Talk:Periodic Report of the United States of America to the United Nations Committee Against Torture

message: Just for starters:
:We have made mistakes: of the detainees we have released, we have later recaptured or killed about 5% of them while they were engaged in hostile action against U.S. forces.
The use of the word "terrorist" is emotive and should not be used.
--Philip Baird Shearer 10:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: POV

message: I am re-instating the NPOV tag because this article makes no attempt to represent a balanced point of view whatsoever.
It presents the US government view, without any attempt at objectivity, even though many aspects of the official US position have been exposed as blatant falsehoods.
For what it is worth the IP number 169.229.94.163, the wikipedian who removed much of the limited attempts to introduce balance to this article, traces to the Office of the President, University of California,  I wrote the following email to President Dynes.
:"You may have read how Congressional staffers were recently detected trying to subvert the free encyclopedia, wikipedia, for partisan political purposes.
:"The wikipedia allows anyone to contribute.  They can log in, and be identified.  Or they can make edits semi-anonymously, identified only by the IP address of their computer.  That is what the Congressional staffers were doing.
:"Someone from your office is using the computers in your office to introduce partisan political comment to the wikipedia's coverage of the US response to allegation that the USA has abused suspects in the War on Terror.
:"Of course your employees enjoy the right of free speech -- on their own time.  But, may I ask if you really want them to use your office to obfuscate their identities?  If they want to express themselves, may I suggest you request they sign in, and do so, on their own time, on their own personal computers?
::Cordially,"  --  Geo Swan 15:34, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reinstating NPOV as of 06/01/31

message: This article is about the report - I think it needs to be  decided what the scope is within that.  At the moment it looks like a paraphrase/summary of the report (to an uniformed observer).  That's fine, but it should be crystal clear that's what it is.  Alternatively if the article is to include criticism of the report, it should be seperated from  the summary/paraphrase, and well sourced.  Having the sentence
"Of at least two of them we know for sure they have been mistreated by US operational staff: Habibullah and Dilawar. See Bagram torture and prisoner abuse for full story." 
in the middle of the summary is almost surreal.  It's also written in a way that ould barely be acceptable on a talk page. I'll change that - but I haven't the stomach for re-writing or re-organising the whole article.  However if anyone can take it on and wants help with parts, just ask. Rich   Farmbrough 03:28 7  March 2006 (UTC).
:Personally, I think what this article needs a cheat sheet to help readers translate the blatantly POV euphemisms.  For instance the article asserts that the Guantanamo detainees are in -pre-trial detention-.  So far only ten of the detainees have been charged.  And they have not been charged in a court of law.  The wikipedia is supposed to present balanced articles.  A bald paraphrase/summary of a deceptive Bush administration report fails WP:NOT.  --  Geo Swan 22:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope 

message: I went through the references last night, changing how they were presented.  This article isn't so much a summary/paraphrase of the original report as a cut-and-paste inclusion of almost the entire original document.
If the works of the employees of US Federal agencies are in the public domain then this is not a copyright violation.  But I believe it violates WP:NOT and should be transferred to wikisource.  --  Geo Swan 16:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Transwiki

message: This article started as a cut and paste job.  It seriously detracts from the quality of the wikipedia, because it is so obviously biased.  And because legitimate wikipedia contributors find themselves tempted to tune bits and pieces of it, not realizing that it was originally plagiarized from executive branch press releases.
Several of us discussed its drawbacks.  No one suggested any redeeming qualities.  Since then no one has felt motivated to rewrite it.
I think it is time for it to be deleted.
The ironic aspect is that the person who cut and pasted dozens of pages of press releases, verbatim, tried to chastise me for occassionally summarizing from the press releases of the defense attorneys of Guantanamo detainees.  --  Geo Swan 21:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Time to AfD this article?