User talk:Mansoor Ijaz/Archive 1

User Talk 22 JAN 2014
Dear Mr Ijaz I am glad that you are satisfied with recent edits to the Wikipedia article regarding you, in order to keep up with what seems to many motorsport fans as an extremely drawn-out and unsettling saga. Thank you for the link to your interview regarding the Quantum/LotusF1 deal as published at Grandprix247. I am sure that you, more than anyone, wish for the LotusF1 transaction to reach a speedy conclusion to avoid further doubt of your word and to start yielding the intended benefits. A key requirement of information conveyed in Wikipedia is that it is verifiable, a measure designed to provide a degree of quality control in a project that welcomes all to contribute - by requiring reputable published sources to support assertions. It is therefore appreciated if you can continue to provide such hyperlinks if you wish to correct any future factual errors. It will be a pleasure to trim the Formula One section of the Wikipedia article once the affair reaches a conclusion and the ins and outs along the way can be seen in a historical context. Kind regards Guffydrawers (talk) 21:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 24 JAN 2014
Dear Mr Ijaz Thank you for your message on my talk page. If you wish to edit the article concerning you, there are two options: Await expiry of semi-protection After 23 February 2014 (at 02:32 UTC) the article will be editable by all. Acquire autoconfirmed status Your Wikipedia user account will become autoconfirmed when it has made at least 10 edits (and is over 4 days old). The vast majority of articles are not protected and can be freely edited. Please, however, be aware of the Wikipedia rules on Conflict of Interest. Kind regards Guffydrawers (talk) 07:31, 24 January 2014 (UTC) Mansoor Ijaz, you are invited to the Teahouse ---

User Talk 16 MAR 2014
Not a webhost --- Wikipedia is NOT a webhost to support your personally approved version of an article. We have no obligation to help you in your business dealings. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  03:35, 16 March 2014 (UTC) A word of advice --- It is inadvisable to use words like 'libel' or 'slander' on Wikipedia - we have a strict policy of blocking from editing persons making what are perceived to be legal threats - see WP:NLT. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:49, 16 March 2014 (UTC) March 2014 --- Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be engaged in an edit war with one or more editors according to your reverts at Mansoor Ijaz. Although repeatedly reverting or undoing another editor's contributions may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, and often creates animosity between editors. Instead of edit warring, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. While edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, breaking the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you.  Neil N  talk to me  05:06, 16 March 2014 (UTC) --- Hello, Mansoor Ijaz. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Mansoor Ijaz, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
 * Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you.  Neil N  talk to me  05:07, 16 March 2014 (UTC) --- Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to Wikipedia. However, please remember that editors do not own articles and should respect the work of their fellow contributors on Mansoor Ijaz. If you create or edit an article, remember that others are free to change its content. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.  Neil N  talk to me  05:08, 16 March 2014 (UTC) --- Your recent editing history at Mansoor Ijaz shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing&mdash;especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring&mdash;even if you don't violate the three-revert rule&mdash;should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. Drmies (talk) 05:15, 16 March 2014 (UTC) How to edit with a conflict of interest - Hello Mr. Ijaz. You ask if there's a middle ground and if you can make suggestions. The answer is yes to both. Please read WP:COIADVICE. The accepted way for subjects of articles to influence/suggest content is to use the article's talk page - Talk:Mansoor Ijaz. Example: I think this should be changed [give proposed wording] because [give reason]. The more specific your suggestions are, the quicker they'll be addressed by another editor. -- Neil N  talk to me  06:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

By the way, I saw your note on Drmies' talk page. Overlinking has nothing to do with sources. It is a style guideline - WP:OVERLINK - "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, links may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead." -- Neil N  talk to me  06:19, 16 March 2014 (UTC) Your recent edits --- Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. When you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion (but never when editing articles), please be sure to sign your posts. There are two ways to do this. Either: This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 09:59, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Add four tildes  ( &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; ) at the end of your comment; or
 * 2) With the cursor positioned at the end of your comment, click on the signature button (Insert-signature.png or Signature icon.png) located above the edit window.
 * Trying it now. Thanks--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 10:02, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Re: Assistance Request

First off, my comments regarding your business dealings would be equally applicable to negative news. Your business dealings really don't belong here unless they're derived from things other than news reports, but negative news equally needs something better than news reports. We have a Wikipedia is not the newspaper section, which tons of people really don't care to observe — too many to enforce, really. As an academic, I tend to stay away from articles about living people and existing companies because it's simply too much effort to ensure that articles are based on secondary sources, rather than primary sources such as news reports. You've discovered a problem that I've been trying to resolve for a long time, without success. I'm sorry, and I wish that it could be resolved.

Regarding your comments about other articles ("I can give five examples immediately..."), let me point you to another page WP:WAX (I have no clue why they called it that), which basically says that you shouldn't compare your article against others, since anything's liable to be worked on. I'm not doing this because I'm telling you to stop complaining: I'm doing this because if you say this in other forums, someone might point you there to get you to stop. In other words, people will listen to you less if you say this. Now on both your article and those, I'd like you to remember something: neither the current nor any past forms are official or stable. You can't assume that another businessman's article is in line with our policies. For a random example, look at Mike Brown — most of the article is essentially people complaining about his actions. Nowhere near neutral! By the time you look at it, I will have marked it for non-neutrality. Meanwhile, on your own article, please don't say things like "This version of the article was locked and approved by Wikipedia Editor John Reaves four months ago". As our protection policy notes, pages aren't locked to ensure that they stay the same: they're locked because of immediate problems, which in this case involved people hacking up the article.

I know I've not totally responded to your concerns, but I'm afraid I'll give you a TLDR response if I answer everything. Let me know that you've read what I wrote, and I'll come back and respond more. Nyttend (talk) 13:04, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your academic approach, but it doesn't really address the issue... This is what I mean by the last paragraph I wrote before: addressing the issue would have made my response too long, so I wanted to split it up, just making sure that you understood the system so you could work within it. Trying to convey the sense of "drop it" is far from my intentions: I understand that you're disturbed, and I want to help you fix the problem.  You can't close accounts (it's not an option with our software), but if you're uninterested in further editing, you can simply request the deletion of your userpage and stop editing.  Please don't do that, since you can help fix the article's problems.


 * First off, while I was at church, TheRedPenOfDoom completely reworked the intro. What do you think of it now?  I've never heard of Memogate before, so I'm not clear about your perspective on it.  As far as the IPs, this is an unfortunate consequence of the "anyone can edit" perspective, which has made Wikipedia as successful as it is.  We can revert problematic IP edits, and the locking ("semiprotection") can be restored if necessary.


 * I've never heard of you before and don't remember the Clinton presidency well (I was a child at the time), so you need to help me: what sections of the article do you believe present you in an unfairly negative light? And which specific sentences?  Presumably you're portrayed more favorably in sources that aren't in the article.  I want you to help by digging up reliable sources (see our WP:RS page if you haven't already) that present your perspective — presumably you know what those sources are, better than anyone else does, so your help is invaluable.  Do you have access to academic journals, whether through JSTOR or anything else?  Coverage of you in an academic journal or a book will be much better than news media coverage, since it will present a much more balanced picture.  If you know about such coverage, please let me know about it, and give me a citation (if possible) so that I can check it.  My university has extensive journal subscriptions, so I should be able to check anything you give me.  I can also search journals for things about you, but first please tell me: are you likely to be "Mansoor Ijaz" in pretty much all English-language sources, or are there other spellings for which I should search?  This is why I don't want you to leave: you can help with finding resources and presenting your perspectives much better than anyone else can.  Nyttend (talk) 18:19, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I forgot to give you a proper summary. In short, I'm saying "You help me find the sources, and I'll help you improve the article with them".  Nyttend (talk) 18:29, 16 March 2014 (UTC)


 * thank you for this very useful continuation. I found Red Pen's edits to be frankly uninformed and reflective of the "agenda" I spoke of earlier. But in the spirit of cooperation that you originally suggested, I tried to rework his way of doing it so that it would be clearer, much more factual, and would lead to the other sections with greater ease. I would like to reserve my "fairness" remarks for the rest of what RedPen has in mind because clearly as an editor, he has a particular thing he/she wants to do to this article. All I can ask is that you and others who have taken serious interest today prevent the article from being chopped up because as it was yesterday at this time, it was perfectly referenced (I checked every one of them myself) and it was accurate. The business OUT discussion I have taken on board and don't frankly care to have my business dealings in the public domain anyway. Never did. But the way in which RedPen has done the editing, it does not lend credibility to his "fairness" doctrine and I do not believe it is accurate either. Here were my suggestions to RedPen's edit -- maybe you will consider using them:
 * thank you for this very useful continuation. I found Red Pen's edits to be frankly uninformed and reflective of the "agenda" I spoke of earlier. But in the spirit of cooperation that you originally suggested, I tried to rework his way of doing it so that it would be clearer, much more factual, and would lead to the other sections with greater ease. I would like to reserve my "fairness" remarks for the rest of what RedPen has in mind because clearly as an editor, he has a particular thing he/she wants to do to this article. All I can ask is that you and others who have taken serious interest today prevent the article from being chopped up because as it was yesterday at this time, it was perfectly referenced (I checked every one of them myself) and it was accurate. The business OUT discussion I have taken on board and don't frankly care to have my business dealings in the public domain anyway. Never did. But the way in which RedPen has done the editing, it does not lend credibility to his "fairness" doctrine and I do not believe it is accurate either. Here were my suggestions to RedPen's edit -- maybe you will consider using them:


 * Mansoor Ijaz (Arabic: منصور اعجاز‎) (born August 1961) is an American hedge-fund manager and venture capitalist. He was for some time a media analyst, mostly in relation to Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and the role of Muslim-Americans in US political life. He acted as an unofficial channel for communications in the past between the United States and foreign governments, notably of Sudan, India and Pakistan. He is founder and chairman of Crescent Investment Management Ltd, a New York investment firm since 1990 that operates a proprietary trading system, CARAT, developed by Ijaz in the late 1980s. Ijaz's venture investments include recent efforts to acquire, among other enterprises, a stake in the Lotus F1 Formula One team.


 * In the 1990s, Ijaz and his companies were significant contributors to Democratic party institutions and Bill Clinton.[3][4] During the Clinton administration's first and second term, when the US had severed official ties with Sudan, Ijaz worked as an informal communications link between Washington and Khartoum in an effort to gain access to Sudanese intelligence data on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, who were operating from Sudan at the time.[4] Ijaz, who is of Pakistani descent[4], was also involved in efforts to broker a ceasefire in Kashmir in 2000-2001, and was a key protagonist in "Memogate", a controversy that alleged delivery of a memorandum by former Pakistani envoy Husain Haqqani through Ijaz to senior U.S. officials to thwart an attempted coup by the Pakistani military after the death of bin Laden.[5]


 * TIMES OF INDIA ARTICLE REFERENCES (LINKS ARE DEAD):


 * 1. TIMES OF INDIA, Sunday, 26 November 2000, "Ceasefire efforts fell prey to Pakistani Hawks", by Siddharth Varadarajan (text available if required)
 * 2. TIMES OF INDIA, Wednesday, 29 November 2000, "Expat Pak Peacemaker had U.S. backing", by Siddharth Varadarajan (text available if required)
 * 3. TIMES OF INDIA, Wednesday, 03 January 2001, "OP-ED: Indo-Pak Talks: Don't Make a Villain of Musharraf", by Mansoor Ijaz (text available if required)


 * GULF NEWS REFERENCE: http://gulfnews.com/architects-and-wreckers-of-the-kashmir-plan-1.287347


 * Please leave reference to my wife (who was my first wife) out of this article.
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:31, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Book References
 * Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed ..., by Richard Miniter
 * Confronting Terrorism Financing - Page 67, American Foreign Policy Council
 * Let Freedom Ring - Page 19, by Sean Hannity
 * Vanity Fair - Volume 65 - Page 78
 * and there are more at GOOGLE: Mansoor Ijaz search under Books -- about 1400 results.

I am mentioned often by both sides of the argument on counterterror issues, Kashmir, India-Pakistan, etc etc. I urge you to look at the type of editing being done. What sections, what type of edits, and you will then readily see for yourself what the problem is. Go and review Husain Haqqani's article. It reads like an advertisement for the guy. No one seems to want to do anything about that.......

My full name is Musawer Mansoor Ijaz. But I am known globally as Mansoor Ijaz --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:41, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the sources, but now I'm really confused. We have a subscription to the archives in the Times of India, but I can't find the Varadarajan articles anywhere.  I've run through the titles of every article they published from 25 November 2000 to 30 November 2000, and while he wrote a lot of articles, none of them have those titles.  Could you check to make sure that you've not made any typos?  I'd like to see the full text, and if possible, without making you give it to me.  On the other hand, I found your article of 3 January 2001 without problem.  The introduction is basically supposed to be a summary of the main body of the article, and as far as I can see, TheRedPenofDoom's edits to the introduction have done a fine job of summarising what's in the rest of the article, so any problems with the perspective of the intro are the result of problems in the body.  We need to fix the main body, since anyone can clean up the intro once the main body is better; could you please identify problematic parts over there?  The easiest approach will be to identify individual sentences (or parts of sentences) that need to be removed and similarly-sized chunks that need to be added — removing parts that themselves are bad, and adding when something provides a valid perspective that needs to be balanced.  Meanwhile, I've found just three JSTOR-hosted articles that mention you, and two just cite stuff you've written; the exception is this article, which is marked as "Free", so you may be able to read it.  Please note I tend to like to work bit-by-bit, rather than doing comprehensive reworkings all at once; that's why I'd rather resolve the main body problems before anything else.  Nyttend (talk) 19:09, 16 March 2014 (UTC)


 * May I suggest you go and look at the article before it was edited this morning. Removing the Formula One section wholesale is what started all this. Exactly contrary to what you have written above. The rest of the article was largely untouched (yet). And it is well-sourced from highly credible sources throughout. I take issue with mention of articles written by me. Newspaper editors that publish op-ed pieces in the New York Times, FT or WSJ don't take unnecessary risks and verify and validate every claim before it is made on their pages by an oped columnist. This was especially the case in my circumstance because I wrote hard charging commentary against corrupt governments.


 * The Sudan letter should be restored. It is hard evidence of the assertion that Sudan made an unconditional offer to the United States of counterterrorism assistance. I do not see any justifiable rationale for removing it. It is a factual document, sent by a head of government in my hands and delivered to a senior US government official for wide review within the USG. It should be restored.


 * With respect to the TOI articles, if you have an email address you would like to share, I will send over the actual articles as I snapshotted them off the web when they were originally published. Sometimes newspapers allow links to die -- maybe on purpose. Anything to do with me in the Pakistan-India environs was subject to that type of disingenuous behavior. Siddharth later left that newspaper and went on to The Hindu, where he wrote quite hard against me. So he was no friend and he had no axe to grind in my favor. Hope that helps -- in general, I find the way in which RedPen has handled edits today to be too acrimonious and not reflective of a cooperative spirit. We are all left to tremble in our boots or he will bar us or block us or ban us -- what utter nonsense. We are taking this up the chain of command at Wikipedia. I'm no shrinking violet. And I believe strongly that I have been harmed today. Your help in correcting this axe to grind with me is appreciated.
 * i dispute the characterization of "highly credible sources throughout" - the one section that i have looked at with any level of detail uses an editorial by Mansoor Ijaz to support that Ijaz has done important behind the scenes work. Thats not "highly credible sourcing ", thats self aggrandizement. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  20:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Why don't you then edit it out and say Ijaz has never done anything important? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC)


 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 19:22, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that Varadarajan's articles were op-eds? If so, they shouldn't be used, since op-eds generally aren't considered reliable sources.  I was checking through ProQuest, which doesn't take down stories; even if they would somehow lose permission to host a story, they'd at least mention its existence.  I'd rather not provide an email address; could you put the snapshots on something like Flickr or Imgur?  Then, you could just give me a link.  "Sudan letter": do you mean the bit in this version of the article, section "Negotiations with Sudan"?  Everything from "In April 1997" until "the Mukhabarat" is sourced to this article, but most of that information doesn't come from that article.  It needs to be removed, since the article presents no source discussing it, but it can be kept it if you can provide a reliable source mentioning it.  If one of those sources you mention above discusses it, tell me which source and which page, and I'll add a citation.  Finally, I'm not clear what you mean about "Removing the Formula One section wholesale is what started all this. Exactly contrary to what you have written above"; if you're saying that I've contradicted myself, please show me how (I don't see contradiction), or if you mean something else, please explain.  Nyttend (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your attentiveness to detail.

Let's take it point by point: 1. Varadarajan was a reporter at TOI at the time. The op-ed pieces I referred to were my own.... and since I have written only in the highest standard papers and journals, I feel the quality of my own reflections is accurate and certainly fact-checked and authentic.

2. I do not know why the links have disappeared, but I don't use the mediums you suggest using. I have only email and blackberry. Never used social media. I have the snapshots safely tucked away and obviously cannot upload them as images in Wikimedia due to copyright issues. But I have them as they originally appeared online.

