User talk:Guccisamsclub/Archive 1

Dispute with TTAAC
I'll take up a few of the less than relevant points here. First, some of the issues that came up in the course of the dispute:
 * 1) Why were the atrocities in East Timor quantified in the article, but not the Cambodian genocide or the events in Laos?
 * As TTAAC thankfully agrees, Ford, Kissinger and Carter greenlighted and extensively armed the invasion of East Timor by Suharto (IOET). Their role is routinely discussed in connection to the invasion and its human repercussions. Nobody holds them to be directly culpable in the same sense as Suharto, but they are culpable nonetheless. In contrast, the US neither financed nor enabled the Democratic Kampuchea regime when it was committing its atrocities. Laos is irrelevant for the same reason. Furthermore, and in stark contrast to both East Timor and Cambodia, the "genocide" of one quarter of the Hmong population of Laos is not at all well documented. Insurgency in Laos contains just two sources making this claim, one of which is the dubious Rummel (citing a source citing from the Hmong president), another which is obscure (possibly quoting same source). For a different account see The Historical Dictionary of Laos or a review in CAS (incidentally, a journal that Cribb has been associated with for decades). This numerical claim is almost impossible to find in the serious literature (and I happen to have few books on hand). Yet despite the relative lack of documentation for his strong claim, TTAAC has no problem declaring that "Pathet Lao's post-1975 campaign against the Hmong—even though both likely surpass Indonesia's crimes in East Timor". And it is statements like these, that have prompted me to condemn TTAAC's attempts at play "little professor". When editors falsely assume the mantle of expertise, they disrupt wikipedia and derail the conversation.
 * 1) Why is East Timor not quantified in the same way in the articles on Carter or Ford or Suharto?
 * The article on Suharto quantifies the claim in the lede, though it uses a raw number and cites a minimum estimate. There is no rule that says we must avoid fractions or that we must use the lowest estimates available. If we follow TTAAC over to the Khmer Rouge article, we'll see that that article uses the maximum estimate - justifiably so, because the best estimates are in the 1.5-2.0 million range. On lower-quality articles, editors take whatever numbers they fancy, regardless of pedigree, and run with them. As for Carter and Ford - I've already conceded that point. I have no objection to including quantitative information about East Timor in those articles. Similarly to Cheney, Kissinger is painted as the black sheep, which may let other members of the American establishment off the hook.
 * 1) What are the estimates for East Timor?
 * 2) *We can refer to Indonesian_occupation_of_East_Timor for most of the estimates, none of which are plucked from thin air. They don't need to be: scholars have not one, but four censuses, all of which neatly circumscribe the period in 75-80 question and point to a death toll of between 112 and 300 thousand. It is extremely rare to have such a wealth of census data - whatever its imperfections - both before and after a demographic catastrophe. So in the case of Cambodia, scholars had only the 1981 census to work with and the pre-1975 population had to be extrapolated from other data or taken as on an educated guess. On the other hand, researchers of the Cambodian genocide did have the advantage of collecting surveys and accounts right after the fall of the Pol Pot regime. In East Timor, this only became fully possible after independence, which occurred nearly 20 years after the deadly first phase of the indonesian occupation. Needless to say it made HDRAG's survey far more difficult and required them to work around the inevitable undercounting.
 * 3) *The estimates cluster around 200K from 1975-1980. HRW, Benedict Anderson, Dunn, Taylor - all authorities on the topic - estimate 200K or close to it, an Amnesty International Study from the late 1980's estimates the same figure). Cribb also notes that 200K is the most widely accepted estimate. However both Kiernan and Cribb reject this figure as a midline estimate for the period - their estimates are lower.
 * 4) *Defert, a demographer, and Aditjondro define the upper bound at around 300K for the 75-80. Defert proposes 170K as a conservative estimate using the official census, and 308K as a maximum using Church figures. I am persuaded by Kiernan and Cribb that these higher numbers are implausible - but what the hell do I know?
 * 5) *To this we can add some figures from insiders that are not cited in IOEC:
 * -A Church estimate of 60-100K from late 1976 (Kiernan)
 * -An estimate of 50-100K by Indonesia's foreign minister in March 1977 (cited by Kiernan)
 * -An estimate of 120K, given in late 1979 by the next foreign minister (cited by Kiernan, Taylor)
 * 1) * The main point of the CAVR/HDRAG study study had been to establish the minimum number. For paper that attempts to estimating the a reasonable "high number" (using conservative assumptions), see Staveteig 2007. Her estimate is 204K +/- 51K.
 * 2) *An early estimate by Waddingham of 133 - 217K, which Kiernan claims to independently corroborate
 * 3) Kiernan on East Timor
 * 4) * The IOET article quotes Kiernan for the 150K figure for the 75-80 period. If we include the famine that began in 1981, Kiernan would be in line with Defert's 170K, whom he cites favourably on this issue. I'd be happy to change my text to read "approximately one fifths from 1975-1980" if that makes TTAAC feel better.
 * 5) *Kiernan's estimate is far from excessive, relative to the full range. Of course TTAAC can argue that the higher estimates are bunk and that the lowest estimates are correct, but that would be blatant OR.
 * 6) Kiernan on KR death toll, relative to other estimates
 * A few quotes from Heuveline:
 * "Cambodia had then lost an estimated 1.5 to 2.0 million people to excess mortality (Heuveline 1998; Kiernan 1996; Sliwinski 1995)" (Heuveline 2007)
 * "Kiernan has continued to maintain that the figure is over 1.5 million (Kiernan and Boua 1982; Kiernan 1993, 1996). Lacking a firm consensus, 'about one million' or 'over one million' are the most frequently quoted estimates, as in Chandler's authoritative history of Cambodia (1996, p. 212)." (Heuveline 1998)
 * "For 1975-78 alone, my results are closest to Kiernan and Sliwinski's estimates of 1.7 and 1.8 million respectively excess deaths, although mine are not inconsistent with any of the estimates made in the past".(Heuveline 1998)
 * But perhaps TTAAC has this in mind: "As best as can now be estimated, over two million Cambodians died during the 1970s because of the political events of the decade, the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the “Khmer Rouge” regime."(Heuveline 2001). Unfortunately: "Heuveline suggests a figure of 2.2 million, but subsequently indicated that had inadvertently neglected to subtract the toll of the war. He stresses, however, that "any POINT estimate is by nature uncertain and that in the case of Cambodia, the uncertainty is high." (personal communication, 5/10/2005)" (Counting Hell, Sharp)
 * Quite recently, Heuveline has produced somewhat higher numbers, apparently. But he has yet published anything to that effect, at least not to my knowledge. At any rate, please forgive Kiernan for not his delay in changing his own estimates based on breaking news. Kiernan finally seems to be losing the "ethnic auction", which as everyone knows is how scholarly disputes are supposed to be settled (unless its east Timor naturally).
 * 1) *As anyone remotely familiar with the historiography of the Cambodian genocide knows, Kiernan's estimate had been the highest serious one for quite some time. Sliwinski narrowly beat him by 100-200K or so in the late 1990's, but Kiernan has since readjusted his range to accommodate higher numbers. Of course Etcheson at one point tried to imply that the number was closer to the 3+ million touted by the PRK (having counted all the bodies, naturally), but later retracted it.
 * 2) *To conclude, let's consider the full range of estimates (note that Heuveline's figure in the graph is likely wrong, as discussed above; note that Kiernan considers 1.8 million possible; also note the Neupert/Prum study which employs similar methodology to Heuveline but arrives as much lower figures.)

