It feels good to know that Massachusetts isn’t the only place to have budget problems. British intelligence, along with U.S. collaborators, now relies on magazine clippings and stolen, impertinent and outdated articles from academia to somehow justify a war to the world.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell introduced the document, “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation” to the UN, he announced, “What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”

Man oh man, was he wrong.

Parts of the 19-page document had turned out to be plagiarized so crudely that the original authors’ typing mistakes were still in the report.

One of the authors, a post-graduate student named Ibrahim al-Marashi, wasn’t exactly flattered. After calling the British scandal “wholesale deception,” he also commented, “How can the British trust the Government if it is up to these sorts of tricks?”

Author William Rivers Pitt had also pointed out that although segments of al-Marashi’s report had been simply cut and pasted, British intelligence officials thought it would be better to inflate their case by changing certain key words from his report.

The al-Marashi report claims that Iraqi intelligence is “monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq.” However, the British report says Iraqi intelligence is “spying on foreign embassies in Iraq.”

Another point that al-Marashi had made was that Saddam Hussein had been known to support “opposition groups.” The statements that appeared in the British report were almost verbatim, except that the word “terrorist” had replaced “opposition” in the plagiarized statements.

Clever, huh?

And then there is Sean Boyne.

Boyne is a journalist for the military magazine, Jane’s Intelligence Review. Speaking to reporters, he commented, “I don’t like to think that anything I wrote has been used as an argument for war,” adding, “I am concerned because I am against the war.” I guess he wasn’t exactly flattered either.

Another interesting statement was that both of these men claim that not only were their statements exaggerated and used out of context, but also any quantitative figures they had presented were actually inflated. I find it a surprise that Blair and Bush would stoop so low as to sell out the dignity of their respective countries in exchange for their ulterior motives, but this is far from the first time this game has been played.

According to the UK Guardian, “Successive U.S. governments have a poor record of misleading their own citizens on foreign policy issues at least since the Vietnam War.”

Well, so much for an informed public.

What was the motivation behind such a shoddy report? Did Bush and Blair expect to keep the world leaders in the dark? It leaves me to wonder if there is any more rubbish that they put into Iraq’s dossier that is getting kicked over to the Security Council. And in return, these leaders will now have to assess the evidence themselves to see what is accurate and what is just plain bogus.

The more ironic aspect of this all is that every time Iraq hands us a declaration or a document, the boys over at the C.I.A and Pentagon rate its quality and consistency to that of a L. Ron Hubbard novel. I can only imagine how much credibility these two “intelligence” agencies will have now.

Saddam Hussein claims that the evidence against his regime consists of “cheap lies.” Well folks, there are, in fact, lies in this report and they were pretty cheap ones too. Is there really room in this kind of a crisis for self-serving hypocrisy?

What kind of a leader actually tries to lie and plagiarize for the sake of starting a war, regardless of their reasoning behind it? This can only be the work of somebody who doesn’t value any life but his own and sees humans as an expendable tool toward a selfish agenda.

With the evidence against Iraq, Saddam is not the only one who is on trial here. The men and women of our armed forces are on trial. Innocent Iraqi women and children are on trial. American values are on trial.

If, in fact, there is incontrovertible justification for an attack on Iraq, then let it be known. This way, we can work to find a way to live with the obligations of protecting ourselves while trying our best to support our friends, families and American values.

If we lie and cheat our way through, then many of those people, as well as what America stands for, will be wrongfully sentenced to a vain and worthless death.

Mark Ostroff is a Collegian Columnist

Non-Plagiarized information was used from CNN.com, The Moscow Times, The UK Guardian, BBC.com, unansweredquestions.org, MSNBC: “Meet the Press,” and a collection of articles at truthout.org.