3. The "Sudan letter" is the image in the version you snapshotted and sent to me. It is the image that I am asking to have restored as it is the image of the letter that I carried from Bashir to Clinton. An image of that letter appeared in the Vanity Fair article that is part of the references on the reference list.

4. What I mean is that the first edit done by an IP address this morning that started all the ruckus was a wholesale removal of the Formula One section of the article. That was done, curiously, on the same day that the first race of the F1 2014 season was taking place in Melbourne. This was not coincidence in my view. The portal that did it was BSkyB out of the UK. What I meant by "contrary" is that you said you like to work on articles bit by bit, and instead the starting point today in this whole affair of us getting to this point was a section deletion, which, if I read you correctly, should not have been allowed or even possible. I agree that there are valid points made about the convoluted nature of the F1 deal -- banks in today's world are a royal pain to deal with, but there was no thoughtful consideration given to how it might be done better -- just a slash and burn philosophy and RedPen has taken a brazen attitude to just doing it his/her way rather than in the collegiate manner this was intended to do be done.

Look at how I tried to fit within the community guidelines suggested by NeilN. Did anyone pay any attention to a word I said? Not one iota. So what was the point then? I registered under my real name so I don't have to worry that someone accuses me of bias, and instead what I see is that if you don't reveal who you are or what your agenda might be, you can pretty much do what you want to anyone's article. I don't find comfort in any of this process as being ethically correct or honest -- until I saw your comments, I really was going to give up and hand this over to counsel for further action. With your intervention, I am trying hard to find a way to do this right, but what I see is an incremental approach on your part, thoughtful as it might be, being overshadowed and being made irrelevant by the much more aggressive manner of editing of others.

--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 20:07, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I just came back and saw this; I've been uploading photos for a while. I'm just about off to an evening church service, but I'll come back later this evening to give you a substantive response.  Nyttend (talk) 21:46, 16 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Just because you started discussing on the talk page after you were warned for edit warring does not mean everything you say will be acted on or acted on immediately. Case in point: This edit was made in response to one of your comments on the talk page. Was it everything you wanted? No, but it was a start. Also, please try to refrain from intimating you are thinking about taking legal action. The policy No legal threats is taken seriously here. -- Neil N  talk to me  23:48, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Section break for convenience --- We just don't use op-ed pieces, as a matter of principle: they're not the kind of sources on which encyclopedias are based. As far as the images, I didn't realise that you were talking about File:Bashir letter to Hamilton.jpg and File:2000.08.17 KASHMIR Sayed Salahuddin Letter to Clinton on Peace Offer.jpg. I'd advise against displaying those in the article, simply because images of text don't generally contribute much to an article. The best solution might be to link the images somewhere, whether in a see-also section or somewhere appropriate within the text. Perhaps something like"That meeting resulted in Salahuddin issuing a letter to President Bill Clinton"As far as bit-by-bit versus drastic, I prefer to work bit-by-bit, but I'm willing to make big changes when necessary, e.g. when a whole section needs to be excised. See this edit, for example. Moreover, I must have confused you, because from a technical perspective, there's no reason for wholesale chops to be impossible, and it's entirely allowed when done in good faith. "Allowed" doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be put back; my point is that someone doing this kind of thing won't get in trouble simply for cutting it. As far as the merits of the section, the detail is far more than we need here; it's basically a timeline of details that aren't important to the general reader. Imagine someone writing about you a century from now — would they provide all the specific dates and similar details? To the contrary, I believe we'd end up with something such as the following:"Ijaz chaired Quantum Motorsports, which purchased a 35% share in Formula One team Lotus F1 in early 2014 following negotiations begun in the previous June."This gets the point across without discussing the extensive detail that's really useful only for people involved in the process. Yes, removing all mention of it was unhelpful, but keeping everything wasn't a good idea either. Now as far as the anonymous editing, I agree that this is sometimes a problem; the one-paragraph "Randy in Boise" page sums it up well. This is basically why we have to watch articles: we need to be ready to revert blatant vandalism, and when non-vandals add or subtract content unhelpfully, we need to question it and sometimes remove it entirely. I wish that there were a simpler approach, but there isn't. If you're interested in this article and want to see it improve, you're going to have to watch out for problematic edit(or)s sometimes. Finally I've not yet read the text you posted from TOI. I'll read it, think of some suggestions, and come back. Nyttend (talk) 01:39, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Done reading the text you brought in from TOI, and I'm still not quite sure what you're wanting. What I was requesting is that you would provide changes that you think should be made to the article, in exquisite detail, since (unlike with the business dealings) we're directly involved and need to know exactly what you're asking to see.  "Remove the sentence beginning with ___.  After the sentence beginning with ___, add this sentence: [text] It should be cited to [citation]".  You obviously don't need to discuss every sentence, but you really ought to mention every sentence that ought to be changed.  This could be done section-by-section, to avoid edit-conflicts.  If you want to add a whole new section, write the section (with citations) here or at the article's talk page, and then tell us where you'd like to see it go.  Until you do that, I'm going to have a hard time helping, simply because I can't know what you want if you don't explain yourself more fully.  Nyttend (talk) 02:04, 17 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Dear Nyttend,
 * Thank you for all of the above. All of it is constructive and helps me understand process much better. I think the problem we have now is that no matter what I suggest, we have an aggressive group of editors who have set their mind to cutting the article and re-splicing it together in ways that neither read well in the whole nor are particularly accurate. I know my own life best. I know what I did right and wrong, and I have never shied away from accepting the critiques of being a neocon or associated with them, or taking very tough political stands against corruption in my father's homeland of Pakistan to insure leaders were held to account. I give an example again, which I gave you earlier, of taking what Red Pen did to the opening lead and tidying it up so it both reads well, is far more accurate in terms of what my life summary could be stated as, and at the same time does not veer away from the thrust of the edit.
 * Thank you for all of the above. All of it is constructive and helps me understand process much better. I think the problem we have now is that no matter what I suggest, we have an aggressive group of editors who have set their mind to cutting the article and re-splicing it together in ways that neither read well in the whole nor are particularly accurate. I know my own life best. I know what I did right and wrong, and I have never shied away from accepting the critiques of being a neocon or associated with them, or taking very tough political stands against corruption in my father's homeland of Pakistan to insure leaders were held to account. I give an example again, which I gave you earlier, of taking what Red Pen did to the opening lead and tidying it up so it both reads well, is far more accurate in terms of what my life summary could be stated as, and at the same time does not veer away from the thrust of the edit.


 * I added this to my talk page, as requested by other editors, and then here with you previously, and got no response. Okay, so we are all busy and engaged in other things, but for the better part of an entire day now, three editors have taken turns at just randomly chopping the article up to their own taste without looking at why the additions made were either relevant or how they provided a more complete biographical sketch. I only added data in sections where I thought the additions would help readers to have a better and more comprehensive look at the life of the individual involved in multiple disciplines and pursuits. Some things I did in life were good. Some didn't turn out so well. But that seems to be irrelevant in the current context because a certain mindset must be satisfied and sated before a rational discussion can take place. Your edit process and style will be quickly and summarily taken over by the current gang of editors who think they know better.


 * Anyway, I enter again here my version of how the lead should look -- you will see it is simply a better edited and clearer version of what is there now.


 * Mansoor Ijaz (Arabic: منصور اعجاز‎) (born August 1961) is an American hedge-fund manager and venture capitalist. He was for some time a media analyst, mostly in relation to Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and the role of Muslim-Americans in US political life. He acted as an unofficial channel for communications in the past between the United States and foreign governments, notably of Sudan, India and Pakistan. He is founder and chairman of Crescent Investment Management Ltd, a New York investment firm since 1990 that operates a proprietary trading system, CARAT, developed by Ijaz in the late 1980s. Ijaz's venture investments include recent efforts to acquire, among other enterprises, a stake in the Lotus F1 Formula One team.


 * In the 1990s, Ijaz and his companies were significant contributors to Democratic party institutions and the presidential candidacies of Bill Clinton.[3][4] During the Clinton administration's first and second term, when the US had severed official ties with Sudan, Ijaz opened informal communications links between Washington and Khartoum in an effort to gain access to Sudanese intelligence data on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, who were operating from Sudan at the time.[4] Ijaz, who is of Pakistani descent[4], was also involved in efforts to broker a ceasefire in Kashmir in 2000-2001, and was a key protagonist in "Memogate", a controversy that alleged delivery of a memorandum by former Pakistani envoy Husain Haqqani through Ijaz to senior U.S. officials to thwart an attempted coup by the Pakistani military after the death of bin Laden.[5]


 * I believe what is written above says exactly the same thing, but is clearer and more accurate on key points without veering away from the essence of what RedPen wanted to convey. Over to you, good sir.


