[Media-watch] Army study of Iraq war surppressed, released on web - Secrecy News/FAS - 7 /7/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

FWD

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 62
July 7, 2004


** ARMY STUDY OF IRAQ WAR SUPPRESSED, RELEASED ON WEB
** LAWSUIT OF FBI WHISTLEBLOWER SIBEL EDMONDS DISMISSED
** NEW FOIA EXEMPTION FOR UNCLASSIFIED SATELLITE IMAGERY
** RECENT FOIA RULINGS
** REPORT ON INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE 2003
** THE GAME OF GO AND THE CHINESE WAY OF WAR


ARMY STUDY OF IRAQ WAR SUPPRESSED, RELEASED ON WEB

Despite extraordinary steps by the Army to limit online public
access to a new report on the Iraq war, the study has nevertheless
been published without the Army's cooperation.

The Army recently completed a book-length study of Operation Iraqi
Freedom entitled "On Point."  It is a revealing and fairly
critical account of lessons learned from the war.

Last month, the Center for Army Lessons Learned posted the study
here:

     http://onpoint.leavenworth.army.mil/

Incredibly, however, the web version of the Army document is coded
in such a way that it cannot be downloaded, or copied, or printed
out.  It must be read online at the Army site, or not at all.

This may be unprecedented for a government web site.  The very
notion of a document that cannot be downloaded is antithetical to
the web and seems like an artifact from an alternate universe.  If
the Axis powers had won World War II, the whole internet might
look like this.

But in a marvelous feat of textual engineering, the intrepid
Francois Boo of GlobalSecurity.org managed to overcome the Army's
restrictive coding of the document and to make it publicly
available.

It can now be found -- and downloaded or printed -- here:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2004/onpoint/

Among the highlights of the report is the disclosure that the
toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was not a
spontaneous act of an Iraqi crowd, but was instigated by a U.S.
Marine colonel backed by a psychological operations unit (reported
in the LA Times July 3).