Talk:Sami Mohy El Din Muhammed Al Hajj

	NOTICE, please do not remove from top of page.
	No "from wikipedia" disclaimer is necessary because I was the sole author of this version. George Swan 19:00, 3 May 2008 (CDT)
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Reconciling references and assertions; formatting

This citation appeared, as the second in a row, after the introduction. <ref name=CNews20080502> {{cite news | url=http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2008/05/02/5453806-ap.html | title=Freed cameraman: Gitmo getting worse | publisher=[[CNews]] | author=[[Mohamed Osman]] | date=May 2, 2008 | accessdate=2008-05-03 | quote= }}</ref>

There is, however, no citation for the report: "It was reported that his interrogators devoted their attention to trying to get him to confess to knowledge of a tie between Al Jazeera and Al Qaida." I moved this here, as "it was reported" rather demands a citation.

Again, successive citations: why three about the release? Latter two moved here:<ref name=AlJazeera20080502> {{cite news | url=http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/04F88FBD-BFA5-42D9-A9C4-D8E0979C79D6.htm | title=Sami al-Hajj hits out at US captors | publisher=[[Al Jazeera]] | date=May 2 2008 | accessdate=2008-05-02 | quote= }}</ref><ref name=AlJazeera20080502b> {{cite news | url=http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C59237D2-5E9B-430D-88D3-0596D969FD39.htm | title=Sami al-Hajj arrives in Sudan | publisher=[[Al Jazeera]] | date=May 2 2008 | accessdate=2008-05-03 | quote= }}</ref>

"Sami Al Hajj had to be removed from the airplane on a stretcher." What airplane? When? According to whom?

Table formatting for non-tabular information takes up a great deal of whitespace and is hard to read. There was the note, in edit comments, " I am embedding this quote in a table, not a {{quotation}} template, because one can't include {{sic}} templates in a {{quotation}} template. And one can't include octothorps. " I don't understand — we don't have a sic template. What's wrong with [sic]? Why is it necessary to include octothorpes?

I'm only guessing that this was an attempt to replicate the exact formatting of the primary document. There's no need to do that.Howard C. Berkowitz 04:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Time magazine reported:

Although Al-Hajj is still trying to comprehend how his life was so drastically transformed, he says he believes he was targeted simply because he worked for Al Jazeera. "Ninety percent of my interrogations were about Al Jazeera," he told TIME earlier this month. "I was interrogated more than 200 times, even a few hours before my release. I kept telling them I was just a cameraman."

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo File, wrote:

Wadah Khanfar, the director general of al-Jazeera, who was in Khartoum to welcome Sami back, was "overwhelmed with joy" at Sami's safe return, but was critical of how the US military had treated him, persistently attempting to recruit him to spy on al-Jazeera, to "prove" a link between the network and Osama bin Laden that does not exist.

Removing references

Howard, you removed some references, that you thought were extraneous...
And you expressed concerns over a statement that you thought was unreferenced.

However, the Al-Jazeera reference you removed, on the basis of redundancy, stated:

"Al-Hajj, who arrived at the airport in the capital Khartoum early on Friday from more than six years in captivity, was carried off the aircraft in a stretcher. He appeared too weak to talk and was immediately taken to hospital where his wife and son were on their way to meet him."

So, the reference you removed, because you perceived it be extraneous, supported a statement you perceived as unreferenced.

Could you please confirm that you have no objection to the re-insertion of this reference? George Swan 19:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I have absolutely no objection to re-inserting the reference if it's next to the text it supports. My problem was with three citations in a row on the first sentence, but then subsequent sentences/paragraphs with no citations. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, I note, unless I have the wrong spelling, we have no articles for Al-Jazeera, Al-Qaeda, and many other important unifying concepts. Some years ago, I did some research on al-Jazeera, and found some quite surprising things.

In like manner, there are both correct and incorrect assumptions about al-Qaeda; it's not nearly as simplistic an enemy as some politicians want to make it. Its heritage with Azzam and Qutb, and their organizations, are important. If the Manchester Manual and similar materials are authentic, they should link to it. Some of the Clandestine cell system#Non-traditional models, exemplified by al-Qaeda are critical to understanding it but are little understood.

I can't stress strongly enough, Mr. Swan, that I believe these articles would be enormously improved if more of the unifying articles I mention just above existed, were under active development, and had these more specific articles linked to them directly, Related Articles pages, or both. Part of the difficulty I have with some articles at the level of prisoners is that I can't get a broader picture. In my sandbox, I am working on a much more general article on interrogation policy and practice, and to some extent detention operations; I hope it will fill some of that role. In like manner, a bin Laden doesn't really have context without some broader issues of theories of jihad, both the Soviet-occupied Afghanistan War (1978–1992) with the "blowback" into radical movements, the current situation in the Afghanistan War (2001-2021), etc. I urge you to collaborate with such unification.

Arguing at the levels of document titles and source citation is not necessarily the best use of our time. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:55, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Your questions about the plane Al Hajj flew on...

Can I ask why you wanted the citizendium article to specify what airplane he was carried off of? Are you in any doubt that it was an American plane?