 * Sincerely, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:24, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

-
 * I forgot to mention that I take on the points about the letters, etc. I have actually asked that all images I uploaded be deleted since the other editors are systematically taking all of that out anyway. I offered these from my private archives to add to the article under the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words", and because, like RedPen who questions everything about me and my life's achievements and insists on using words that are inflammatory rhetoric in his responses to my queries, that the image would prove the point.


 * I also like very much your one liner on the Quantum-Lotus deal. As I said before, I did not add that section and all I tried to do was incrementally keep it accurate and worked well with other editors to do so. In the end, it was all for naught because clearly there is a group of the editorial staff that have a different way of handling things. That's also why I am asking shortly for my user account to be deleted. I hope you will continue to monitor the article and make a serious effort to really understand the hard content rather than allowing those who simply wish to dismiss my life's work in its entirety the upper hand.


 * Thank you, and good night, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Glad to know that the one-liner sounds workable; I remembered that you'd not added it. Please remember what I said above, that there's no way for accounts to be deleted; in order to have such an ability, we'd need to hire programmers to completely rework our software.  As far as the intro, I've replaced the existing intro with the one you suggested, after making some modifications.  Most of them are rather minor, but this one makes some wording changes to split up an over-long sentence.  Did I summarise it correctly?  I've never heard of the incident, so if this mangles the situation, please remember that it's because I misunderstood, not because I'm trying to introduce errors.  Responding to your question up above, 16:45, 16 March 2014 — the problem is precisely that we're running with first-hand reporting.  Can you suggest a book or academic journal article that provides an overview of what happened?  Perhaps such an overview is present in one of the books you cited yesterday?  With that, we could reasonably replace everything sourced to newspapers, aside from something talking about the newspapers themselves, e.g. "Initial news reports said X, but it was later discovered that the actual situation was Y".  Finally, one thing I simply cannot understand: why is your name in Arabic critical to have at the beginning?  We routinely put non-English names in introductory sentences when they're highly relevant to the subject, and of course a non-English version of your own name deserves to be there.  I'm just not understanding why Arabic should be included but not Urdu.  Nyttend (talk) 22:16, 17 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this. I cannot tell you how pleased I am that we at least now have a working collaborative effort to chisel the article into a truthful and factual recantation of the facts. You have done much to restore my interest in Wikipedia. Really much. Now, is it possible to archive some of the above stuff so we can take things section by section? I am certainly happy now with the intro paragraphs and can help a lot to give input on the section that I believe would be better entitled "Professional life" as I have not had a business career per se. Thank you again -- would be nice to at least know your first name so I can thank you properly. Are you stateside? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:35, 17 March 2014 (UTC)


 * You're very welcome. Earlier, when you made a similar intro-modification request (just under "Here were my suggestions"), I didn't consider doing anything with it because I thought you were quoting a past version of the article, which I was unable to find.  Re sandbox, I assume you're talking about User:Mansoor Ijaz/sandbox?  Thanks for helping me understand your name; since your father's article gives an Urdu original for his name, I assumed that your name likewise was Urdu, especially since (unlike "Ahmad", which I knew to be Arabic in origin) I don't remember hearing "Mujaddid" or "Mansoor" and knew nothing about "Musawer".  I know a little about Arabic (basically the concept of trilateral roots and other features of Semitic languages), and I know a little of Arabic and western Indian subcontinental history, so I understand a little bit about the relationships between the two languages — but just enough that I can be easily confused.  It doesn't help that I can't understand anything of the Arabic alphabet (the cursive format confuses me), even though I can transliterate between Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Hebrew, and I've had a little experience with the Syriac alphabet.  As far as archiving, I'd advise you to collapse it.  You could archive it by moving it to a subpage (e.g. User talk:Mansoor Ijaz/archive 1), but that would be confusing because you'd be archiving just part of the thread, and that would make the conversation much harder to follow.  Collapsing it will get it out of the way without making it harder to follow; just place collapse top and collapse bottom around the text, as I did here.  I'm in Indiana (see my userpage), and a marginally employed librarian: I have a couple of part-time jobs, one partly related to my field, and one totally unrelated; unfortunately I can't provide any more help this evening because I've been on Wikipedia too much today and need to finish off a job application before going to bed.  I'll check back when possible (presumably tomorrow) and see how to respond to what you've written below.  Nyttend (talk) 04:42, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Talkback --

 Neil N  talk to me  14:53, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Note also Talk:Mansoor_Ijaz. -- Neil N  talk to me  15:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion Box -- Mansoor Ijaz article
This section is created to allow User:Mansoor Ijaz to interact with and discuss potential future changes to sections of article Mansoor Ijaz

Article LEDE
Section to add suggestions for the Lead section of article Mansoor Ijaz here:

a reference is needed for the Formula One sentence. I can suggest one: or you can find one of your own.

Suggest Bill Clinton be linked in the first instance of mentioning him in the article, ie Bill Clinton.

Also suggest making "Memogate" as Memogate for ease of link and reference to the main Memogate article.

--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:23, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

My name is actually an Arabic name -- both Musawer and Mansoor are taken from the Quran, holy book of Muslims, and each are one of the 99 names attributed to God in the Quran. I don't think there is a material difference in the Arabic and Urdu spelling, as both draw from Arabic letters, but the name is an Arabic name, not an Urdu one. Hope that helps. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:59, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if you can see my sandbox or not, but I reorganized the sentences a bit to make it flow logically from summary intro to professional affiliation to media commentator to political life to international negotiator -- sort of sequenced a bit better and tighter logic flow. Let me know if you can't see it and I will paste it in here. Working on the Professional life section now.--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:24, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Article PERSONAL LIFE
Section to add suggestions for Personal Life section of article Mansoor Ijaz here:

John Gamble was indeed a major influence on my early development. We called him the Gentle Giant. I learned more about discipline, a proper competitive spirit and how to deal with my own race issues in rural Virginia life as a child (he is an African American) than anyone else I know. Now, the problem is that User:Drmies wants secondary source verification of events that took place nearly 30 years ago when this type of electronic medium did not exist. I have, as I did with the TOI articles, old clippings from University of Virginia newspapers and other local newspapers that were written about my career at the time. These articles go into some detail of my inspiration and relationships with those who helped me in my weightlifting achievements. When I tried to upload those images, they were deleted for copyright infringement (I did that when I was not aware of how Wikimedia Commons works).

I would ask that the sentence about John be re-added, as he was a major influence in my life. Here is that sentence with its reference link as it was in the article before the cuts (please edit as you see fit):


 * Ijaz’s coach at U.Va., John Gamble, was the top ranked powerlifter in the world in the 275-pound class from 1981 to 1983.

CUT THIS [He placed first at the IPF World Powerlifting Championships in 1984. He finished 3rd in the 1982 World’s Strongest Man competition and went on to serve as Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Miami Dolphins under coach Don Shula from 1994 until 2005.] END CUT

--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:23, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Trimmed Gamble sentence --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:11, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Article PROFESSIONAL LIFE
Section to add suggestions for Professional Life section of article Mansoor Ijaz here:

I am working in the Sandbox on some suggestions for the Professional life section that I will add as suggestions here later on. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:21, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I have prepared a draft version of the Business career (perhaps more appropriately named Professional life) section in my Sandbox. If you cannot see it there, please let me know and I will paste it in here. I have not included any references yet -- thought perhaps you could read it and see how it looks and then let me know what you think needs referencing. Some of it is available in the Losing Bin Laden book. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:38, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the thrust of arguments made by Nyttend, NeilN and TheRedPenOfDoom are essentially correct (too complicated and too much emphasis on one single data point in my career, as much as it may be of significant public interest due to the high profile of the investment being considered. May I suggest a better way to do this edit you have added in -- to have a look at my Sandbox where I have proposed a fuller narrative that is accurate regarding my Professional life (which I think is a better way to describe my career as I have not had a traditional "business career"), and then integrate your addition rather than in a seperate article section, into a sub-section of the article as "===Formula One==="? Perhaps this then puts the Formula One bit in more perspective and respects the points made by Nyttend, NeilN and TheRedPenOfDoom. I also think some mention has to be made that Quantum fulfilled the essential obligations of its original contract but recently introduced banking regulations in the countries where the companies that were part of the deal operated required a restructuring of the transaction. Without that, the gap of time in your edit makes no sense. These are my suggestions for the re-work.
 * What is in the sandbox now is unsourced and full of name dropping. Its not appropriate for the article. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  16:48, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

these are people that I worked with my entire career and who, each one of them, had an instrumental impact on my life's work. That is surely about me, is it not? As example, we did not just work in professional pursuits, but in authoring articles together as op-eds, and both Woolsey and Abrahamson attended my wedding, Abe as a groomsman. These people are like my family. I don't mention them to name-drop, but to make clear who were the influences in my life. That is what you and others keep saying, that the article is about me, not these people. But these people are as much the shaping force in my life as my own mother and father were. Is there middle ground here? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 16:52, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Not really. You can mention them all you want when you write your biography. For an encyclopedia, the contents and focus are different. The fact that you have co-authored items with someone is probably appropriate to include. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  16:56, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * okay, I understand. Co-authoring of articles, etc should come under the Media section, yes? Am I permitted to enter these into the article and then you can review and edit as necessary or do I have to do it Sandbox and you or some other editor pulls it in? I am allowed to make edits, am I not, to the article? As long as they respect the Wiki guidelines. I appreciate your responses and will spend some time on this now to get it fixed for review. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

re: sourcing, I just haven't added that in yet. It's all there and well-sourced. Shall I do that so you can see sourcing? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 16:54, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * yes, please. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  16:57, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

