US Government censors Wikipedia

I first read about this in like.. 2005?

The wikipedia article on Ansar al-Islam makes several references to possible links between Al Qaida and the Saddam Hussein's regime. It is not an "absurd" claim, but rather one over which there is serious, legitimate debate.

As to the "fiction Iraq had weapons of mass destruction", there were many chemical weapons found whose origin predated the first gulf war, and whose existence Hussein denied.

While this was certainly far less than expected, it is also far more than nothing.

Finally the title "US Government censors Wikipedia" because some employee of the U.S. House of Representatives added "it is claimed" to some statements is more ridiculous than anything said employee ever wrote.

I think it's sad to see how they cling on to their Vietnam 2.0 and try to justify themselves by editing history........ on whakipedia.... c'mon you can do better than that, oh and good luck with all the oil... or WMDs... I forgot what the objective of the war was, sooo confusing!!!

" The wikipedia article on Ansar al-Islam makes several references to possible links between Al Qaida and the Saddam Hussein's regime. It is not an "absurd" claim, but rather one over which there is serious, legitimate debate. "

Which just goes to show how inaccurate Wikipedia can be and how spinmeisters can manufacture a debate out of thin air. To date there are well documented ties between Osama bin Laden, Al Quaida and the u.s. governemnt. All ties between Saddam and Al Quaida have consistently been exposed as lies, 

"there were many chemical weapons found whose origin predated the first gulf war, and whose existence Hussein denied. "

Even the crazed fanatics of the current u.s. regime never tried to claim those were anything but duds. It was well known before the war that Iraq had chemical weapons because the u.s. and Britain supplied the material and technology to build them. It was also well known that any weapons developed with those materials could no longer be used due to expired shelf-life of the chemicals. Hussein denied their existence because they were not weapons. 

"Finally the title "US Government censors Wikipedia" because some employee of the U.S. House of Representatives added "it is claimed" to some statements is more ridiculous than anything said employee ever wrote."

That is of course how plausible deniability is maintained. There are so many heads that keep on sprouting from this Cerberus that no one can be certain of who. Had the u.s. government chosen to censor Wikipedia would they send a bill through the houses? I don't particularly credit the caption but if it was a Chinese official who edited Wikipedia I doubt you are the sort to deny that it was a government conspiracy.

Legitimate debate? Are you serious? If you know anything about the region, you would know that Saddam hated Al-CIAda, and would have nothing to do with them. The only thing we should be debating is how many neocons should be tried for TREASON. And of course there were chemical weapons that predated the first war... WE GAVE THEM TO SADDAM! Quit trying to justify an unconstitutional occupation and genocide. For the rest of you... READ, READ, READ.

Wikipedia also censors. This is all about the First Amendment. Let's not follow the gov't down the path of censorship. After all, censorship is becoming America's favorite past-time. The US gov't (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like "America Deceived" from Amazon and Wikipedia, shut down Imus and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. Free Speech forever (especially for the internet).
Last link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0

This link stayed in Wikipedia less than one and a half hours (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2003_invasion_of_Iraq&diff=next&oldid=20869075)

A rather good time considered how long it was reported by the main stream media ;-)


I don't visit the Inquirer to read political bullshit like this. Most of your readers don't approve either, it is claimed.

...related to technology?

And what is news about anyone disguising the truth where politics is concerned?

Next you'll be reporting that the Yanks shouldn't have helped you out of that spot with that nice elected man, Adolph; that he never roasted folks in the "ovens;" or that Global Warming is a bad thing (I never met a European who didn't wish for higher annual temperatures).

If you really want to talk about Censorship, how about mentioning how technology is being used to inundate the masses with useless information to hide Inconvenient Truths like the fact that for the first time in history we have the possibility of a Free and Friendly Iraq?

I can't believe some people are actually believing in a "Free and Friendly Irak". Oh yeah that's it Irak seems soooooo friendly to me these days. Why don't you go there for a week to spend some hollidays ? I'm sure you'll enjoy the friendliness of Bagdad, really. 