If any of our references noted that the plane's serial numbers, and it turned out to be one of the "Ghost planes" that plane spotters noted, allowing the CIA's flights to be mapped, that would certainly be worth noting in our article. If any of our references noted that the plane was a US military plane, or, alternately, a chartered US civilian plane, that would probably be worth noting.

But none of the references I came across offer that information.

There were negotiations over whether Australian Mahmoud Habib could be allowed to fly home to Australia -- almost a 24 hour flight -- without wearing shackles. The USA would not fly Habib home, without shackles, on a US plane. And they would not allow Australian security officials to take custody of him, and escort him, unshackled, on a commercial airliner. The only condition under which they would agree that Habib would be allowed to leave Guantanamo, without shackles, was if the Australian government chartered a plane to take Habib directly from Guantanamo to Australia. Even the captives whose CSRT determined that they were not enemies were flown from Guantanamo in shackles. George Swan 19:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

What plane means "who controlled the plane". Its country of registry would be nice, to see if this was an international operation. "But none of the references I came across offer that information." In other words, you don't know, you are guessing it is American, and guesses don't belong in encyclopedia articles.

Do I have the slightest doubt it was an American plane? As "American" plane would be defined by the International Civil Aeronautics Organization, or, for that matter, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, yes. It might have been a chartered UAE or Sudanese plane; I have no idea.

You will find, George, that I will argue the most with lack of precision in terminology, variously international law or terms of art in military and intelligence. I don't mind accurate description of reprehensible conduct. I do mind taking a specific U.S. example and assuming that is the way it is done by all countries, or indeed all U.S. officials.

What is your point, on this talk page, of talking about the shackles? Let me assume, arguendo, that your concern is that is a human rights/abuse issue. If so, it doesn't belong in an article about a specific captive. It belongs in a more general article about the treatment of prisoners. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

"Guesses don't belong in an encyclopedia." Howard, I don't think anyone has suggested regular citizens' guesses belong in article space.

When my references didn't specify whether the plane was part of the ghost plane fleet, and didn't specify its nationality, or whether it was a civilian or military plane, I didn't include any guesses in article space. Specifically, I never placed a guess on the plane's provenance in article space.

While speculation doesn't belong in article space, when good faith contributors are trying to collaborate, I thought discussions of issues and opinions that aren't referenced are among what is appropriate. I thought good faith contributors should be working to agree on what else the article should include, what should be removed, and what kind of references that haven't yet been supplied, should be supplied. It seems to me that for this kind of good faith collaboration to take place contributors are going to make comments that may not be referenced.

Howard, no one has challenged your credentials, or experience. I have done a lot of reading about the captives. I offered you the information about the conditions under which the captives were flown home because I thought you may not have been aware of it, and I thought it might be significant. George Swan 22:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Talk pages are for improving articles. No, I don't discussions of issues and opinions that are neither not referenced, nor of general knowledge to people familiar with the field, are relevant, since, without additional information, they can never go into the article.

Personal opinion, not speaking as an editor: I don't think these individual prisoner articles should be in CZ at all, at least if they remain orphaned, and there are no articles explaining the policy and politics. I do not regard CZ as a place to "raise awareness" or "encourage the asking of questions", unless the discussion has a direct contribution to article(s). As far as the conditions under which the prisoners were flown, given the existence of wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of people, dispossessed millions, and wasted billions in treasure, no, I'm not particularly interested in how someone was flown home. At least they went home, as opposed to a lot of people, of a lot of citizenships, who can never go home alive. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, talk pages are for improving the citizendium project. I thought that included raising questions about material that someone thought might have a place in article space. I thought a good-faith contributor might run a question up the flag pole, and look for feedback like:

1. bad idea, that could never fit, don't do any more work on this;
2. bad idea, you will never be able to find references for that;
3. I don't know about that idea, but if you want to look for references, I can suggest a couple of place for you to look;
4. okay, maybe, but you would need this kind of reference first;
5. okay, but it should be covered as a subsection of this other article, over there;
6. great idea, full speed ahead!

It seems to me that requiring authors to dig up references before they run a question up the flag pole makes their collaboration on the project a lot more work -- work that would be a waste of time if the feedback they get is that the idea would never fit. I would prefer to wait to do the work of marshaling references until after I got positive feedback.

Could you please reconsider whether you agree authors should be allowed this freedom, on talk pages? George Swan 23:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a judgment call. I'm willing to entertain it, if and when it is generally agreed the point is important but it may be hard to source. Personally, I rarely run things up the flagpole unless I have evidence; until I have evidence, why should I think the topic is worth including? In certain cases, I have fairly detailed experience with the subject and may suggest something I'm reasonably sure I can document. In contrast, I'm working on an article on command responsibility, and would like to bring up issues concerned with some ethically complex orders that I believe, from talking to pilots directly involved and having nightmares years later, to strafe refugee columns being used for cover by the North Korean People's Army. Until I can find documentation, I woudn't even bring it up on a talk page, unless I thought there might be an expert available.

In this case, I don't begin to see why the point is particularly important. I personally don't expect that level of feedback until I have some text with at least preliminary references. Again, if I don't have a fair idea how to source "material that someone thought might have a place in article space", I won't bring it up in the context of an encyclopedia. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC)