Talk:Sami Al Laithi

"pre-trial detention"?
A user, who feels I write with a biased POV, has added {disputed} tags, with similar wording, to a number of articles related to the "global war on terror" which I have contributed to. IMO, they seem unaware that they have a distinct POV of their own. They added:


 * "Pretrial detention in Guantanamo Bay. Essentially this article, like all the others, sources from the press releases of defense counsel. Those press releases end up in the newspapers. This is not a criticism of Clive, he is doing what lawyers do. The issue is whether an encyclopedia loses credibility by becoming a megaphone for one point of view."

IMO saying the Guantanamo detainees are in "pretrial detention" suggests a strongly biased POV. Just four of the detainees have been charged. It is unlikely that more than a slight fraction of the detainees will ever be charged. FBI agents withdrew from the interrogations. IIRC they withdrew because, in their expert opinion, the interrogation techniques used were too extreme, and would cause the charges to be dropped, if the detainees were ever to be charged and tried in a US court of law.

Shouldn't the person who puts a {disputed} notice on an article feel an obligation to be specific about what they think is disputable, in the article's talk page?

Explanation of both sides were offered
I agree that a one-sided presentation doesn't serve the wikipedia. But I don't believe that the article was one-sided. Readers can decide to keep an open mind, and wait, before the make up their mind on how Sami al Laithi came to be paralyzed. Or they can decide they know enough already. This article gives both Al Laithi's side, that a beating crippled him -- and the authorities version, that when Sami al Laithi arrived in the camp he already had the injury which would cripple him. So, IMO, it is not "unbalanced".

The publicly known details of Sami al Laithi's capture, transportation to Cuba, detention and release, may not show the actions of the Bush administration in the most positive light. But, so long as what the article says is sourced and verifiable, so long as it avoids inflammatory language, and attempts to give the other side, such as it is, I do not believe the article can be accused of a biased POV.

IMO a NPOV does not require using euphemism so clouded that the nature of what is being described is cloaked to irrelevancy. As I have suggested to the disputatious wikipedian, if slavery was still legally being practiced today, we would not let the spin doctors of the slavery industry to force us to mask the true nature of the slavery by forcing us to call the slaves a euphemism like, "beneficiaries of life-time job-security".

Clouding incidents that do not show the Bush administration in the best light in euphemisms, or stripping mention of them from the wikipedia altogether, without any explanation or any attempt at discussion -- as the disputer has done in other articles -- does not serve to enhance the wikipedia's reputation for reliability and objectivity. It may not reflect well that the Bush administration declined to release Sami al Laithi's medical records to his lawyer. But they did decline. And no amount of wishful thinking will change this.

Maybe they did finally release his records to him when they repatriated him on October 3rd. If so news of the release of the medical records has not been made public. If the records are released, and they show he did receive adequate medical care for his paralysis, if an outside expert's review of the records show the paralysis was the result of a pre-existing condition, not a brutal beating, I will be the first to change this article to reflect that. -- Geo Swan 15:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)