State of the Union Plagiarism

Innnnteresting!

An Atrios reader discovered some plagiarism in the State of the Union. The following is shamefully ripped off from Atrios.

On October 20th, 2003, Rep. Peter Hoekstra wrote an op-ed in the Detroit News where he said:

The group's report uncovers dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.

In the State of the Union on January 20, 2004, Bush said:

Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.

Since the same person probably wrote both, it's not really plagiarism. It's just shameful. And shamefully easy to find in the age of Google.

The construction of this phrase is so tortured. I would've thought the PR flacks would have time to clean it up after a few months.

Update: Looks like they both lifted the tongue-mangling phrase verbatium from the Kay report. From a speech Kay gave: "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002."

I hope Kay will continue to be vigilant in his search for "program activities".