Now some minor issues, from the NPOV board post: Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) Re: "drive-by editors and Sanders: I was not even aware of Sanders' criticism when I made the edit. In fact that's how I learned about Sanders' criticism. As my edit history shows, my primary interest is the Cold War in general and East Asia in particular - mostly the latter. Calling C.J. Griffin, myself (and probably a few other serious editors) "drive by editors" perfectly encapsulates TTAAC's sense of ownerwhip over articles. So does his insistence that others "get consensus" when he is the one making making the [problematic] [edit]. So does his tendency to want set the agenda on any given topic, ruthlessly weeding out source material that he considers "undue", a judgement often based on on little more than his own political preferences and original research. When the sources genuinely are crap, nobody objects. But TTAAC frequently overreaches and attacks important and reliably sourced material, refuses compromise and invariable gets into conflict with other editors.
 * 2) Is Cambodia Genocide Denial a "serious issue"?
 * 3) *Serious or not, it is irrelevant to the discussion. The charge can be leveled at many of the scholars who have made crucial contributions to genocide (or whatever you want to call it) recognition (examples include Chandler, Vickery, Kiernan and probably Heder) and virtually all Cambodia specialists active in the late 1970's. In contrast, our current understanding of the Khmer Rouge owes almost nothing to Ponchaud, Barron/Paul or Lacouture, whose evidence for mega-killings varied from shaky to fraudulent. If we had this dispute c. 1995 - you'd be arguing that Kiernan's Cambodia figures were implausibly high because Karl Jackson and other "non-former-deniers" came up with lower figures.
 * 4) *The term "denial" is commonly reserved for those who deny in the face of overwhelming evidence (Climate change denial, Armenian genocide denial, Holocaust denial, Katyn denial and so on), not for those who refused to extrapolate a mega-killing from scraps of evidence. Of course, some of these "skeptics" did also support the Khmer Rouge to a degree, but there is nonetheless a clear conceptual difference between skepticism and support. Would anyone aside from the most partisan observers have believed that 100-200K Timorese were massacred based on similar evidence? The answer is painfully obvious.
 * 5) *In Kiernan's case, this "genocide denial" smearing is particularly inane, and is loosely based on a couple of things, he wrote at around the age of 23 and on his unspecified affiliation with News from Kampuchea, from which he apparently got booted for insufficiently suporting Pol Pot. By 1978, before the overthrow, Kiernan was already completely opposed to Pol Pot's regime. This "controversy" gets one-third of the space in Ben Kiernan, and draws on the most dubious sources available. Right, nothing "undue" about that. It should also be noted that the manufacturers of this "controversy" (whose ranks included Jeldres, a genocide denier) firmly supported the Cold War policy of aiding and abetting the KR-dominated resistance during the 1980-90s; Kiernan opposed it. They saw Kiernan's work on the genocide as KR-bashing directed at bolstering Vietnam and the PRK. So they thought it a good idea to sabotage Kiernan's efforts to document the KR genocide. They claimed Kiernan was "the wrong man" for that job, despite the fact that they themselves had done zero work on the issue. Kiernan's discusses this catfight here and here
 * Gucci is arguing that virtually all academic specialists supported the Khmer Rouge because that was a reasonable position based on the evidence available at the time, and that academia is insanely far to the Left only insofar as Leftism is synonymous with reality and the truth. I do not accept these assumptions.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, so maybe conservapedia is the place for you? And do answer: would you accept an allegation that 100-200K were slaughtered in East Timor based on a few refugee accounts, fake or cryptic quotes, or KGB propaganda? Seems hypocritical.Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:24, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I can't respond to a false premise (namely, that there was more evidence of atrocities in East Timor than Cambodia), but I will take this opportunity to mock one of your sources above for blaming the far-left academic campaign to defend the KR during 1975-1979 on the CIA's 1980 report "Kampuchea: A Democratic Catastrophe"—by pretending that the CIA's "estimate" (in reality, an assumption plucked from thin air for the purposes of the study and based solely on the number of potential targets) of 50,000-100,000 members of the old regime executed in just one purge was the CIA's estimate for the total number of executions carried out by the KR and that "interestingly, the CIA did not explicitly report the excess deaths during the Khmer Rouge period of April 1975-January 1979", although the CIA actually gave an (admittedly too low) figure of 1.5 million. (Chomsky maintains that this figure was chosen to "whitewash" the crimes of the KR—though it would be an odd way of doing so—while simultaneously citing the CIA as his source for the claim that U.S. bombing killed 600,000 Cambodian civilians—as in, "I didn't say it; the CIA said it!"—although, of course, the CIA report says nothing of the kind.) The deniers in general and Chomsky in particular were not merely selective with the evidence, but creative with the evidence, to the point where Chomsky credited the KR with saving up to one million lives: "U.S. officials predicted at the war's end that a million people would starve in a year. It appears that the new regime was at least partially able to avoid this consequence of the war." The American prediction actually referred to the anticipated Khmer Rouge "bloodbath": "In CIA jargon, the agency has "no assets" left in Cambodia. The analysts can only make agonizing guesses about what has happened to the three million men, women, and children. For many, the forced evacuation must have been a death march. The aged and the ailing probably didn't survive the trek. Patients were even cleared out of the hospitals and herded into the hinterland with the rest ... There also aren't enough food stocks in the backwoods ... Analysts believe that hundreds of thousands will die of starvation. One shocking estimate is that at least a million people will perish. It appears that the Khmer Rouge, as all Cambodian communists call themselves, may be guilty of genocide against their own people ... There also have been reports, including some intercepted messages, that the communists are executing the entire families of former military officers and high civilian officials." (Jack Anderson, "Genocide in Cambodia?", June 4, 1975.) When I see Chomsky not only deny the bloodbath but praise the KR with saving an equivalent number of lives—and his disciple, Herman, advocate the same extreme denialism in the case of Rwanda, where he insists the Tutsis were the perpetrators of a genocide against the Hutus—I cannot help but think that these "scholars" would murder millions if given the chance—just like the French-educated intellectuals of the KR.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:19, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I didn't say there was more qunatitative evidence of atrocities in East Timor than in Cambodia - at least not until the indonesian foreign minister gave an actual estimate. But you don't have to answer if you don't want to. I like how this is all you learned from the book on Civilian Casualties: "blaming the far-left academic campaign to defend the KR during 1975-1979 on the CIA's 1980 report on the CIA's 1980 report".Guccisamsclub (talk) 08:43, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't accept that Indonesia slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Timorese based on the evidence available today, so no, KGB propaganda would be unlikely to alter my opinion. The overwhelming flood of refugee testimony describing an unending litany of horrors in Cambodia was different in kind from the testimony emerging from East Timor or Vietnam, which required statistical legerdemain to extrapolate into a "bloodbath".TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:11, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Well at least you are "denier" of the mythical Vietnam bloodbath. We agree on something.Guccisamsclub (talk) 20:41, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * On Vietnam, the argument that Chomsky set out to rebut was not that tens or hundreds of thousands were executed outright, but that the communists resorted to mass imprisonment, torture, and gross human rights violations, all of which is unquestionably true.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:11, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Let's end this on a point of agreement. I can't debate the Cold War with you indefinitely. PS I don't know why you think I am Noam Chomsky's defence attorney: he's perfectly capable of arguing his own case. He never hired me - I do my own thinking.Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:19, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Cambodia Bombings - sidenote to the dispute
While Kissinger’s assertion that drone strikes under Obama had been wider in geographical scale than the bombing of Cambodia may be at least partly accurate, his statement about the civilian casualties is “disingenuous”, said Carlyle Thayer, a Southeast Asia expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