And yes, an article dealing with what's happening on one of the more important website of the internet is relevant on theinq.

I fail to see how info pertaining to the web and it's manipulation is not news...

If web neutrality was announced tomorrow and Inq didn't cover it, you'd be up in arms over the fact they didn't cover it...

As for
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The wikipedia article on Ansar al-Islam makes several references to possible links between Al Qaida and the Saddam Hussein's regime. It is not an "absurd" claim, but rather one over which there is serious, legitimate debate.
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A debatable point is not something that should be entered in to Wikipedia. The original assertion should have been challenged till the point was proved rather than altered covertly.

The usefulness of a tome of "facts" is entirely limited to exactly how factual it really is. If, instead of using the established mechanism to challenge a misconception, someone covertly alters a post, how can that new "fact" be trusted.

The standard method is to put a challenged item to the test to see if it passes muster, and removing it if it does not.

Lastly, agents of the US Government represent the government. If they take an action, the Government bears responsibility for it.

I once read an article that Sadam was proud of his deception, that he wanted to world to believe he had WMD's because the threat helped to keep Iran at bay. Lest we forget that Iraq was once at war with Iran? So, if Sadam was engaged in a rouse, who's fiction was it?

Your definition of Tampering with an entry is someone else's definition of completing or correcting it. I'm sure you wouldn't have noticed if the tampering had tilted towards the other side of the debate. Certainly there are enough Wikipediats to sort the whole matter out without involving your obviously slanted opinion.

Actually I'm not much surprised by this no-sense...the US Government wasn't the
same "entity" who sent the FBI in the home of a boy who made a satirical picture of George Bush Jr??

Seems that some guys in the US Government have no sense of humor and of reality nor intelligence...and hey?

Sorry, sir...our experts said that, no matter what's the budget, the "Langley Boys" could give you "intelligence", but not "a brain"!

I have to agree with Tim on one point...
...notwithstanding my appreciation for the information, this news seems a bit "out of place" in this setting...

In truth, this morning I opened the Inquirer in the hope that you'd tell me if the problems between nVidia's 680i and 780i motherboards and Penryn would be solved by the 780i's launch in December...by the way...this political news gave me a bit of "free fun" for this morning. >D

...may be I can agree on you on the political side, but Tim isn't that wrong on his point...may be he's a bit wrong in his way of expressing it...to call political news "political bullshit" isn't fair...it's the kind of open-minded approach that characterized people happy to be "free" of yelling "SIEG HEIL" within an oceanic mass-gathering and then we found out that...opps...they "incidentally" sent people to the ovens and how could have been? They were such polite independent tinkers! 

Not that this guy seems to me "that" bad, don't get me wrong, but he's definitely on the wrong path...his way of approaching political news speak to me of a dangerous leaning to shift from an independent computer to a terminal receiving all elaborations from the central system...

The Inquirer is very interesting because is a tecnical news source which grants very fresh news.

Politics is just Moral and Religion...

...start a speech on it into a group of people if you like to see a verbal war start soon...

Anyone has the right of expressing his political opinion, but is fair to say that in a technical news source, politics is a bit out of place for one usually comes here to know if the product "so and so" is coming out, while his political views are already pretty known to him.

Sean Parker-Perry, the political assistant for the culture secretary James Purnell often tampers with local Labour politicians Wikipedia profiles and even edits subjects to appear more bias to their party policy!

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/83.104.50.161

Someone from Purnell HQ doesn't like John Hutton either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Hutton_%28Labour_MP%29&diff=prev&oldid=52633731

Evan K:
You suggest "America Deceived" has been banned from Amazon and Wikipedia because of pressure from the U.S. government?

I suggest to anyone who believes this that they should follow his link and read the first part of the book. It's poorly written and horribly edited. It's typical of books that published in the vanity press because the authors couldn't find "real" publishers to print them -- not because of any government plot, but because the writing sucks.

Conspiracy? Yes. The conspiracy here is to waste people's valuable time by suggesting they read (let alone purchase!) this crud.

