General's and Ambassador's Reports on Iraq

The much-anticipated reports by General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador there, have been released. The news has been full of their testimony before Congressional committees the last few days. You can see the reports for yourself at the House Foreign Affairs Committee's website: Gen. Petraeus' report | Amb. Crocker's statement.

Another important report on Iraq

The government keeps churning out reports on the situation in Iraq. Of course, next week, we'll have the Big One, delivered by General David Petraeus on the success or failure of the troop surge. But leading up to that major event, we have this report of the Iraqi Security Forces Independent Assessment Commission, delivered by retired General James L. Jones. The Senate Armed Services Committee has made this report, mandated by a law passed in May, available from its website.

For links to more of the recent reports, see the post below.

Several government reports in the news

If you watched the Daily Show from Aug. 23, you saw a very interesting interview with a gentleman who helped write the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual. This is a book you can actually buy, or, if you're curious about it, you can view an online version, made available from the Government Printing Office.

Other government publications have been in the news lately. The latest National Intelligence Estimate came out this week, and an unclassified summary entitled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive" is available from the Director of National Intelligence.

This week also saw the release of a report from the CIA's Inspector General—"OIG Report on the CIA Accountability With Respect to the 9/11 Attacks"—that has received much media attention. This link is to the unclassified executive summary of the report.

For more links to Government Information in the News, check this page on the Library website.

Converting documents to another format—inexpensively and easily

Have you ever wanted to share a file with someone, but you’re not sure that the person who will receive your document has the software necessary to view it? Or perhaps you’d like others to see your document, but you don’t want changes made to it. Converting your file to portable document format—or .pdf—is often a good solution for these types of situations. But what if you don’t have software on your computer, like Adobe Acrobat, to convert your files?

There are several free file conversion services that could provide your solution. One service, PDF Online (http://www.pdfonline.com), walks you through a 3-step conversion process where you select your file, name the converted file, and enter your email address, so the converted output file can be emailed back to you.

Another free online file conversion service, Zamzar (http://www.zamzar.com/) offers even more options. Video and audio format conversion is possible with this service. The process is similar to the PDF Online conversion process, except that you also select the output format you would like.

Of course these services don’t provide as many options as software you might purchase can offer, but for quick and simple file conversions, these services provide inexpensive and convenient solutions.

"Family Jewels" now belong to the whole family

The "Family Jewels" papers, over 700 pages of CIA responses to a request for identification of "activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency's charter," were released by the Agency June 26. Another collection of historical documents, known as the CAESAR, POLO, and ESAU papers, which deal with the Soviet Union and China, were also released.

You can find the documents several places on the web, including:

--the CIA FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) page: http://www.foia.cia.gov/
--the National Security Archive at George Washington University : http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
--National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11417938.

In response to the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech University in April, the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education, and Justice were directed to meet with educators, mental health experts, law enforcement, and state and local officials to discuss the broader issues raised by these events. The officials have summarized their findings in this "Report to the President on Issues Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy".

There is also a link to the report on our "Government Information in the News" page on the Library website, where you can look beyond the headlines and find links to other official reports you might see/hear/read mentioned in the news.

Those Urban Legends Email Messages

Do you ever wonder if that email message that has been forwarded to you by a friend or colleague is true? One place to check out the authenticity of a message that has been forwarded from email address to email address is at the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com. (Snopes is the surname of a family of characters who appear throughout the works of American writer William Faulkner. See the Faulkner Glossary for more information about the Snopes family.) Barbara and David P. Mikkelson have maintained the Urban Legends Reference Pages since 1995. Entries usually summarize the email claim in a sentence, indicate the true or false status, include a significant portion of the email message, discuss the facts pertaining to the message, and provide additional references for further exploration. The Urban Legends Reference Pages can help you critically evaluate information and determine whether or not to incorporate it into your personal knowledge base.