While it is impossible to know how many were killed in bombings of communist base areas in eastern Cambodia in 1969-70, if later airstrikes when the Khmer Rouge began to advance on Phnom Penh are included, “at a minimum, several tens of thousands” of civilians perished, he said.

Historian Ben Kiernan writes in The Pol Pot Regime that up to 150,000 civilian deaths resulted from the bombings between 1969 and 1973, though he does not provide a source for these numbers.

Demographer Marek Sliwinski, meanwhile, estimates about 53,000 people, both civilian and military, were killed by bombardments.

According to eminent Cambodia historian David Chandler, while nobody has any reliable evidence of casualties from the US bombings, they “certainly killed a lot more civilians than drones” have.

“The problem is, if you just made a very cold, calculating, military decision, the bombing of 1973 was in fact a sensible thing to do [at the time], because had it not happened, the Khmer Rouge would have taken Phnom Penh [much earlier] and South Vietnam would have had a communist country on its flank,” he said.

-Phnom Penh Post

The CIA estimated 600 thousand deaths for the entire civil war, although estimates from Banister, Heuveline 1998 (although the latter is fuzzy on the issue) are lower. Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:30, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Kiernan's completely baseless 50,000-150,000 is no more reliable than Etcheson's purely anecdotal 5,000. If Kissinger was merely referring to the Menu bombings, his comparison was indisputably correct. The CIA "estimate" was not an estimate at all but an assumption for the purposes of the study, based solely on citogenesis: "The assumed number of war-related deaths (600,000 to 700,000) is debatable; US government sources put the figure unofficially at 600,000 to 700,000; authorities of Democratic Kampuchea say 600,000 to 800,000; Prince Sihanouk is quoted as saying 600,000. None of these estimates is well founded." I also see that your source resurrects Kissinger's "anything that flies on anything that moves" in an attempt to demonize him, even though Kissinger and Haig were joking about Nixon's views on the war and the "order" was taken about as seriously as Nixon's threat to nuke Capitol Hill: "When Nixon proposed an escalation in the bombing of Cambodia, Kissinger and Haig felt obliged to humor the president while laughing at him behind his back."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:11, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Kiernan's 50K is sourced straight to Kissinger himself, who asked a congressional historian to come up with an estimate.Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:54, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Assuming that is true, how did the Congressional historian come up with the figure? Does it logically compute that higher tonnage estimates allow Kiernan to triple it? I don't think so.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:30, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
 * You don't know what you are talking about. Kiernan proposed 50-150K before he proposed the higher tonnage estimates. His numbers were based on conventional tonnage estimates (per Kissinger) and the surveys he conducted after the Vietnamese invasion. After he proposed the higher tonnage estimates, he suggested that the number killed was likely to be higher than this earlier range suggested - though he proposed no new figures. But as we now know, Kiernan/Owen's revised tonnage estimates turned out to be wildly exaggerated. The current consensus is that the earlier tonnage estimates were indeed close to the mark. And please, stop posting unsourced assertions and polemics. If you have the source in front of you - quote it. Otherwise - don't. Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:04, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
 * You're right—I have no idea how Kiernan conjured those figures, since "Bombs Over Cambodia" does not even hint at a source. But since I have coaxed an explanation out of you, allow me to reiterate that estimating the death toll based on the tonnage dropped is an exceedingly dubious proposition, because most of the targets were almost completely unpopulated, when the Air Force wasn't simply emptying its payloads into lakes to artificially inflate its mission count and thereby justify its budget. As I said elsewhere, Kiernan's range is more or less plucked from thin air. As to the rest, I will continue to be informal on talk pages and to assume other users have some basic knowledge of the topics at hand, even though I concede this is a rather generous assumption when one is attempting to engage a leftist.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:50, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Iraq
Saddam's regime was probably immune to collapse as long as he remained alive, but he was getting on in years, and had already delegated most of his authority to his son Qusay. Moreover, as Makiya recounts in the revised 1998 edition of his Republic of Fear, the Iraqi state never quite recovered from the blow to its prestige dealt by the first Gulf War and the ensuing March 1991 rebellion. The Ba'th had long prided themselves on the considerable reduction in crime that occurred under their stewardship, while the refusal of Shi'ite soldiers to defect during the war with Iran has been frequently cited as evidence that the Party successfully forged a new Iraqi national identity transcending sectarian bonds. (Makiya disputes the latter assertion, as well as claims that the extraordinary lengths the Ba'th went to create distance between Iranian and Iraqi soldiers—such as "a fifteen-mile giant moat between half a mile to three miles wide"—were primarily motivated by the desire to reduce casualties, instead arguing that the military remained loyal out of fear and that Saddam worked tirelessly to ensure soldiers remained more afraid of the security services of his dictatorship than they were of the Iranian alternative). During the 1990s, however, there were a number of trends that posed a real and serious threat to the regime's legitimacy and survival—including a reported 40-50% increase in thefts, burglaries and rapes and an alarming rate of desertion in the military (to say nothing of a dramatic increase in corruption caused by the UN sanctions). Under such circumstances, the illusion of the Ba'th's omniscience and omnipotence was shattered, and it was no longer possible or desirable for the Party to simply kill every last one of its critics. (Consider that Makiya needed to write under a pseudonym in 1989, but not in 1998.) Saddam responded by promulgating ever more bizarre additions to Iraq's legal code—such as amputations for thieves and branding for deserters—in order to make a sufficiently grotesque example out of enough of the troublemakers to deter everyone else, but the trend-lines are clear enough: When the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, there was already a great deal of ruin in that society, dating back to many decades of repression and war. Moreover, much of the Iraqi population was armed, and the example of March 1991 suggests that a revolt might have succeeded at least under certain extraordinary circumstances, such as in the event of a power struggle following Saddam's death (particularly if the Iranians overcame their fear of another long war and supported their Shi'ite coreligionists.) (To be fair, there was never any chance of a successful military coup, as Iraq had been rendered effectively coup-proof since the mid-1970s, notwithstanding the total obliviousness of U.S. policy-makers to this reality.) But what if Ba'thism was immune to internal collapse? Would that not then affect our judgement of an external intervention to unseat the Party after more than 30 years of extreme dictatorship? When it comes to the prospect of Iraq descending inevitably into civil war, or being ruled by Saddam's family dynasty for many more generations, is either option especially palatable? And if the U.S. bears at least indirect responsibility for all of the atrocities committed during the occupation, on the grounds that the occupying force is responsible for maintaining security, doesn't that support the contention that the U.S. had a moral obligation to "stay the course" rather than "cut and run," regardless of whether or not it was right to invade in the first place?

Is a mistake morally akin to a crime? If it had been as easy to depose Saddam as it was to depose Noriega, would the invasion of Iraq still merit the same condemnation? How many protesters accurately predicted the consequences of the war? If President Bush invaded with the intention of drawing al Qaeda and any other Islamic extremists into Iraq like a moth to flame, in order to fight them on Iraqi soil, then I would agree with you about the hideous immorality of such a strategy, but the Bush administration really seems not to have known what it was getting into.

It's perfectly obvious from the text who "unknown" refers to, even if the specific group is impossible to ascertain: "Unknown perpetrators executed their victims, or tortured them and then executed them," ect. I see little reason to assume the ratio is drastically different from the War in Afghanistan, where, according to UN figures cited in the Taliban article, "The Taliban and their allies were responsible for 76% of Afghan civilian casualties in 2010, 80% in 2011, and 80% in 2012." Take a closer look at the numbers, and you will find that coalition forces were responsible for roughly the same amount of violence in both theaters: Namely, a little over 10% of the total.

That only 1% of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. troops were intentionally murdered hardly absolves the U.S. of all responsibility for "collateral damage." It does, however, have different implications regarding U.S. troops's training and discipline than might be suggested by your cavalier remark about "mass murder."

