Talk:Stephen F. Hayes

message: the show was Funny, but ...
deleted a section referencing the recent jon stewart smackdown of Hayes on the daily show.  Really not appropriate ... Killtacular 05:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Seems to be where the vandalism is coming from; there or West River. Where are the Weekly Standard offices again?
I'm just askin'. ;) --csloat 11:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Misuse of Wikipedia as a platform to espouse "hypothesises" and "theories" with no basis in fact is not to be tolerated.--MONGO 08:22, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Shady Side, Maryland

message: I'm removing the following text from main space:
"Hayes has explained the contradictions of Cheney saying during the first Gulf War that toppling Saddam Hussein's government would trap the US in a quagmire and his enthusiastic support for it today by claiming that '9/11 changed everything.'"Comedy_central:
It's problematic because Cheney was a signatory to the principles of the Project for the New American Century, which sought global hegemony (the group advocated invading Iraq long before 9/11). This could be fixed by saying "Hayes has attempted to explain the contradictions of Cheney..." or something similar, and noting why his explanation is unsatisfactory. smb 06:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  9/11 Changed Everything 

message: The objective of the edits in May 2008 on Stephen F Hayes are to correct some inaccuracies (it previously stated the Feith memo was based on leaked intelligence. In the former state it could have been written by a left wing blogger one sided. The current version presents factual information on the points of controversy concerning his writings. ---- —Preceding unsigned comment added by DrivelEliminator (talk • contribs) 
:I reverted those edits; this is a biography page, not Stephen Hayes' personal soapbox.  See WP:SOAP and WP:UNDUE.  I have no objection to correcting inaccuracies but you did not do that.  You censored accurate information (the Feith report was in fact based on leaked intel; the Pentagon even issued a public statement about that) and then you filled the page with original research analysis of Hayes' articles on this topic, most of which are not notable.  You also severely skewed the POV so that the whole page has become a defense of Hayes' claims, which every mainstream source (not to mention several independent investigations by the FBI, CIA, State Department intel, DIA, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) has refuted.  I have no objection to adding some of Hayes' responses to his critics, but this is not the place to detail his discredited theories of a Saddam/AQ conspiracy. csloat (talk) 07:05, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  DriveEliminator edits