As you made these changes, may I ask you to fix the following: these two sentences do not belong in this section. They are not part of my professional life, but indeed are matters of personal interest and I suggest should therefore be placed back in the Personal life section of the article. Neither position was held as a paid position of any type and both were part of my personal interests, just as the Council on Foreign Relations is and just as the Non-Proft activity is.


 * Ijaz has served on the College Foundation Board of Trustees at the University of Virginia.[15] He was also a member of the board of directors of the Atlantic Council from 2007 until 2009.[16]

--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 16:57, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * People dont get those types of positions merely because they are interested, they come because of professional expertise. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  17:58, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * by the same rationale then, can we agree to move the Council on Foreign Relations and the Afghanistan Foundation down into Professional life? I take your point.--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:00, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Before I go in and source the Professional life DRAFT in my Sandbox, would you kindly have a look and see if this version works?

references added -- please have a look and let me know if you feel any further sourcing is needed, or any other modifications. The references are listed raw. Obviously in the article, I would clean up how they are to be presented in the References section --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 19:30, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * sorry for delay in responding - i have not had the appropriate time or mental energy to focus on the issues here.
 * I may have been misleading in my "The fact that you have co-authored items with someone is probably appropriate". By that I was thinking of books. In a complete encyclopedia article about someone, we would generally include something about every book; and in the mention of a book, we would include note of a co-author. In an encyclopedia article, no matter how complete, we are not going to mention every op ed piece, only those that have specifically had impact beyond their appearances (in Wikipedia terms, that other sources have discussed the Op Ed piece) and so only co-authors of those op eds that have had third party coverage would be noted. We would not include wikipedia article content about a co-authored op ed piece simply to add the name of the co-author. Does that clarify?
 * I probably wont be able to give appropriate attention to this article for a while, feel free to move on without me if the rest of the editors involved are in agreement.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  13:18, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the time to respond. It makes perfect sense -- in that case, there are one or two op-eds that would make the cut but it really isn't any longer an important issue. Good luck with other editing. Nyttend has been very helpful -- your reply to his remarks on your talk page would be appreciated so we can move on and finish the unfinished sections and clear up the rest. Much appreciated. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 13:27, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Article MEDIA COMMENTATOR
Section to add suggestions for Media Commentator section of article Mansoor Ijaz here:

my suggestions for the MEDIA Section of the article in light of your comment on collaborative efforts with some of my well-known colleagues over the years can be found in my Sandbox. At the same time I added in the new material, I trimmed the old so the net effect does not lengthen the article.

Article INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATOR
Section to add suggestions for International Negotiator section of article Mansoor Ijaz here:

Please see Sandbox for initial re-write suggestions. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 13:58, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Article MEMOGATE
Section to add suggestions for Memogate section of article Mansoor Ijaz here:

Please see Sandbox for re-write suggestions and source referencing for text. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:36, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 20 MAR 2014
I'm sorry. I meant to respond last night, but I had to go to bed early, and by this morning I'd totally forgotten. One technical issue: as far as I can remember, linking a username in an edit summary, as you did here, doesn't alert the user, unlike linking a username in text. Point by point responses to what you've said, based on this revision of the sandbox: As far as I can tell, you've improved lots of things with the sandbox proposal, and nothing has been made worse. I'll wait for input from TRPOD, and I'll hope to hear from anyone else, but I think we could try to run with the sandbox text. Nyttend (talk) 01:29, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Lead — Clinton and memogate links added in intro, per your suggestion here. The F1 citation is already there; apparently someone else responded to your request before I came along.
 * Personal life — you ask that I remove the powerlifting and Dolphins sentences, but I can't find them in the current version or any recent versions that I've checked, and they're also absent from a January revision that I checked. Since I can't understand, I can't help there; could you show me where I'm supposed to look?  Meanwhile, I take it that you'd like to have"Ijaz's coach...to 1983.&lt;ref></ref&gt;"Is that correct, or do I misunderstand you?
 * Professional life — as far as I can tell, your style of writing is ideal. So often, this kind of section can degenerate into something like "The businessman got into venture A, which made tons of money.  After that, he entered venture B, which saved the world.  After that..."  As far as I can tell, you've given a balanced overview of your successes and disappointments.  Meanwhile, the article's current bit about UVA foundation trustees and the Atlantic Council seems relevant here; what would you think of including it?  I've not yet checked to see whether the sources back up what you've said, but I do have three minor issues: (1) Your lotusf1team.com link returns a 404 error; did you make a typo?  (2) In your Google Books citation, you ought to link Regnery and Miniter: I was originally going to object that you were citing a book by a no-name author and a no-name publisher, so the links will demonstrate that it's an established author with an established (even if controversial) publisher.  (3) Combining the sentences into one or two paragraphs, rather than having four little ones, will probably make it easier to read.
 * I'm concerned about the media section's reliance on links to your publications, i.e. by the fact that much of it is essentially "Ijaz wrote articles with A,&lt;ref>link to article with person A&lt;/ref> B,&lt;ref>link to article with person B&lt;/ref> C,&lt;ref>link to article with person C&lt;/ref> etc. Granted, that's a problem with the current version as well, but I think we really ought to take this opportunity to start depending on secondary sources.  Let's have these statements depend on other people's writings about you, whether a bibliography compiled by someone else, or a book or article written about you that mentions your key publications.  The small amount of context given here means that these would fit better in a section at the end of the article: something like "Articles" or "Publications".  Analysis of what you've written about ("In numerous opinion pieces written over the years...") really should be based on third-party sources as well.


 * Thank you for again assisting.


 * The issue with the Lede is organization of the sentences. Please have a look at my Sandbox version and you will see how I proposed the organization so that it is brief intro summary, then the biz stuff and media, then the political and citizen diplomacy interventions... Would appreciate the reorganized version as I believe it reads better. And is a tighter fit.


 * I also took your comments on board about how to take images of documents out and embed links to them in the sentence structures, which I did not know how to do before. Thank you for the tutorial.


