Downing Street's Deceit

"Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on 'intelligence material' - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old," the Guardian writes. "[O]n Channel 4 News last night it was revealed that four of the report's 19 pages had been copied - with only minor editing and a few insertions - from the internet version of an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi which appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last September." US Secretary of State Colin Powell praised the dossier during his speech to the UN Security Council on Wednesday. "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities," Powell said.