FC: Iraq posts its version of the Saddam-Dan Rather int'v online

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 22:20:05 PST

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    Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:15:19 -0500
    To: declanat_private
    From: Brian McWilliams <brian@pc-radio.com>
    Subject: Iraq posts its cut of the Saddam-Rather interview
    
    Hi Declan:
    
    I thought you & Politech might be interested to know that the Iraq 
    government today posted its version of the Feb. 24 Rather-Saddam interview 
    on its web site. As you may recall, CBS had to rely on Iraq for the tape of 
    the interview.
    
    To my knowledge, this is the first "full" version of the interview 
    available on the Internet -- it runs about 94 minutes. I believe it's also 
    the first to include Saddam's full answers in Arabic, rather than English 
    voice-over translations.
    
    Unfortunately it's still not an uncut version of the interview, because 
    most of the English translation has been edited out! As a result, the video 
    probably isn't of much use to people who don't speak Arabic. On top of 
    that, the streaming video and audio quality (34 Kbps) are quite poor.
    
    But I think the Iraqi version provides an interesting counterpart to the 
    video and transcript published at the CBS site. (For some reason, the CBS 
    transcript does not include any text directly attributed to Saddam. 
    Instead, the transcript consists of Rather's questions along with what the 
    translator said in English on Saddam's behalf.)
    
    Iraq's video is contained in three RealMedia files that are linked from 
    http://www.uruklink.net, the home page of the Iraq government.
    
    Since Uruklink.net can be flaky, and the admins didn't set up the files to 
    stream properly, I have temporarily mirrored the three files at
    
    http://www.pc-radio.com/rather-saddam.html
    
    (Fwiw, there was no copyright information in the files' Clip Info area.)
    
    Brian
    
    
    
    
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