 * Working on your other comments next.
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:39, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Personal life -- you have it right -- it was not in the version as it is now. The Gamble sentence was taken out and I'm asking the edited shortened sentence be added back in. This should appear at the end of the weightlifting paragraph.
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:41, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, in keeping with TRPOD's comment about why he moved UVA Board of Trustees and Atlantic Council service to Professional life, I would ask that we go ahead and move both Council on Foreign Relations and Afghanistan Foundation into the Professional life section as well. Keeps it all in one place as all are related -- my service on external boards and memberships in professional organizations.
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Professional life -- need to un-capitalize "L" in Life to "life" to keep with Wiki style.
 * please use this link -- the Lotus corporate website may have rolled the old news off or archived it. Let's use this one instead: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/10130010/Lotus-will-be-the-No-1-team-on-the-Formula-One-grid-within-a-year-claims-new-investor-Mansoor-Ijaz.html
 * On the Miniter book, I agree, but the problem is that I cannot find a link direct to Regnery that has the full pages of the book where you can actually go and read what was written in its entirety. That's why the Google Books option works better -- if you hit the link, you find that you can read any page in its entirety for context and understanding.
 * I am now going to the Sandbox to fix up the four small paras into two or three main ones. That's an easy fix.
 * Question, am I allowed to go into the article to make mickey mouse fixes like scaling and placement of pictures and insuring all the syntax and punctuation are correct so the article has a more professional "look" to it?
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:55, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:55, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Responding to your final points on the Media section -- I took TROPD's comments on board about the fact that if I was going to mention the big names that everyone said was me "name dropping", that indeed it would be appropriate to mention those as joint collaborations on articles. I asked if the Media commentator section was the right place to do it, but did not get a reply. I still feel that rather than adding another section where we seek to trim the overall article down, it is better to add this in the Media section. It has direct relevance there and won't seem out of place. I will have to research how to do the third party sourcing -- I know some of it exists because many books have cited articles written by myself and Woolsey in particular. It won't be the case in every one of them, but citing my own articles co-authored with these folks is also direct evidence -- I guess since we are proving only the point that a joint article was published in a reputable place (i.e., that's the purpose of the sentence, we achieve the objective that way -- or do I have that wrong?
 * --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:10, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * [edit conflict] I hadn't noticed that you'd rearranged the lead. I agree with the rearrangement: when we have sections on topics A, B, C, D, it's silly to have the lead discuss them in an order of C, A, D, B, but that's what we have, and your change will get us to an order of A, B, C, D.  Understood on the Gamble thing, but I disagree with its inclusion, simply because I don't see how his accomplishments are relevant to you; could you say a little about why his 1981-1983 accomplishments belong in your article?  Simply mentioning who your coach was, on the other hand, is definitely fine.  By the way, you link to John Gamble, but it's a disambiguation page, and none of the entries there discuss a weightlifter.  Also wasn't noticing the header capitalisation (you're right), and thanks for the changed URL.  Again, being third-party, it's probably better, even if the other URL were working.  As far as the citation links, I was meaning something like &lt;ref>Miniter, Richard.  Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror.  Washington: Regnery, 2013, 117.</ref&gt;  Adding links to Miniter and Regnery articles will help readers understand that author and publisher are notable; you're not citing something by a random person who used AuthorHouse.  And finally, minor edits are of course acceptable.  The problem with conflict-of-interest editing is that someone might improperly influence the article; spelling, grammar, photo sizes, etc. are always acceptable.  Nyttend (talk) 02:13, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

On Gamble, the point was only to show that he was a world-class weightlifter himself, not just any coach. I feel it is relevant, but it's your call.

On Miniter, done. I agree. Don't know how to do it as well as you do, so I will leave that to you.

When you are done with your changes, I will perhaps go in and do some tidying up that I've noticed with my old op-ed editor's eyes..... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:17, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Will need your help on one other item -- during the moments after the weekend foofaw when I was considering just leaving the Wiki community (until your intervention stopped that notion in my head), I had asked for all of the images to be deleted from Wikimedia Commons. How do we undo that? And can you help? Also, can we restore the image of the All American certificate so it can be embedded as a link in the weightlifting paragraph? Sorry to give you so much homework. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:22, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * See Help:Edit conflict if you wonder what I mean by "edit conflict"; it's a technical thing, not an interpersonal conflict — I wrote what I said before seeing your Media comments. Having something saying "Ijaz wrote about topic X&lt;ref>Ijaz, Mansoor.  "Article about X".  Magazine of X.&lt;/ref>" is definitely acceptable from a sourcing standpoint; even self-published sources are accepted when we're talking about the sources themselves, so it's definitely permitted to cite your article as a source for the fact that you wrote the article.  I'm just saying that it would be better yet if we could cite someone else's publication that reviewed your writings — this is more of a general improvement thing, and I'm not complaining that you're trying to influence the article unduly or to make yourself look good.  Right now, I don't understand your selection process: it raises a question of "why does the article mention those articles and not others?"  If you cited someone else who was looking at your writings, we could list the publications that the other author considered most important, while the original research standards say that we shouldn't by ourselves determine what's most important.  Of course, you could include some specific standard, e.g. "Ijaz has co-written editorials with five generals: A, B, C, D, E", that would be different, since you would be going by a clear standard that anyone could understand.  Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * That's what I did in fact on the media thing... Please see my Sandbox suggestion and you will see that's how I wrote it, in my own style.


 * Now, are you making some of these changes, or am I permitted to do it once we have agreed a version and what is acceptable? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:26, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * On the Commons images, I can't help there as I can here, since I'm not an administrator there. However, I'll leave a note at their administrators' noticeboard (Commons:COM:AN) to let people know that you've changed your mind.  Please note that File:1982 All-American Powerlifting Certificate.jpg can't be restored, because its inclusion was actually a copyright infringement.  On the media thing, I understand that you've done the self-citation as I was talking about; I was just trying to say that there weren't any significant problems with what you were doing.  Sorry that I wasn't clear.  Unlike with the links and the new intro, I'd prefer to get a little more input from someone else before copying over your changes.  I'll not make any changes to your sandbox, since it's not appropriate in most cases for one user to edit another user's sandbox without permission, although temporary technical things (e.g. the changes I reverted here) or changes that you request (e.g. the citation links) are fine.  Nyttend (talk) 02:34, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, thank you. Will you make the Lede changes then? I only see the initial link changes, but not the sentence structure change. Are you referring to that as well that you want other input? Or the more substantive changes --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:38, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I hadn't made any intro changes (except for the links), but I've now implemented your requested text and asked TRPOD to come and offer input. I meant that I wanted input on changes to the body text, not to the intro.  Note that this is exactly what I meant by going bit-by-bit, addressing individual issues separately rather than rejecting everything because of a problem with one section.  Nyttend (talk) 02:50, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Learning a lot from you in all this. Really appreciate your patience and the tutorials. I re-scaled the weightlifting image to fit the section height better. I would suggest that the Kashmir letter image in Sub-Section Kashmir and the Memorandum image in Section Memogate be removed, as these are now embedded images in the Lede. Thoughts? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:07, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You're quite welcome; I'm glad to help. See my comments immediately under the "Section break for convenience" header in the collapsed comments above — I think it's a good idea to remove links to these images in these sections.  Nyttend (talk) 03:14, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? "Article X isn't neutral", "Article Y is badly sourced", "Someone's damaging Article Z", etc.?  If that's what you mean, the answer is definitely yes.  Nyttend (talk) 03:55, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 21 MAR 2014
For completeness, I drafted into the Sandbox version the current relevant information from the article itself so if the proposed Sandbox suggestions are accepted, it is an easier move from Sandbox to Article in complete, integrated form. It went back to 4 paragraphs, but this was necessary to separate ideas and insure clarity rather than crunching unrelated topics into two paragraphs. Hope that works. If accepted, can I count on you to Wikify the references and draft them into the body text where designated or shall I do that? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 09:33, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Good afternoon, Sir. Hope all is well. I had a reply from Red Pen earlier -- you can see it above in the Professional life section, but I paste it in here as well for ease of reference. Seems he's focused on another project and has essentially told us to proceed without his further input. I did re-work the Media section to comply with a clarification of understanding on collaborative media efforts. I think your idea can potentially replace that later on but let's get the big picture right first. Appreciate your continued interest and support to complete the re-write task. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:28, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * TheRedPenOfDoom wrote:    sorry for delay in responding - i have not had the appropriate time or mental energy to focus on the issues here.
 * I may have been misleading in my "The fact that you have co-authored items with someone is probably appropriate". By that I was thinking of books. In a complete encyclopedia article about someone, we would generally include something about every book; and in the mention of a book, we would include note of a co-author. In an encyclopedia article, no matter how complete, we are not going to mention every op ed piece, only those that have specifically had impact beyond their appearances (in Wikipedia terms, that other sources have discussed the Op Ed piece) and so only co-authors of those op eds that have had third party coverage would be noted. We would not include wikipedia article content about a co-authored op ed piece simply to add the name of the co-author. Does that clarify?
 * I probably wont be able to give appropriate attention to this article for a while, feel free to move on without me if the rest of the editors involved are in agreement.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:18, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Good morning, Sir. I have now finished off the Media section re-write with necessary links. I am happy to have the references managed any way you see fit. If you need another type to replace the ones there now, I can research and suggest. There's plenty of them.....

On the Professional life section, I left the references separate for now so you and other editors reviewing can decide what's really relevant and what not. As with the Media stuff, some of this is now so well known about me that it doesn't really require referencing. But I don't want to make those decisions.