Finally, does thinking this way make me, like Cohen, "an outspoken apologist for mass murder"?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:19, 18 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The "unknown" here really is largely unknown—you shouldn't extrapolate the answer from some quip about "executions and torture" or what happened in Afghanistan, where the opposition to the invaders was less pronounced. The Lancet and PLoS Surveys have managed to reduce the "unknown" factor significantly—worth a look if you are genuinely interested. It is also important to remember that there were other perpetrators besides coalition forces and the "resistance", namely the Iraqi army and allied militias, both of which were supported by the US and Iran and have committed their share of atrocities.
 * As for the rest, I'll respond rhetorically, since your arguments are rhetorical. No regime is immune to collapse; I regard Makiya's claim to the contrary as mere apologetics for the supposed "export of democracy". This was a transparently bogus notion to begin with. The US's foreign policy never had anything to do with it. In the case of Iraq, this notion was not even applied consistently in the official propaganda, nevermind in practice. Recall that WMDs were the "singe issue" — until finding them proved to be tricky.Nor do I accept that what happened in Iraq was simply the hastening of an inevitable civil war (the disgusting Arab savage narrative, cooked up by American liberals and right-wingers, now eagerly being parroted by Putin and Co.), which would have proceeded in exactly the same way had the US not invaded. Recall that the conflict began as a war against the invading forces. Recall also that the US played no small role in fostering sectarian divisions in Iraq, out of imperial arrogance. Anyhow, after all these years, where's the evidence for this narrative? Syria? Let's take a look at who, besides Assad and the opposition, is responsible for the violence: Russian missiles and ISIS. The latter is simply a byproduct of the invasion of Iraq and all that followed, whereas the former is yet another foreign gift. Furthermore, the US and Israel, supposedly sworn enemies of Assad, have done just enough to keep the conflict going, but not nearly enough to ensure a rebel victory or even a stalemate, despite having had easy opportunities to do so. But putting that aside, the short-run alternative to the invasion was the continuation of the Saddam regime. That was certainly preferable to a US occupation. After all, Saddam's worst atrocities were well behind him, committed over a decade ago, frequently with US acquiescence or support. The sanctions could also have been lifted. At least a million lives would have been saved.
 * What is just a mistake? Then what was the objective? Don't go to absurd extremes: certainly it was not to promote civil war, just as it was not some benign concern over global security or the welfare of Iraqis. The motivation for the war was imperial hubris combined with exceedingly stupid pipe dreams about somehow gettin' their oil. And of course they planned to have their war wrapped up in in a few months. I don't know of a single case in history where the aggressors looked forward to a long and brutal war or where their initial objective was to make the occupied suffer as much as possible just for the hell of it. That's also true of Hitler. Or to give a more tangible example, imagine an armed robbery. If someone gets killed, is it a mistake or a crime? How would "I didn't intend for anyone to get killed" stand up in court. Maybe you should have through about that before robbing the damn store, or perhaps you did and just brushed it aside because you are a psychopath? At least the robber can often fall back on the poverty excuse. People wielding immense power and resources don't have that excuse. And unlike the robber, they don't put their lives, or much of anything, on the line.
 * Does your line of reasoning make you an "apologist for murder" on a level with Cohen? No, since you don't appear to support the war—but feel free to correct me if that impression is mistaken.Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:45, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I don't support the war, because it's impossible to see how anyone could possibly claim that it served the U.S. national interest, let alone tell the families of the thousands of soldiers who died that their sons's/daughters's death was somehow worth it. Nor do I intend to suggest that all of the bloodshed was actually inevitable—my argument is simply that it would be facile to pretend it was only the presence of Western soldiers that introduced sectarianism to Iraq, thereby depriving the Iraqis of moral agency. The porous foundation of existing Arab societies hardly constitutes a moral basis for tearing those societies down if there is no realistic prospect of building anything better in the aftermath. After the catastrophes in Iraq and Libya, however, I find your faith in the quixotic search for "moderate" Syrian rebels quite amusing. I'm wondering how far you would extend that logic: Did you favor the intervention in Libya, considering it was undertaken in support of an indigenous rebellion, and helped depose a viciously tyrannical regime without a lengthy foreign occupation? Would you have supported U.S. aid to the Iraqi rebels in March 1991? In the same way, I find it hard to understand how you can seriously consider "imperial hubris" a motivation for war.
 * Perhaps I'm just not as cynical as you, but I believe that even politicians generally say what they mean and mean what they say, with the Bush administration being no exception. We know from the Duelfer Report that Saddam was ready to resume his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs as soon as the sanctions were lifted, and the sanctions were collapsing. Moreover, the invasion of Iraq seemed to have at least some deterrent effect on other "rogue regimes": Qaddafi gave up his weapons, Pakistan placed A.Q. Khan under house arrest for several years, and Iran suspended some overtly military aspects of its nuclear program. It seems like Bush decided after 9/11 that the proliferation of WMD in the Middle East created an unacceptable danger that such weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists, and decided to draw a "red line" with Iraq. Due to its violation of numerous UN resolutions, Iraq was simply a target of opportunity; Bush was going into a bad neighborhood, and wanted to take out the biggest bully to get everyone else to back down. Other considerations were that the no-fly-zones designed to stave off further genocide in the north and south of Iraq, as well as the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia to protect it from Iraq, could not be sustained indefinitely—and the deeply flawed neoconservative belief that only a democratic "domino theory" could eliminate the "root causes" of terrorism, so why not start with Iraq? Obama seems to have intervened in Libya despite doubting that the end result would be anything other than a failed state, while doing as little as possible in the aftermath, just as (for political reasons) he escalated American involvement in Afghanistan despite what Bob Gates later described as the President's private belief that the war wasn't worth it. In a way, the naivete of Bush and the neocons seems more virtuous by comparison.