Talk:James Risen

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Contents 1 Recent edits to "Reports on government surveillance programs" 2 Please provide sources 3 Claim removed from State of War 4 A puzzling edit

[edit] Recent edits to "Reports on government surveillance programs"

Adalie, I can understand that you feel very strongly about these stories. But your edits to this section clearly reflect only one point of view -- the government's -- both in terms of the nature of the programs and the details of the reports. Especially given the secret nature of the programs, the administration's characterizations of them cannot automatically be presumed to be accurate. And when making accusations of illegality against a living person, it is critically important to provide verifiable sources for your statements, and to also include sourced statements describing the person's stated defenses (if any), to avoid immediate deletion on the grounds of WP:LIBEL. Kickaha Ota 01:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please provide sources

In articles about currently controversial events (and the whole James Risen/New York Times saga would certainly qualify as a red-hot controversy), it is very important that editors provide sources. This should not be hard, since this controversy seems to have been the subject of approximately 1.2 metric assloads (or 1.4 Imperial assloads) of articles in the last week or so. Kickaha Ota 00:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

And while finding sources, please don't forget about the verifiability requirements. Given the extensive coverage of this topic, it should not be difficult to find verifiable articles in newspapers, magazines or news web sites. By definition, saying "Classified sources" (as a recent editor did) is not a verifiable source -- but a newspaper or magazine article talking about what classified sources are saying would be fine. Kickaha Ota 01:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Claim removed from State of War

The discussion of State of War previously mentioned that the book claims that the CIA disregarded intelligence reports that Iraq was not currently attempting to rebuild its nuclear program. This statement was removed. It seems appropriate for the article and I'm inclined to restore it; but would the person who removed it like to explain the reasoning for the removal? 206.253.199.122 19:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Oops. I didn't intend for that to be an anonymous edit. And after seeing some of the other edits from this proxy IP, I especially didn't intend for it to be an anonymous edit. :) Kickaha Ota 19:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A puzzling edit

Could someone please explain the purpose of this edit? I could understand someone thinking that Mr. Risen's family isn't important enough for the intro paragraph, but it sure doesn't seem relevant to government surveillance programs either. :) Kickaha Ota 01:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)