When I blogged and posted a copy of The Baghdad Mosquito yesterday I had no idea I was spreading classified material.
The Baghdad Mosquito is a daily newsletter produced under the auspices of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq. It is distributed via e-mail to an elite group of military officers and policy planners and is posted on the military’s classified Web server.
The March 5 edition contains a reprint of Scott Horton’s article from Antiwar.com, “Finding Ways to Stay in Iraq.” (It is reprinted without the copyright note and The Baghdad Mosquito was not given reprint permission). It was run to show that an Iraq newspaper, Al Nour, had reprinted it in full, to the surprise of the editors of The Mosquito. The Mosquito editors commented:
Summary: A US Political analyst believes that the policies of the Bush administration are being repeated in Iraq; however, the administration is trying to ‘beautify’ the policies in an attempt to fool the world. The analyst claims that Obama is ‘playing with slogans’.
[Mosquito Note: The rest of the article was taken from another website and translated into Arabic. The author at Al Nour removed the names (other than Scott Horton) from the original article. The rest of the content remained the same. The following is the text of the article written by Mr. Scott Horton that was published on Antiwar.com. It is unusual for Al Nour to publish this type of article. The article is written from a very left-wing liberal point of view. Al Nour is usually a non-biased newspaper that publishes news stories rather than extremely biased editorials.]
The staff at The Baghdad Mosquito have become aware of the fact that we obtained a copy of their publication. They have made the following “request”:
Please delete the copy of the product that you have, and I would appreciate if you would ask Mr. Horton to do the same. Additionally, please do not distribute the product further.
The email is signed: V/R, Baghdad Mosquito Staff.
Since this is only a request, and not an order from any governmental body, we have no intention of removing the post at this time (but you might want to grab a copy of the pdf, just in case…)
The Baghdad Mosquito has been published daily since late 2003. I was unable to find another copy anywhere on the web via a Google search, although copies are clearly distributed to non-military people like Daniel Pipes.
The document is not classified. It is unclassified FOUO, but may contain links to classified material on the SIPRNET (the smil.mil addresses). Those links can not work from the ordinary public internet, since the 2 networks are not connected. FOUO means that the information is prohibited from public distribution, but does not have the much more severe restrictions of classified information. When information is classified, every instance of it is supposed to be tracked and accounted for, it must be kept in approved safes when not inuse, and unauthorized possession is a felony.
The vast majority of what is classified is not classified for any legitimate reasons of national security, but to cover up government misdeeds and incompetence.
Well so much for the Freedom of Information Act. You are only allowed to know what the Government wants you to know.
Exactly. Based on my nearly two decades of military experience in this area, I think it’s no exaggeration to say that the higher the classification applied to something, the more “embarrassing” the contents of the material.
Once something is on the Net, you can’t take it back.
Nertz.
It does seem like the Black Bush has every intention of continuing our failed policies and unrealized dreams of hegemony in the region. How far does the economy need to collapse to give up our trillion dollar a year empire? Doing so would not only save precious resources and civilian lives, but provide Americans with greater security.
You guys are all idiots. No one on this site knows anything about classification…especially the guy with “nearly two decades of military experience in this area.” I think it’s no exaggertation to say that you’ve never had any contact with classified material in your entire life champ. And the Mosquito is most certainly not “…distributed via e-mail to an elite group of military officers and policy planners…” It may however be posted to the SIPRnet, but you’ll never know because you’re an idiot.
From my own experience after many years of service in our armed forces is “Classification” is a useful tool employed by the Military-Industrial-Complex leaders to hide the mistakes they make from the American public. In many, many cases the details of how they get us into these unnecessary foreign wars are still classified going back to their successful efforts and ploys used to get us into World War One.
Education helps to learn social skills. It is impossible to remain aloof in this world. We have to interact with others to fulfill our needs. It is helpful in meetings and gatherings etc
The Baghdad Mosquito has been serving the Iraqi military forces for quite a long time. It has done all with extreme passion and courage. It is our duty to pay tribute to Helvetic Clinics and Dentist abroad those who have been involved in this act.