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:45, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Iraq and Syria are the catastrophes. Libya is not even in the same category.Guccisamsclub (talk) 10:00, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It seems like very few people are still willing to defend NATO's intervention in Libya—including President Obama himself—as civil war has resumed, Islamic State has established a presence, and weapons left behind by Qaddafi's regime have been used to ferment chaos all throughout the Sahel. Your thesis that Libya is a relative success because the freedom-loving Libyans themselves played the decisive role, without imperialism exacerbating sectarian tensions, is somewhat reassuring. However, if far fewer Libyans than Iraqis or Syrians have died since liberation, I might be inclined to consider other factors—such as the fact that the population of Iraq and Syria combined* is almost ten times as large as that of Libya, and that almost all Libyans share the same Sunni Muslim religion—before making the comparison. I might even note that while Qaddafi was a thug, he wasn't anywhere near as bad as the Ba'th.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:16, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * "Combined" added for clarity on 17:00, 20 June 2016 (UTC) by TheTimesAreAChanging (talk)
 * That barely registers as an "intervention" in my view. You might also want to google those population figures, unless you are talking about the combined populations. One can consider the role of sectarianism and other country-specific factors in hardening the battle-lines, but they should not serve as a distraction from American or Russian aggression, or from the damage done simply because someone like Assad simply managed to cling to power, in no small part due to external factors. BTW, I think the main problem with the Assad regime is that it is more capable, not that it is more "thuggish"; nor do I think the main problem with US wars of aggression is that they "inflame sectarian tension", as if that makes culturally homogenous societies fairer game somehow. So in the case of Libya, I am thankful for the fact that we don't know what the Gaddafi regime might have done had it held on to power, which was not out of question. And I'm also thankful we don't know what would have happened had Russia or the US decided to go all in. The precedents aren't pretty. And regardless of the body counts—which, are always linked to at some counterfactual—these precedents cannot be defended in principle as far as I am concerned. That's the elementary democratic principle, codified in international law. Any viable or participatory model of development can only come from the popular movements that have at least an interest in making it happen, not from neo-colonial wars or crackdowns by sclerotic dictatorships. Of course policymakers in Washington and the Kremlin have a different "philosophy", one that I am not inclined to politely debate.Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:06, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Good talk. I appreciate your time. Hopefully, we can at least agree on the general proposition that gradual reform within societies is usually preferable to attempts by an outside power to impose democracy by force of arms (as if a change in regime would be sufficient to alter the polity of any society overnight). Regards,TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:00, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Likewise -- it's been an interesting discussion. I do of course agree but I'd echo the caveat of one famous Indian guy: "the imposition of democracy from outside would be a horrible idea". Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:25, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Please do not use Russian
This is English WP. Please do not use Russian in discussions on article talk pages. Thanks, My very best wishes (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If you have a constructive suggestion for how I can communicate to with you more effectively, I'm all ears. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:17, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Please WP:SPEAKENGLISH. You are well aware of the fact that MVBW has absolutely no problem with English. Minor grammatical errors in actually writing in English on occasion are most certainly not an indication of his struggling with understanding you in any shape of form. Given that you have established a negative relationship with the user, any communications between the two of you should be exclusively in English so that sysops and other editors can follow what transpires without missing any nuances/between the lines/implicit commentary. Why would you feel that MVBW needs to be addressed in Russian? Your emphasis on "with you" seems somewhat on the patronising side. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:13, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, Iryna, let me provide one possible translation of Russian phrase by G. in this diff in context of the conversation: "you do not know what you are going to bring upon yourself by your words". Note that the phrase was included by G. entirely out of context, and his arguments in the diff were rather ... strange. But this is only one of possible translations, so that is a matter of plausible deniability. My very best wishes (talk) 02:46, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * My bad, the Russian aphorisms don't seem to help at all. I thought they would. Guccisamsclub (talk) 05:36, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, let's consider this simply an explanation why you should not use Russian in such discussions. Let's forget about the context and assume that you simply quoted Fyodor Tyutchev. My very best wishes (talk) 12:50, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The point, repeated twice, now thrice, was that authors cannot necessarily be held responsible for how their work is used by others. How you managed to twist my words into a personal attack on you, god only knows. "нам не дано предугадать, как слово наше отзовется"—amen. However, I find it hard to believe that anyone can permanently suffer from such a severe case of reading incomprehension, on display in virtually everything you've written to me recently. This is why I'll treat this as simply WP:TROLLING to get me to say something for which I can get blocked. So I'll stop responding, to both of you. Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:11, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * None of us ever said that an author should be "held responsible for how their work is used by others". You invent something very stupid that others never said to disprove it. My very best wishes (talk) 18:29, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