Far better things than this have been removed from Wikipedia, and not because of government influence. As for its removal from Amazon, I suspect that happened because someone at Amazon read one of the copies they had sitting around (as I can't imagine they were selling quickly...) and realized how little literary merit the work had.

It is so-called "Wikiality"(by Stephen Colbert)

Well "John Doe," good idea! I did live there - for 9 months / 1 conflict. No sensible person is fool enough to believe that there aren't still people there who will hate every non-Muslim and particularly every American "infidel" no matter what we do. However, people like you continually disregard the fact that tens of thousands of people were slaughtered under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein - not to mention the hundreds of thousands of them who died under his leadership in their war with Iraq.

Despite your Ostrich approach to world events, there are MANY people in Iraq who are now interested in becoming good global neighbors, and are appreciative that they don't have to worry about Husseins' secret police taking them away in the middle of the night. This attitude is spreading.

So, your history assignment is to go and study Germany following WWII. Pay particular attention to how many troops it took and how long it took before insurgency was eliminated, even under their free democratic rule. Once you have a clue, then perhaps you will be deserving of an opinion.

Oh, and for Msugar - we lost more men in a day in Vietnam than in all of the Iraq conflict to date. The numbers are in, and the number of soldiers who have died as a direct result of this conflict are comparable to the number of soldiers from that same sample set who would have died during that same period from training accidents, auto accidents, etc. had they been "safely at home." There is no comparison for any sane person between this intervention and Vietnam. The only way that Iraq will turn into a failure is if the Democratic Party succeeds in their ongoing determined effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Cheers,

Bill

"One has to wonder how reliable an encyclopaedia is when it peddles government propaganda in an almost Orwellian manner and forces people who disagree with it to 'disappear' from history."

If you took the time to inspect the Wikipedia article history, you would see that the "government propaganda" was corrected within an hour and a half.

Furthermore, one of the most well known features of Wikipedia is that no changes EVER "disappear". Wikipedia maintains a complete record of every change ever made to every article.

For example, here is the record of the change you mentioned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=20867043
... and here is where the change was corrected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2003_invasion_of_Iraq&diff=next&oldid=20869075

So, how does one moron, who happens to work for the fed gov, editing Wikipedia constitute government censorship? If it really were a conspiracy, don't you think they would have been smart enough to take a laptop to Starbucks? Your article is nothing but a troll.

I'm kinda bored and tired of hearing that wikipedia is bad for the very reason it's good. The reason it is the most popular encyclopedia in the world is due to the fact that it is so broad and so well maintained. This would not be possible without the wisdom of crowds mechanism that lets anyone who cares to, make a change to an entry. Articles are changed constantly, and the people who work closely with Wikipedia are ridiculously serious about accuracy. A third-party research group ran tests where they made serious and highly fallacious changes to several articles without warning. The time it took for the articles to be repaired was an average of a couple hours. I'm sick of hearing people who just don't get the way society is heading, babbling that it's bad because people can vandalise it. It's highly accurate for the most part, it's free access to libraries of knowledge, and most articles link to reputable sources to facilitate research. Most of the people who criticize Wikipedia don't even understand how it works.

In short, stop whining, you just don't get it.

Now, I can let the chip on my shoulder rest.

Lets get something straight, Iraq had WMD's and the United States had proof, because we gave them to Iraq to fight Iran in the 80's. duh

If anyone did the research you'd find a disturbing fact about the Neocons that brought us to this point in the Middle East. Most of them have dual citizenship.....US and ?. This plan was set in motion decades ago and since the 60's Middle Eastern Policy has been going down hill for Arabists in the US. 

For me personally I don't care where you come from or what you believe BUT when you start manipulating US and UN Policy and get people killed then you must be exposed and banished...........again.