message: Let me try again on the Feith Memo.
This is what the article says now and abaout which I have an accuracy issue..
  :The so-called Feith Memo was based on leaked intelligence, which the Defense Department subsequently rejected as "inaccurate,"
You mentioned the DOD statement. To understand my objections we need to disect that.
First if you look closely at the DOD statement it says in the first sentance as extracted below..
:News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate. 
To write that sentance in shorter form;
:News Reports that DoD confirmed *new* info [with respect to...] are inaccurate.
They are basically saying the Feith memo does not contain anything "new". So reporting in the press that they have confirmed something "new" is not correct. What needs to be understood about this statement is the first sentance is part of a Rouse. I'll get to that in a bit.
The statement then goes on to say..
"A letter was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Oct. 27, 2003, from Douglas J. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy, in response to follow-up questions from his July 10 testimony. One of the questions posed by the committee asked the department to provide the reports from the intelligence community to which he referred in his testimony before the committee. These reports dealt with the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."
The above says who wrote it and why, as well as the subject matter.
What needs to be understood is there is much more going on here.
The Neo Cons at DOD who leaked the Feith memo to Hayes, followed up with this statement to confirm and lend credance to the points he made in his article. The DOD statement reads to me like a Trojan horse. In the beginning there is an inane reference to inaccuracy in the media, and at the end it has the obligatory leaking is bad, but in the middle it says and that the Hayes colunm publishing items from the Feith Memo contains the considered product of the intelligence community provided with their permission and agreement.
This is what they were really trying to get out and the reason why the statement was produced in the first place. The whole thing about correcting New reports that "New info" being inaccuarte "it is really old stuff" is a clever and very creative device used so they can authenticate what they leaked.
:The letter to the committee included a classified annex containing a list and description of the requested reports, so that the committee could obtain the reports from the relevant members of the intelligence community.
:The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the National Security Agency or, in one case, the Defense Intelligence Agency. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the intelligence community. The selection of the documents was made by DoD to respond to the committee’s question."
Then it says in the next sentance..
:The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions."
This is saying; See, See, See like we said above in the first Sentance this is all nothing new by the DOD, because while it is very real, it is the work product and raw reports of other agencies (not the DOD) that BTW they said we could send to the Intelligence committee.
So this sentance and the first are all a rouse on a nonsensical issue, only to create a reason to state what was in the middle.
VP Chenney has been accused of leaking classified info to the press and then go on TV and refer to it - in an effort to make his point on what ever, with out himself revealing publically classified info. This DOD statement reads to me like another form of the old leak and then talk about the leaked info trick.
So what we have in our Hayes bio article is way off the mark. Hayes was the mouth piece in a high stakes play to shape public opinion on the Iraq/AC subject. The DOD statement was a device to reinforce what Hayes said in his article.
Also it relates that the state of understanding in the intelligence community as late as Oct 27, 2003 was not at all decided in terms of Al Qaeda/Iraq ties. The Feith had lots of details much of which was proved inaccurate, but at a much later date.
Sorry to be so long winded this time, but I just want you to understand the nature of my objection to the sentance saying the DOD issued a statement saying the Feith memo was based on leaked Intel and is inaccurate. That is just not true.
I'll propose something to replace it later.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.118.240.220 (talk) 02:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think this is the place for a hermeneutic exegesis of a DOD memo.  If you think there is a significant difference in our interpretations, let us quote it verbatim and keep our interpretations out of it; I think some of your points are hair-splitting (e.g. the placement of the word "new") to come up with a novel interpretation.  It is not appropriate for the article to say that Hayes was a mouthpiece in a DOD play or that the DOD was trying to do the opposite of what everyone concluded it was doing -- you may believe those things, and you may even be right, but that is original research that is not appropriate on Wikipedia.  If you have articles from reliable sources interpreting the DOD's memo in this manner, it might be relevant on an article about the Feith memo but it still doesn't seem that relevant here.  If you have a reliable source concluding that Hayes was a pawn in Cheney's chessgame or whatever, that would probably be relevant here - but I'm looking above and all I see is your interpretation concluding that.  It's not OK for Wikipedia to even mention your or my interpretation given the original research issue.  Finally, you are also wrong that "the state of understanding in the intelligence community as late as Oct 27, 2003 was not at all decided in terms of Al Qaeda/Iraq ties" -- by then both the CIA and DIA had concluded that there was no evidence of ties between the two forces.  The public may not have been made aware of it, and certainly they went and did more investigations, but they forwarded their conclusions to the Bush Administration and the SSCI (who eventually published their reports in 2004 and 2006).  But the definitive CIA conclusion was reached in January 2003 (this was later confirmed in a separate report in 2004).  The material in the Feith report was known by the Intel community to be largely inaccurate when the report was made public; that's why so many in the intel community were disturbed by its release.   If your only objection is that the memo was leaked intel (and not "based on" leaked intel), I think we can make that adjustment easily without all the other changes you suggested.  Cheers, csloat (talk) 03:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

text: I thought you earlier wrote that the memo and the annex were one and the same?  I don't know of a link to the memo itself but Hayes' article about it quotes it extensively.  I seem to recall the memo being posted on Pat Lang's site but I haven't seen it recently and that could be totally wrong.  Anyway I'm not sure I agree with your interp of the DOD press release but if we quote it directly it won't matter which interpretation is correct. csloat (talk) 08:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objections on present wording about Feith Memo 