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Thank you!
This is hilarious! Thank you for pointing that out; I needed the laugh. Disagreements aside, consider everything bad I've ever said about you officially retracted.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:19, 16 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Welcome. I agree: it may be the most beautifully intricate RS:WTF I've ever seen. You may wish to add a few of your own (however, I reserve the right to delete them if they are not up to snuff). Guccisamsclub (talk) 07:09, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Multiple accounts
So, did you switch permanently back to this account? If so, please place a notice on your another account was completely abandoned. This is needed, because if someone would like to make you an official notification, should he use this or another account? Thanks, My very best wishes (talk) 13:54, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Official notifications are accepted USPS certified mail only. Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:09, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Cambodian Civil War
I disagree with your contention that the 750,000 figure is anywhere within the realm of plausibility. If 750,000 Cambodians died in the war, and about 1.5 million died during the genocide (I've argued that the real figure is likely to be in excess of 2 million, but many academics are still in denial), that suggests a 1:2 ratio wildly inconsistent with anecdotal evidence (such as interviews with Cambodians and memoirs by survivors). To give just one of innumerable examples, consider the following: [http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm "Anthropologist May Ebihara, who conducted fieldwork in a village in Kandal province in 1959-1960, returned to the village in 1990. Of the 159 people she had known in 1960, she found that by 1975, 16 persons had died from old age or illness, and 4 had died during the war. Of the 139 remaining people, half of them—69 people—died during the Khmer Rouge regime. Discussing Ebihara's research, Kiernan notes that 'Eighteen new families had formed in the hamlet after 1960; but from 1975 to 1979, 26 of the 36 spouses and 29 of their children also perished.' Ebihara's data highlights the disparity in the death ratios between the civil war and the Pol Pot regime. The number of deaths in 1975-1979 was roughly seventeen times the number of deaths during the war. ...While the exceptionally high ratios from this village might not be typical, they were also certainly not unique. My own conversations with refugees also suggests very high ratios. When questioned about the Pol Pot years, most Cambodians will immediately begin listing names: 'The terse tally of the dead,' as author Minfong Ho once put it. Yet when asked about deaths during the war, the list of names is almost invariably short: Perhaps a cousin who was a soldier, an uncle whose fate was never entirely clear, and so on."] But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:47, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * BTW, I can't see where you got the 80,000 figure for the Laotian Civil War. As I read Table 3 of The BMJ, the WHS estimate is 62,000—compared to Uppsala's 20,000.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:41, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I got the 80K from the periodized table on page 3 of the BMJ study. The range for 1965-1974, is 2-8 thousand per year according to the WHO, which gives us the range of 20-80K over the 10 year period. I then added to the total range in the infobox. I know I've been "eloquent" about not aggregating improbable estimates using simple addition, so it may not be the best option. But since reliably sourced total estimates for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos don NOT exist, we'll be adding up ranges no matter what we do. Then again, variations in the estimates for Laos and Cambodia won't have a big effect on the variation in our aggregate range, since their casualties are dwarfed by Vietnam. Another issue is the periodization of the WHO survey deaths by the BMJ. I used the 1965-74 period for Laos, since low-intensity civil war continued for years after the victory of the Pathet Lao. But following the BMJ periodization (you can read about the methodology on page 4) is probably a very bad idea due to uncertainty about the reported or inferred times of death. That's how the BMJ ended up with 800K war deaths after 1975 in Vietnam. Only a tiny chunk of that is  actual post-1975 war deaths (Kampuchea and China wars), with the rest being a result of temporal uncertainty. For the sake of consistency, we should probably use 20-60K for Laos, as you say.
 * All estimates should be taken with a grain of salt and should never be allowed to violate common sense. Take the PRIO estimate of 3K for Georgia from BMJ. It clearly refers only to military deaths—the total number was much higher. Then take the WHS-based estimate of 33K for Georgia—it is a ludicrous over-estimate. Further consider the WHS-based estimate for Guatemala, which is a ludicrously low 20K! Compare, contrast and ask yourself  in what alternative universe this is remotely credible. Also on the PRIO, consider Spagat's comment that the PRIO battle-death data set does not include deaths from “one-sided violence”—that is, the intentional, politically motivated killing of noncombatants by either governments or nonstate armed groups—on the grounds that slaughtering defenseless citizens does not constitute armed conflict link