Would appreciate that you can spend a little time on this today so we can advance to the final sections in terms of re-writes.... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 12:19, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, so you're in Zürich; I thought you were somewhere on the US East Coast. No longer will I be amazed at the unusual hours you're awake!  I'm about to go to eat, but I'll give you a substantive response later.  Let it suffice to say that I'll be happy to move ahead without further input because of what TRPOD said.  Nyttend (talk) 21:50, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Three things, none of which require any action from you. (1) Our citation standards stress the importance of using the same citation style throughout, but I've never used the citation templates that are currently in use in the article.  For that reason, minor cleanup will still be needed, since I'll only be able to use handwritten citations, although of course this won't affect the article text.  (2) Links can be embedded within single brackets, so text appears as text.  However, we generally discourage that practice in the body of the article — I don't know why, but we've discouraged it since I joined Wikipedia in 2006, so we might as well follow it.  External links belong in the External links section; very few pages should be linked there, but if you wrote something that caused national debate, it definitely belongs there.  (3) I'm about to move your changes to the "Professional life" into the article.  Nyttend (talk) 00:19, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Sir. I am at station and can help if you wish. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 00:52, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * While formatting the citations, I checked the content against them and was surprised to note that a substantial amount of the content wasn't in the citations. For example,  says nothing about 1986, and the only bit about you that I see is a statement that you were party to a 1987 Van Eck contract.  Meanwhile, no citations are present for other parts of the article; these parts, along with the spots that didn't reflect content in the sources, I've marked as needing citations.  Would you please be able to find sourcing for these statements?  Company-produced documentation, as long as it's been published in print and/or online, will suffice for the "Mansoor Ijaz began his career" and "Since that time, Ijaz has" sentences.  This is something that would best be resolved before we put it into the article.  Nyttend (talk) 01:10, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hm, now I see that you've added some citations before you got my note; this is precisely what I was asking to see. Nyttend (talk) 01:12, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I've added all in that were requested except the first one -- I think using the Miniter book should be okay for that -- or the Newsweek article published in 2011 that covered the Memogate matter had it pretty well covered as well. Both are already in the article so I can link easily if you agree. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:18, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I've moved the Miniter citation as you say. Unfortunately, we need something discussing 2008 cancellation, so the 2007 source won't be sufficient, although of course it's good for describing the projections.  None of the cancellation-related sources at Hydropolis and none that I found through Google were really the kind of thing that meet our reliable-source standards, or I would have added one of them.  Would this kind of thing have been published in business periodicals, perhaps?  Nyttend (talk) 01:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

(unindented) Try this one -- maybe we use the words, "was put on hold indefinitely" as this source states. http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2009/id20090415_380317.htm

Also requesting permission to insert this sentence back into Personal life section.


 * Ijaz was coached at U.Va. by John Gamble, the top ranked powerlifter in the world in the 275-pound class from 1981 to 1983.

--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:40, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that article was what I was hoping to see. On the weightlifter, could you find a source mentioning that he was your coach?  Your source mentions his participation in the event, but it doesn't say anything about you.  Nyttend (talk) 01:45, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I sincerely thank you for teaching me the ropes. May I ask that you please add the words after the last sentence on Formula One deal as .... remaining incomplete more than nine months after its announcement amid ongoing negotiations with Lotus. I didn't quite get to that in proofing the final version before you moved the section to the article. On Gamble, the problem is that it is mentioned in those references from Larry Appel and the other Cavalier Daily articles, but there are no links available due to the dates on which they were published. I had mentioned before that I tried to upload images of the articles but they were taken down due to copyright issues. But those articles -- all of them -- mention John and Willie Morris, my other coach who was taken out of the original article by Red Pen and NeilN.--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:51, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * May I ask whether we have still energy to go ahead and move the re-edit of the Media commentator section over as well, as I think that is also now ready to go.... Thank you once again, for your patience in teaching me with a velvet glove and for helping me to understand the essence of how an Encyclopedia is developed -- really a pleasure to work with you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:06, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Last question from me... Are we now at a stage of collaboration and your confidence in my understanding of the Wiki process that we can remove the COI tag? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:09, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Negotiations text changed to reflect the source, which since it was written in January, isn't good for saying anything beyond "into 2014"; with a more up-to-date source, we could simply replace the current one and replace "into 2014" with "into [month] 2014". Gamble link added, although as I see it, his championships wouldn't really fit: they'd interrupt the account of your various competitions, and the presence of the link demonstrates that there's something significant, because the average coach in his place really wouldn't warrant mention (let alone a link to an existing article!) in an article about someone like you whose business and political actions are far more significant than college sports.  I've "refused" to move the media section because I've not looked at it at all; let me check it first, and I'll move it over if I think it's ready.  You're quite welcome for all the help — I can't sympathise in the sense that I've not experienced it, but to a point I can understand why you were profoundly disturbed at the state of the article and at the responses you got when you tried to improve things.  Finally, I'd like to retain the COI tag for now, but I'll remove it (if I remember) when moving the media stuff; if I move the media stuff and leave the tag, please let me know, because it will have been forgetfulness on my part.  Nyttend (talk) 03:20, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * God bless and thank you again. You not only restored my confidence in what the Wiki system is all about, but you also helped me to see through my frustration with initial edit conflicts and see the merit of arguments made by some of the other administrators. In the end, I seem to have gotten along with them as well as they understood that I respected the system they (and you) were administering, and that integrity of that system trumped my personal view of what an article should look like. I would say we have dramatically strengthened the article's course without fundamentally changing anything that was present in the "pre-education of Mansoor Ijaz on Wikifying an article" version -- other than to take out all the references to those who were not, as you have all said, subject of the article. I now understand enough and have gained enough confidence that I am going to propose writing a few articles as well on living people I think merit mention in the Encyclopedia. I look forward to working on the Media commentator section, and am up for another hour due to jet lag if you need my inputs.... And I really believe now the COI tag is not a fair characterization of my inputs............................. :-) --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:27, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Again, you're welcome; I've wasted effort in trying to help people who don't particularly feel like participating (they complain and then leave), so it's really been refreshing to work with you to improve things. Please permit me to wait until tomorrow for media work; last Saturday I made a photo-taking trip to the Jackson Purchase (I was on the road from 5AM until nearly midnight), getting 400+ photos that still aren't entirely organized, so I'd like to put more effort into that for the rest of the evening, but of course remind me if I don't return to help you tomorrow.  A couple of other things on COI: (1) I don't want to remove the tag yet out of respect to what others thought, since that section isn't hugely different from when the COI concerns were active.  I might think otherwise if we weren't preparing to replace the section with the new text and get rid of the reason for the tag.  I've moved the tag so that it's just on the section, by the way.  (2) If you're creating or improving articles on other people, the "Close relationships" section of this old version of Conflict of interest might be helpful.  In short, be careful writing about close associates, but you can write about them if you're careful to be neutral; you wouldn't need to make all edits through talk-page proposals like we're doing for your own article.  I agree with your opinions about how your own article has improved, and I don't expect you'll have too much difficulty in writing decent articles on them.  Nyttend (talk) 03:42, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

(unindenting) God bless. Have a good evening and good luck with the picture sorting. That's my next task of learning on Wiki stuff -- how to properly upload and license images so they can be used throughout the Wiki community. Please don't forget to ping an administrator at Wikimedia Commons on leaving my images intact, and if I need to make that request, for someone to tell me how and where.

On other articles, I was thinking of writing one on my youngest brother, Mujeeb, who is one of the world's leading battery engineers in the locomotion systems category (planes, trains and automobiles, so to speak), and one about Klaus Buescher, who was perhaps as great an investing legend as Peter Lynch at Magellan. These are long-term projects for when I don't have so much to do at 5am......

Good evening --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:49, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 22 MAR 2014
Media commentator section to be edited and moved to the main article today --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:58, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I have today re-written the first sub-section on Sudan in the International negotiator section. Please let me know how you see that reads now. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 13:57, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I had forgotten; sorry — as you can see from my latest edits, I was fixing historic site coordinates so that I can more easily get photos next time I'm in Louisville, KY. No comment on the media section, since I've not yet looked at it, but I'll do that next.  See WP:HIDDENCAT — the category system is meant to permit people to navigate between articles on similar topics, but categories are technically valuable enough that we also use them for maintenance, creating categories to group articles with similar problems.  They're hidden because we don't want them to distract people who are simply looking for content on related subjects.  To take a random example, some of the articles in Category:Accuracy disputes from January 2010 are Elena Ceaușescu, Light-harvesting complex, and Galactic Republic — we don't want people thinking that Nikolae Ceaușescu's wife, a kind of proteins, and a Star Wars topic are somehow related.  Nyttend (talk) 17:22, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The first paragraph really doesn't seem to help the article, unless we find some sort of secondary source examining your editorial-writing in general. Of course we can prove that you've written for these various publications, but in order to avoid original synthesis (see our WP:SYNTH page, which prohibits it), we really ought not to mention them without a source to back them up.  For some people, writing in this kind of setting may be highly significant, while for others, I can imagine that it would be trivial — plenty of elected officials write things that get published on editorial pages, even though the editorial writing isn't really significant to the lives of those officials.  If we can find something that examines your editorial-writing and deems it important, I'll support including that paragraph, but for now I think we ought not to include it.  I know that it's significant to you; I'm sorry, but this is a necessary result of the no-original-research standards, since even when we know something to be true, we shouldn't write about it without documentation to back it up.  Your relationship with Fox is different, since frequent contributions to the same network are of course significant, but I hesitate to move it until the whole paragraph is sourced.  Of course, I could just chop out everything after the first sentence, but I don't think that would do the article justice, especially given what's said about the effect of the Financial Times article.  We really need sources for two separate things: the stuff you talked about while at Fox and other people's categorisation of your positions, and the effects of your Financial Times opinion piece.  As far as I can tell, this article looks like it would work as a source for that last sentence; am I correct, or did I misunderstand something?  Nyttend (talk) 17:53, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * to be very candid, I never really thought about the first paragraph in the right way. And given what you've said in the analysis above, I have another suggestion -- let's just take out Media commentator altogether..... Thoughts?