Again, it's not Wikipedia that is at fault here, it's essentially a public forum--not gospel truth. I think Wikipedia is actually GOOD in the fact that people can post their version of the truth so that other people can scrutinize it, and ultimately find out WHO is possibly responsible for any misinformation.

propaganda 0 - Wikipedia 1

Ansar-Al-Islam has never had ties to Saddam, but it did have ties to Osama Bin Laden and the United States at the same time no less.
It was an unruly Kurdish separatist group and the USA had a bad habit of supporting anyone who claimed to oppose Saddam without properly vetting their claims. Not only that the USA openly supports MEK, Mujahaddein-e-Kalq, an Iranian Marxist-Islamic separatist group that is essentially run like a cult. The pentagon claims it is a "protected minority". The MEK was responsible for numerous bombings in Teheran. Lastly, to show how bizarre US foreign policy is, the Bush administration also supports and funds the SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is the political wing of the militia Badr Brigades, the largest shiite militia in iraq and the one responsible for most death squad activity.
Don't fall for the claims by Bush that Sadr and Al-Mahdi is doing it all. Badr are the ones chopping sunni heads and leaving widows in iraq.

I'm not going to jump into this debate about who's right and wrong about Iraq, but has anyone stopped to think that the fact that Wikipedia allows people from both sides of the argument to make comments is exactly why it beats a traditional dictionary.

If the House of Reps puts in propaganda, there are MILLIONS of people around the world who can easily edit it again (including Al-Queda if they want!).

In the past, only the winners wrote history, now everyone gets to write a piece of it!

Second respondent re-states something that serious people believed. That although Saddam hadn't after all built an arsenal of new WMD following the Gulf War, that he retained a limited number of pre-Gulf-War chemical weapons.

Our second respondent, like those serious commentators, was burdened by wishful thinking, and was insufficiently skeptical.

In 2004 a couple of GIs tried to disarm an IED that was built around an artillery shell. General Kimmick claimed this artillerty shell was an active binary chemical weapon.

Well, first, the shelf life of Sarin and other nerve agents is measured in weeks, not decades. Second, the Iraqi chemical warfare department had never figured out how to make workable binary weapons. Rather they shipped their chemical munitions around full of one of the components. And, just prior to firing a munition the Iraqi top sergeant would nominate a vounteer to put on his gasmask and gas suit, and top up the munition with the other binary component.

No, I am not making this up.

Anyone who claims the US found even one active binary weapon, including General Kimmel, doesn't know what he or she was talking about.

Saddam's 'unforgivable sin' was to dare to suggest that he would stop taking Dollars for Oil, because he got fed up importing USA inflation. The USA could not allow a precedent to be set, for other Oil producers, so naively made an example of Iraq, by invading Iraq and annexing the oil, the trouble is Iraq is now an unmanageable disaster area, no amount of Wiki editing will hide that!

Hopefully the next Deflationary Depression (predicted to start by 2012) will burn out all the political dead wood in the US and UK e.g. Brown, Darling, 'New Labour', the fake Conservatives, 'Political Correctness', 'War on ...' BS, the EU, Clinton, Bush and the 'Neocons', and not lead to an oppressive new Dark Ages.

I don't have any recent information, but everyone loved what we were doing for the first year or two. The press just kept dwelling on all the negatives, like the obvious that our escape plans suck.

Still, I'd be hard pressed to believe whatever is going on is worse than being run by a military state whose henchmen will rape a woman with a gun and threaten to shoot them if they don't enjoy it. Marines found accounts of atrocities that made their stomachs turn and they refused to talk about. If you search google video, you'll find a ton of information about how evil Saddam was.

If you want to talk about Orwellian tactics, you better start pointing fingers at the press first (well, after all the pictures of Big Brother watching you in Iraq). The complaint wasn't so much that they had the weapons, but that they weren't offering satisfactory investigations into the issue and supporting terrorism. If you've ever seen how this man acts, it's easy to believe that someone could run 1000 investigations and not be convinced, and it's no question that Saddam was terrorizing his own country.

In fact President Clinton almost put a clause into some agreement that stated we would go to war against Iraq if they didn't comply with weapons inspections. The UK backed him in this too. However, they backed down after France objected, who I think was being paid by Iraq for different things.

I won't say that I think there are weapons, but they could be easy to miss. It took us 4 months to find a fleet of 30-40 fighter jets. http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/sandplanes.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3116259.stm

Any comments from someone in Iraq?