 * The critics of BMJ are basically Spagat and his co-authors. I think you're drawing the wrong conclusions from Spagat's paper, which does not really dispute the individual estimates based on WHO data, but rather the aggregate model that the BMJ builds from them. Indeed there is nothing in Spagat that would allow you to dismiss the WHS-based number for Vietnam, quite the opposite if your read pages 939-940. The PRIO and WHS numbers are actually not particularly inconsistent, according to Spagat. As a humorous aside, consider that the Spagat paper is courtesy of the "Human Security Project" at Simon Fraser. If  you go to their site, you find some pretty cute headlines, that make me raise an eyebrow or two. Here's a taste:
 * "Since 1900, far more people have been killed by their own governments than by foreign armies link
 * "National Mortality rates usually decline during warfare" link
 * "Since 1989 there has been an upsurge in international efforts to ensure a more secure world link (actually, that's probably the establishment view, since every government in the world claims to act in the name of "security". War is peace, in other words.)
 * Have these people heard of WWI and WWII? I don't think most of the victims of the Holocaust were killed by their own govt either. Looks like they've been smoking the same herb as Rummel. The one about mortality (hopefully they mean non-combat) declining is tenuous at best, explicable only by the fact that people have fewer children in wartime, or by secular trends that continue to operate in spite of war.  Sounds like they might be trying to "blow your mind".
 * On Cambodia, you're right we will have to agree to disagree. I don't think the astronomical disparity between KR and Civil War deaths is well-supported at all, regardless of the tenuous consensus that has emerged in the last decades. Nobody has bothered to do a serious count of civil war deaths and nobody really cares. In any case, now it's too late to pick up the pieces by doing surveys, especially considering the scale of the carnage during the subsequent KR years. Census data is non-existent (last one was in 1964). Guccisamsclub (talk) 14:55, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * My guess is that if an accurate accounting were ever done, it would find that even ~300,000 is far too high. Cambodia had over twice the population of Laos, but received only one-fourth of the bombing, and wasn't deeply involved in the war until 1970: I see absolutely no reason to assume that the Cambodian Civil War resulted in substantially more deaths than the Laotian Civil War.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:34, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a very good point, I agree. Shouldn't we raise add higher estimates for Laos in this case? They are not based on surveys or anything like that but they go as high as 250, and less plausibly 350K. Guccisamsclub (talk)
 * Well, if you want to I can't stop you, though I have no idea where those numbers come from. On an unrelated matter, are you ever going to respond to the impasse at Soviet–Afghan War?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 1)They are guesses from Tirney and the NYT. Although if guess by USAID about the population being 1.9-2.3 million is to be believed, going through ten years of civil war and being the most heavily bombed country on earth has no impact on life expectancy. 2)Probably. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:07, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Dispute Notification
I have filed a dispute on the article of Fidel Castro. I do this because it is recommended "If you begin a discussion of another user on a common notice board, it is expected that you will notify the subject user by posting a message on their talk page". Do not report me as vandal. This is the only instance in which I will write something here. If this is not the way to do it, let me know how it is done. Jhaydn2016 (talk) 16:54, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 7 December
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Univision
I took the test and got 10/12. TFD (talk) 20:23, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Great, if we combine our trials the null hypothesis can easily be rejected (p=0.0033). Of course the fairness of the experiment depends on not knowing the quotes ahead of time. Did you? Guccisamsclub (talk) 20:54, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Just one, "No leader, especially a religious leader, has the right to question another man's religion or faith." I remembered Trump said that when the Pope criticized him.  But one only needs to know that Trump is a Calvinist and Chavez was a Roman Catholic and the theological differences between the two religions to accurately guess who said it.   TFD (talk) 21:36, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I got them all except the one about the low pain tolerance of the rich—which I really should have gotten. That said, I already knew Trump's rejoinder to the Pope and his reference to Hilary Clinton as "the devil," and probably subconsciously recalled a few more from both men.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:46, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That one about the rich is the only one I can remember, because I slapped my forehead when I saw that had gotten it wrong. Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:07, 7 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I got that one wrong too. It was a trick question, because Trump was saying (in 1981) that his (rich) tenants would have left had he treated them the way they claimed, not making a political statement.  The other one I got wrong was "My problem is they love me or hate me."  That is true for both, but the level of love and hate for Chavez was way higher and not something that could be patched up by placating his opponents.  I wonder though if Chavez actually would have said that the people love him.  TFD (talk) 22:48, 7 December 2016 (UTC)


