 am 18. Knucklehead:

I’m in for the Sandy P idea. Open a tipjar (please use something in addition to paypal – like the amazon version) to help pay for translators. Now all we need is to find out how far $30 or $40 will take this.

Jafaar,

Can you link to what you are describing?

Mar 17, 2006 - 10:35 am 19. Kevin Peters:

Roger:

This is exactly what the blogosphere is designed for. As far as any disputes over translations the fact that the raw material is open for everyone to look at puts pressure on anyone who might try to mistranslate for political gain. This would have had taken decades for official Washington to sift through and depending what party was in office the possibilty that the truth, whatever direction it leads, would be silenced. Could some of the info be bad for America? Possibly.But my bet is against those who promote the idea that letting Saddam stay in power was the path to follow will be the big losers. I can’t wait for the results. Imagine if all of the truth about Stalin had been released in 1956. We might have been spared 4 decades of the myths that were spread by the Communist apologists.

Mar 17, 2006 - 1:09 pm 20. Rick Ballard:

Roger,

PM certainly gets credit from me on this – a push in the right place at the right time does wonders.

Two suggestions – prior to highlighting a “hot” find – have a second translator provide an independent translation. Second, ask one of the ITM brothers to propose a translation service at a university that is big on teaching English – students can do enough ‘rough’ translating to determine whether a doc is ‘hot’ or is a maintenance schedule. ‘Hot’ docs get passed up to proficient English speakers (after the student does a first draft and is acknowledged). This should also be the least expensive way to get a lot of docs translated – make it homework.

Mar 17, 2006 - 3:18 pm 21. Barry Dauphin:

I second Rick Ballard’s suggestion.

Mar 17, 2006 - 4:26 pm 22. Fresh Air:

I third Rick Ballard’s suggestion, third Sandy P’s suggestion and second Barbara Skolaut’s suggestion. To wit, put out the dedicated tip jar to pay for translators and hire a few. Maybe you could do it through the Internet with appropriate quality controls. Maybe administer a one-page test or something to make sure they know Arabic?

There seem to be lots of Middle Easterners who need jobs, and very few Arabic speakers in the U.S. who don’t already have them.

Mar 17, 2006 - 10:42 pm 23. jaafar:

Links:

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-docex/Iraq/CMPC-2004-002219-0.pdf

The second document has changed since yesterday. The Al-Qaeda documents have moved to another website, and this document now has an accurate translation, apparently.

http://www.ctc.usma.edu/aq/AFGP-2002-000078-Trans.pdf

There’s at least one new document on the Leavenworth site today.

Mar 17, 2006 - 11:35 pm 24. Jeff M:

I would like to remind everyone that CNS News revealed the existance of 42 pages of important Iraqi documents in October 2004. They subsequently went on to publish them in their entirety. I would suggest that these be added to this to the PJM archive.

Mar 18, 2006 - 6:42 am 25. Jeff M:

I would also remind everyone of the documents found by Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star. I have looked long and hard for a full translation of them and cannot find it. Does anyone else know where this might be posted?

Mar 18, 2006 - 7:31 am 26. Jeff M:

Stephen Hayes most recent article in the Weekly Standard is a real eye-opener too.

Mar 18, 2006 - 8:34 am 27. FredLee:

Congratulations on your part in this effort, which was probably also championed by other “Davids” in the blogosphere such as IRIS Blog (January 8):

“The severe shortage of reliable Arab translation resources has shown itself to be a major security vulnerability and a recurring theme. In short, it can be solved by turning to an open source collaboration model (with security provisions where necessary)”

Mar 19, 2006 - 9:59 am

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