message: Change the order of two paragraphs to improve the flow. In the existing the first paragraph delves into the 9/11 aspect in June of 2004, and the second paragraph goes back to the Feith memo in late 2003. If we reverse the order it will hang together better.
Existing
:The arguments raised by Hayes about the Saddam/al-Qaeda relationship have been mostly discounted; they have been rejected by almost all counterterrorism experts and intelligence analysts, as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and by the Bush administration itself. What Hayes called "perhaps the government's strongest indication that Saddam and al Qaeda may have worked together on September 11,"[7] for example, has been described by some other analysts as a mere confusion over names that sounded alike.[8]
:Former head of the Middle East section of the DIA W. Patrick Lang told the Washington Post that the Weekly Standard article which published Feith's memo "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" And, according to the Post, "another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather 'data points ... among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.'"[9]
Proposed
:Former head of the Middle East section of the DIA W. Patrick Lang told the Washington Post that the Weekly Standard article which published Feith's memo "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" And, according to the Post, "another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather 'data points ... among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.'"[9]
:The arguments raised by Hayes about the Saddam/al-Qaeda relationship have been mostly discounted; they have been rejected by almost all counterterrorism experts and intelligence analysts, as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and by the Bush administration itself. What Hayes called "perhaps the government's strongest indication that Saddam and al Qaeda may have worked together on September 11,"[7] for example, has been described by some other analysts as a mere confusion over names that sounded alike.[8]
DrivelEliminator (talk) 20:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This change makes sense to me :) csloat (talk) 23:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some minor formatting changes for the article proposed 

message: The following Sentance does not meet Wikipedia standards for a living person's bio.
:The arguments raised by Hayes about the Saddam/al-Qaeda relationship have been mostly discounted; they have been rejected by almost all counterterrorism experts and intelligence analysts, as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and by the Bush administration itself.
I'm not raising an issue of accuracy. The problem is; it is a very broad based sweeping statement, taking a point of view on the authors "arguements" and is unattributed. Hence whether true or not it constitutes original reseaach, and perhaps a problem with WP:NPOV - as is.
I don't have a good solution. Best I can come up with is a pointer where Leiken makes statements similarly as sweeping, and Guaratna makes statements. But it was in the text of a lengthy symposuim (like reading War and Peace) to get to the references.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30B099F2-0C06-4BC0-AD25-6258BD40E184
It might be better to quote them or some one else saying x,y,z intelligence agencies have concluded etc.
I haven't removed it but that should be considered unless a replacement or appropriate attribution can be made.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by DrivelEliminator (talk • contribs) 05:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think quoting Gunaratna and Leiken on the matter would be a good solution, or at least referencing them. csloat (talk) 09:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Robert S. Leinken, a Director at the Nixon Center and Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institute cited the 9/11 Commission Report’s  conclusion that they had found “no evidence [of] a collaborative operational relationship.” [between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime]  and the Senate Intelligence committee Report’s finding that the CIA’s conclusion [of the same] was “reasonable and objective.”  in an article he published for In The National Interest. [Leiken, In The National Interest]:[http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/November2004/November2004Leiken.html
He further stated at the Symposium: The Saddam-Osama Connection sponsored by Front Page Magazine “These conclusions echoed the judgment of virtually every outside expert and government authority.”, then provided similar quotes from Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary, Kenneth Pollack, the former NSC and CIA point man on Iraq, as well as French and Spanish Magistrates heading investigations into Al-Qaeda.
[Leiken, Front Page Magazine]:
DrivelEliminator (talk) 23:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Research issue with sentance starting as The arguements raised by Hayes 

message: The Antiwar.com article is inviolation of Wikipedia standards for a Biography of Living Persons WP:BLP.
See WP:QS sources that rely heavily on Parsonal Opinion
See WP:SPS Blogs.. largely not acceptable. Should never be used as 3rd party sources about Living Persons
See WP:SELFPUB violates item 2, so long as it is not contentious
The author of this calls Hayes a Nobody, Hack, and characterizes Hayes's POV as "Risable".
Under Wikipedia guidelines I have excersized immediate removal of the source - prior to discussion.
DrivelEliminator (talk) 18:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issue with source in Zarqawi section 

message: The opening sentence of this section is:
"In 2002, Hayes also gained some attention with a piece exposing former PBS host Bill Moyers as a journalist, activist and financier of left-leaning public affairs bias."
"Hayes also..." also what?  
We are categorically stating that Bill Moyers was "exposed"?
As a journalist? 
This section, if even noteworthy, is terribly written and should contain 3rd-person citations rather than consisting almost entirely of statements made by Mr. Hayes himself. It should also not make the conclusion that Moyers was "exposed" as this, that, or the other. 98.16.158.7 (talk) 01:45, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bill Moyers dispute