 * That one was kind of close, but I got it right as recall, on the hunch that Chavez would not see it as a an unfortunate "problem". Brought to mind FDR who said: "They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred." Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:13, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a good point. Trump wants everyone to like and admire him, like Caesar and Napoleon.  That and many other things clearly distinguish him from Chavez.  TFD (talk) 04:11, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Notice
SPECIFICO talk  15:08, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Barnstar

 * Much appreciated, thanks! You probably deserve one of these also for you work over at Ramadan Revolution. Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:24, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Gift for you
WP:SECONDARYNOTGOOD exists now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:22, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

More Russia hysteria at the Wash Post
At this point, you may want to consider creating a new category of "Reliable WTFs" solely dedicated to the Post. If not for the fact that this kind of yellow journalism can lead to war, it would be downright hilarious.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 07:24, 1 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Take a crack at it if you wish. Off tangent, I'm actually thinking about setting up a fact-check wiki, with a bunch of narrowly-focused articles and some features that wikipedia is missing: like a reference database and semantic annotations, click-to-edit with the Atom (text editor) etc. I dunno how interested you are in wiki-tech, but this is Mediawiki-based. There's also an scarily powerful and fast wiki platform called XWiki, but it has few ready-made components for an encyclopedia-type wiki (while it's behind in that respect, you can write sophisticated extensions for XWiki in about 1/100th of the time it would take on mediawiki; plus users can actually construct their own data-driven apps and interfaces with just a GUI!). I have many gripes with Wikipedia's usability and limitations. I'm interested in hearing from a long-time user what kinds of features are most sorely missing from wikipedia, and what would be some nice to haves. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:41, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * While that sounds like a very interesting project, I'm probably not the best person to ask for advice. I don't know enough about the topic, and I've been using Wikipedia long enough that I no longer notice its imperfections.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:32, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This is more like feedback, rather than technical advice. I guess my biggest problem is that the lack of structure and the crappy tooling throughout the project. I know it's possible to get used to anything, but I don't get how anyone could try to edit an info-box and not cringe. Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:44, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, I agree with you there, but I still don't think I could add much to what you know already. I like to think I'm pretty smart, but to be perfectly candid I also lack creativity when it comes to this sort of thing.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:01, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

A pie for you!

 * Hits the spot. Guccisamsclub (talk) 10:47, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Your recent edit at Russian Interference
Hello Gunnisamsclub. I reverted some text that per my edit summary I believe to be SYNTH and not directly related to the topic of the article. Per the Discretionary Sanctions notice on the talk page, your reinsertion of that text violates the following restriction:

'''Consensus required: All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion). If in doubt, don't make the edit.'''

Accordingly, I ask you to undo your reinsertion and use the article talk page to seek consensus for your view. As you will note from my edit summary, I did not state that the text was not cited to RS. I stated a different policy-based objection.

Thank you. SPECIFICO talk  19:08, 10 January 2017 (UTC)


 * What is your objection? That it's irrelevant to the subject? As I've said in my edit summary, that is simply not true. Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:55, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Editors can disagree on content, but we are not permitted to disagree about the sanctions. Do you deny that you violated the sanction I cited above?  Do you deny its validity? Do you think you are exempt? If so why? Because your view is correct? I'm not understanding your view.  SPECIFICO  talk  21:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your concern. Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't see any violation of policy here by . I don't see any objections on the talk page to the material that was removed, and it's pretty clear why it was removed, and you insists that it not be reinserted: it quotes well-known public figures who have expressed skepticism about the case against Russia. Most of the involved editors' points of view are clear now, so I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that quotes by Scott Ritter and Jeffrey Taia were removed for overtly political reasons from the article. As usual, the editors who do so quote some policy acronym as a fig leaf. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This was actually regarding the inclusion of information about past interventions, which was meant to contextualize the 2016 issue. There was eventually an RfC about this, and almost everyone voted against inclusion. Now the article just contains opinions about how this is a completely unprecedented act (from RS Bob Baer) and how it's just like 9/11 (Michael Morell). These certifiably retarded opinions now stand completely unchallenged, but gotta live with it.Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:00, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement
There is a case posted at WP:AE that concerns you. It is located here. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:22, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Your AE questions
AE admins are not interested in opinions, they are interested in evidence. Only diffs are normally useful as evidence. If you want to resubmit your statement, please be concise, stay on the topic of the request, use dated diffs and do not duplicate diffs already submitted by others.  Sandstein  13:30, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

My post mostly consisted of either direct quotes from two editors or diffs. Which is why I asked if providing giving diffs fro quotes would even help. Would it? Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:34, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Long quotes are not normally helpful. I recommend you stick to the format "[dated diff] - [brief explanation of the problem with the diff]".  Sandstein   13:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)