How A Comma and an Oxford Thesis Started the 2003 Iraq War

greetings from

carmel california i am talking to you

from my hometown and

the bedroom in which i spent my

childhood

i want you to imagine it is

february 2003 i am

visiting my parents and staying in this

very room

during the winter holidays and it’s

5am and i get a phone call

it is my classmate from oxford

university

who has since gone on to graduate

and has a job with cnn the cnn branch in

london

and while i was sleeping he has called

me to tell me

that the news is going crazy about

you all the newspapers your frontline

material

all the uh tv uh the five o’clock

news is talking about you

what have i done well

you have to imagine in september 2002 i

wrote an

article that was really just chapter two

of my thesis

that i published on the uh on an online

journal about iraq’s

intelligence and security agencies it

was the topic of my thesis

and even though i began the thesis in

the year 2000 i could have never

imagined

that by 2003

a war is going to be waged against my

native iraq

chapter two of my thesis which was

published online

somehow made it into

the british government’s latest

intelligence dossier how did that happen

well a british academic who had read my

article

and then read in september 2002 and then

read the british intelligence dossier

that was made public

in february 2003 notice similarities

in the language between my document and

the british intelligence document

but what helped this british academic

detect

that i had in fact been plagiarized

even as a phd student i saved things to

the last minute and when i submitted my

article i had a misplaced comma

in my article the british government not

only

copied my information but even my

grammatical mistakes

including the misplaced comma that

gave beyond any doubt the

evidence to this british academic that i

had been plagiarized

and he informed the british media while

i

slept the british media was breaking

this news story the british government

had copied an

article from a phd student

and tried to depict this

as the latest intelligence from the

british government

what are the odds of getting a call at

5am

i am sleeping in my childhood bed which

is i’ve

i’ve outgrown it i have to sleep at a

diagonal to just fit in it

and my friend in london is saying can

you talk in that 10 minutes to cnn

london

about how you feel about this i

pause and i just look up the ceiling

where i have these

model airplanes that i used to construct

as a kid

and it’s surreal here i am now at the

uh really at the front of an intern

national relations scandals and i

am still feeling like i’m that 10 year

old child who just wants to go and make

toy airplanes

so what happened next the iraq war

happened now

you see there was no weapons of mass

destruction found in iraq

and really the plagiarism of my article

should have been really

kind of a wake-up call that if they’re

plagiarizing my

information which was really about the

1991 gulf war

and you recycling that information for

the 2003 iraq war

that there’s something faulty in the

british and american justifications for

the invasion of iraq

nonetheless the war happened and no

weapons of mass destruction were found

i returned to oxford in may to uh

and in may 2003 after the war had

finished

i got a letter in the mail imagine

you’re going through the mail

junk mail going through it and then you

see a letter with the stamp of the

british

parliament i opened it and what are they

asking me

they are asking me to testify

there is an inquiry being launched as to

how the british government

misled the public prior

to the invasion of iraq and they’re

asking me to testify

so one beautiful may afternoon i get

onto a train

i leave two hours because you know you

never what

good excuse do you have for being late

to parliament i

get into a train and i’m off to the

british parliament

the train ride is normally less than an

hour 20 minutes into the train ride

i would the train stops in the middle of

the british countryside

outside of reading and for no reason it

just stops

and i said okay whatever the british

train system is notoriously unreliable

i thought it was just you know your

regular uh delay

then 10 minutes past 15 minutes pass

and the passenger sitting around me

we start to talk what are we being

delayed from

a businessman sitting next to me

says uh i have a business meeting

the woman sitting in front of me says i

was hoping to go shopping in london in

oxford circus and then they look at me

and i say i am late for a testimony in

front of the british parliament

the businessman next to me folds his

newspaper points to me in that newspaper

and says oh i’m reading about you right

now i’m reading about your testimony

and here you are sitting next to me

then an announcement comes on

and says we’re sorry for the delay but

apparently there has

been a train explosion i’m sorry an

explosion on the train tracks and we

can’t proceed any further

the woman sitting in front of me starts

to joke and saying it’s your fault

there is somebody wants to delay your

testimony

i called the parliament the secretary

who arranged my testimony

and i told her literally that i can’t

make it to

day there’s an explosion and she made a

joke that

the tony blair must be behind it

she says can you get out of the train

and just take a taxi to london

i say no i’m stuck in the british

countryside i cannot

she goes okay just let us know the

details

the woman sitting in front of me was

quite attractive actually and you know

what i didn’t mind the delay

i really was didn’t mind the delay but i

had this worrying scenario

after she made the joke and the woman of

the parliament the joke

i had this image of a black helicopter

at that moment swooping down from the

sky

landing on top of my train car and who

comes out but james bond

takes out his pistol he puts a silencer

breaks into my train car

walks up to me shoots me in the forehead

with his gun

like that and then of course what does

he do he takes the attractive woman and

then you know what james bond is famous

