Saturday, December 09, 2006
Helping President Bush with that pesky Iraq Study Group report
The Iraq Study Group report was written mainly for one person to read: the President of the United States. But can he really read and understand this complex report? Here's something to help him get through it.
On Thursday President Bush commented on the report after possibly being briefed on it by visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Standing next to Blair, he commented:
Iraq for Dummies
The document has almost 32,000 words. 7200 are "Big Words" according to a text analysis program. Bush is challenged even by medium-sized words (e.g., "nuclear"). The same program assigns the report a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score of almost 15, which means that someone with one year of graduate study would be comfortable with it.
Especially if one is not used to reading, it just takes time to go through something this long and with so many Big Words.
Disappeared News, as a public service and special gift to the president, has used computer technology to produce a summarization of the document that is only 10% of its full length. The entire Appendix has been skipped because who reads appendices anyway.
The summary was produced entirely by computer, without the interference of human judgment. Of course, a lot is omitted, but reading this summary might get one through the final exam. Sort of like a "Cliff Note" for the entire Iraq Study Group report.
GWB or anyone interested can find this summary at:
http://disappearednews.com/docs/IraqStudyGWBSummary.htm.
You're welcome, Mr. President.
On Thursday President Bush commented on the report after possibly being briefed on it by visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Standing next to Blair, he commented:
Some reports are issued and just gather dust. And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and our guest read it. The Prime Minister read -- read a report prepared by a commission.So I ask you--after reading this, the president's own words, do you think he really read the report? He sounds like a kid trying to convince the teacher that he really read The Odyssey over summer vacation.
Iraq for Dummies
The document has almost 32,000 words. 7200 are "Big Words" according to a text analysis program. Bush is challenged even by medium-sized words (e.g., "nuclear"). The same program assigns the report a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score of almost 15, which means that someone with one year of graduate study would be comfortable with it.
Especially if one is not used to reading, it just takes time to go through something this long and with so many Big Words.
Disappeared News, as a public service and special gift to the president, has used computer technology to produce a summarization of the document that is only 10% of its full length. The entire Appendix has been skipped because who reads appendices anyway.
The summary was produced entirely by computer, without the interference of human judgment. Of course, a lot is omitted, but reading this summary might get one through the final exam. Sort of like a "Cliff Note" for the entire Iraq Study Group report.
GWB or anyone interested can find this summary at:
http://disappearednews.com/docs/IraqStudyGWBSummary.htm.
You're welcome, Mr. President.
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