for and then boom boom boom

the james bond film starts this is what

i was imagining

the train announcer finally says we have

to go back to oxford there are this

train cannot go into london

the train pulls into oxford

i jump out and i get into the first taxi

cab i see and i tell the taxi driver

can you take me to parliament he looks

back to him i mean he probably thinks

stupid american tourist and says

sorry you know there is no parliament in

oxford and i was like yeah i know

i want you to take me to the parliament

in london you know the one with the big

bang i didn’t even have the address in

parliament and i just said go to big ben

he goes do you know how much it costs to

go to a parliament and i was like no

do you and he goes no no one has ever

asked me this

but anyway he goes and he’s off and

while he’s driving he’s just loving the

fact that he’s taking somebody to

testify in parliament

he is on the phone talking to a

significant other saying

you can’t imagine who i have in the back

of my seat

we finally pull up to the parliament the

woman who arranged my

testimony has a bag of money that i

think she just collected from every

parliamentarian to chip in for my taxi

fare which came out to around 260 pounds

and i finally get into the parliament

and

i make my deposition that was

anti-climactic but i just have to say on

the record

i was plagiarized i did not give this

information to the british government

willingly

that ended the first episode years later

i see my

story made into a film starring

james gandolfini of sopranos fame

and who played me now they were joking

leonardo dicaprio did not play me

i was played by an actress named anna

chumsky

so i don’t know what happened maybe i

sound so i sounded so

whiny when i used to give my media

interviews they said oh um

let’s make him into kind of a cathy

woman because that’s who the actress

they found

to play me uh maybe they just didn’t

want to pay me royalties but i was

yeah they chose a woman with my least

favorite actress actually

to play me then i moved to turkey where

i had my first academic position

imagine this what are the odds you’re

giving class

and that should be kind of a harrowing

experience already

but why is this particular class a bit

worrying

imagine you’re walking into class and

you decided to have

a coffee before class starts

and you see a newspaper somebody reading

a newspaper before you’re going to

work and the face looks familiar

and you look closely who is on the front

page of the newspaper well it was me

but what did the front page of the

turkish newspaper say now you have to

imagine this was maybe a year

after the plagiarism it said the man who

started the iraq war

has just moved to istanbul

the way the turkish media kind of

construed my story was

i was the architect of the iraq war in

other words the information i collected

and researched

was deliberately designed to justify and

started a war against my native iraq

uh

i thought okay maybe not that many

people read the newspapers

i get into the taxi on the way to work

and what does the taxi driver said why

did you start the iraq war

i began my class and what

happens i hear voices outside and it’s

protesters

protesters who have organizing saying we

don’t want the architect of the iraq war

at our university

what happened this went on for my entire

career in

turkey where i was dogged as the

architect of the iraq war it made my

life unbearable and even though i loved

turkey

i decided i have to move and i had to

look for a new job

and where did i find a job announcement

well at a brand new university called

i.e

university i didn’t know much about

spain i didn’t know much about this

university i didn’t even know if this

university would ever take off

but i took a risk and decided to apply

there

how was my first year at iu university i

hated it

i was stressed i didn’t know this

university would take off

but after the first year i fell in love

with spain

and i fell in love with that university

it was the greatest

thing that could have ever happened to

me because here i am in the year 2020

and i’m still finding a reason to come

back to spain

every year and lecture at this

university

what’s the lesson behind my experience

well the first lesson is this

learn how to use your commas because

there is a book called eats shoots and

leaves

i highly recommend you purchase it

and in the final page of each shoots and

leaves

what is the final lesson about why you

should learn how to use

the commas because the author lynn trust

says

remember the case of ibrahim al-marashi

and how his misplaced

comma gave away that the british

government plagiarized them

that should be the ultimate lesson on

how to use a comma and the importance of

commas and punctuation

okay you might ask how many people have

read this book

it is sold more than a million copies

okay in other words more than

a million people know that i cannot use

commas anyway i did learn how to use

commas but what’s the other takeaway

from this

unfortunately this entire ted experience

is because we are all had gone through

the experience of quarantine none of us

can meet face to face

as a result of this many of us have

endured mental health

uh trauma as a result of the quarantine

some of us may have even lost loved ones

i i personally did lose

relatives in iran due to the coronavirus

and what is the takeaway of this kind of

this

global traumatic experience

well let’s think of the black death

there would have been no

italian renaissance without the black

death that ravaged

uh europe as well as the world

and i want you to think about this if

the we owe the renaissance

to the black death i want you all of you

who are listening right now to think

what renaissance

will you contribute to once

this covet 19 uh

uh pandemic is over what renaissance

will you contribute to and for anyone

watching this now

i want you to think out of that

renaissance that perhaps

you will be giving your own ted talk

based on your silver lining

whether it’s now in a year or in a

couple of years from now

thank you so much