 * I think in the larger scheme of my life's work, the real issue relevant to this article is that my writings and appearances on television generated significant storms because I was not constrained by a boss or some artificial barrier to say what I knew or thought was right. Leaders in Pakistan wanted to eviscerate me because I exposed publicly in a manner that mattered to American taxpayers both financially and politically what they did wrong. Memogate being born out of the fire of one op-ed in the Financial Times is one example. But there are others. What I wrote in the Los Angeles Times (Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize) sparked an entire decade-long conversation about Clinton's real record in countering Islamist fanaticism and was the starting point of who knows how many books (Miniter's being one of them).


 * So I think perhaps we need more discussion here first about what is this section really all about -- and I am happy to just take it out altogether. If we leave it be, then perhaps I need to think how to re-write the concept of my media life and why it is relevant to Encyclopedia readers. But I need guideline help on that and then can craft? Over to you sir --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:03, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Good point. I still think we ought to retain the bit about Fox appearances, since you served the same rôle for the same media organisation for a sustained period of time.  However, it should fit fine with the other non-Crescent parts of the Professional life section.  Meanwhile, I suppose the memogate bit duplicates the Memogate section down below, so I'll remove that too.  Nyttend (talk) 18:09, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * May I suggest you bring over for a minute the Professional life later grafs or something and then we do a work around together before migrating to the main article. I agree on Memogate -- it's all covered below. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:11, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * To make it simple, I would suggest including the two sentences as a separate graf between the last two sentences of Professional life -- leave out the last sentence on the FT op-ed morphing into Memogate. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:14, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Personally, I think this oversimplifies matters a bit....


 * Ijaz has also served as a media commentator for Fox News, playing a popular role for the network's Special Report.[24]


 * Can I suggest:
 * Ijaz has also served as a media commentator, frequently writing opinion pieces and appearing on television news programs over the past two decades. He was exclusively retained by Fox News in the period immediately following the September 11 attacks, appearing on Fox programs over 100 times. He was a popular guest on the network's Special Report broadcast.


 * I think this gets to the overall role media played in my life's work without overstating anything. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:23, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

after reviewing my request on the small additions to finish off the Media section stuff, I wanted to let you know that I've now completed the hard edits I was going to do for the International negotiator section (both sub-sections). Those are there for your review when you get to them. I cut both sub-sections pretty well but tried to keep the essence of detail that makes my involvement hang together in each of the instances.

I recommend wholesale deletion of the Osama bin Laden sub-section. It is a mish mash of stuff that really doesn't belong in the article and will lend greatly to trim the overall article down to a reasonable size.

Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:25, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually I'm somewhat concerned about the second sentence of the suggested text re the media commentator. Perhaps something like "following the September 11 attacks, he was retained by Fox News and became a popular guest..."?  Meanwhile, could you find a source for the proposed expansion?  I agree that it's relevant, but we should have a source for this like everything else.  Moreover, I'm not sure what you mean by "retained", and I'll guess that many other people won't, so a link would help.  Do you mean Retainer agreement?  When I hear "was retained" or hear of someone as a "retainer", I tend to think of housecarls.  Meanwhile, what do you mean by "graf"?  I know about the German concept, but I don't know anything in English that would make sense here.  Haven't checked the negotiator, so I'll respond after reading it over.  Nyttend (talk) 00:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * graf = paragraph, shorthand from op-ed writing and editing.
 * I was a paid Fox News Analyst. When Fox News captioned my appearances as a paid consultant, the caption would read "Fox News Foreign Affairs Analyst" as opposed to dropping the "Fox News" if I was simply a non-exclusive and non-paid television analyst. I was under contract.
 * I will see what I can find on referencing now... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 00:20, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If you type in "mansoor ijaz fox news foreign affairs analyst" to Google search, you will find an array of different references to use. One of them, a book by Al Franken, was perhaps the harshest critique of my media presence -- happy to have that one included in the list of references for balance..... even if every word he wrote was pure nonsense..... (laughing as I write it) --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 00:25, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Love the reference to Housecarl. Manservant I was not, but very interesting lesson. The reason Fox did that with preferred analysts with exclusive information was to box out the competition at CNN, MSNBC, the networks, etc.
 * Thanks for the explanations; I figured you weren't hired to be a mediæval soldier (after all, you weren't working for Capital One), but the retainer agreement article sounded more suited to lawyers than TV consultants. I've never before heard "graf" in this usage, so I misread "Professional life later grafs" to mean "Later, the Professional life section will be grafing".  I'm trying to find things that discuss your time at Fox in general, but all I'm getting is stuff that mentions you (e.g.  and ) without providing a necessary overview.  Re Franken, I take it you mean Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them?  I'm very hesitant to use him as a source for anything, just as I would be with someone like Hannity or Limbaugh — we really ought to prefer neutral sources over ones that write specifically from a political position, unless of course we're writing a section on how you were viewed by different positions on the political spectrum.  With that in mind, I'll add Franken as a background resource for the balance you suggest, but he's not good as a textual source.  And now on Kashmir: I've not yet checked the sources, but I think your changes are an improvement.  We still need sourcing for the end of each paragraph, but if we can get resources to back up what's there, we'll definitely have a better section.  The Agra summit wording ("nearly forged agreement") in the original text is rather awkward, so I'll reword that somewhat.  Nyttend (talk) 00:56, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 23 MAR 2014
Good morning, Sir. I have added in further references for the Kashmir sub-section, trimmed the section further and also trimmed the Sudan section to read more clearly. Please let me know how you see those now. Also, did you find a reference you liked to expand on the media sentence in Professional life from the Google search page I offered? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 11:37, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Good evening, Sir. Memogate section now re-written and referenced for your review. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:02, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know. I'm off to a get-together for much of the evening, so I'll respond after that's finished.  I'm sorry to dump one other thing on me, but I just remembered that you technically qualify to be blocked indefinitely, although of course I'm not going to do it or ask anyone else to, and you can rectify the situation easily.  The WP:REALNAME section of the username policy has the following thing to say:"Do not edit under a name that is likely to imply that you are (or are related to) a specific, identifiable person, unless it is your real name...If a name is used that implies that the user is (or is related to) a specific, identifiable person, the account may sometimes be blocked as a precaution against damaging impersonation, until proof of identity is provided."It's obvious to me that you're the person discussed in our article, but other users might not realise this, so you might get blocked and have to explain yourself in inconvenient circumstances.  You can rectify this by notifying OTRS, .  Use an official Crescent email address (or something else official, which someone could check on a website that's plainly connected to you) to send something along the following lines:"I am Mansoor Ijaz, the subject of the Wikipedia article of the same name, and I am also the Wikipedia user of the same name. Please place an OTRS ticket link on my userpage to prove my identity."Your email will be archived (the link will go directly to the archived email), but it will be visible only to a few trusted users.  This way, if anyone challenges the idea that you're the subject of our article, one of the trusted users can consult the link and come back to say "Yes, this really is the same guy".  Nyttend (talk) 22:44, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the heads up. I've just sent off the requested email to --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:35, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Very good! It's much easier to take care of that now, rather than in response to an unexpected block.  I'm just back to my house, and I'm about to get going on checking the sections you mentioned.  Nyttend (talk) 02:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I've moved the Kashmir section to the article. Unfortunately, I'm on the verge of falling asleep.  Please check what I copied to ensure that I didn't make any mistakes, whether substantial things or trivial bits like spelling errors.  Nyttend (talk) 04:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Regarding Sudan, I've checked content against sources. A couple of chunks of text I couldn't find in the sources, so I've marked them with fact; please add sources there, or let me know if I made a mistake.  Also, your source #1 has no content whatsoever — I suspect you accidentally deleted it or made some comparable mistake.  Could you put in whatever the citation is supposed to be?  Nyttend (talk) 04:46, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

(unindenting) Thank you, checking on all of that now. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:51, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Kashmir is good. Now checking the Sudan bit -- need ten minutes. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 05:03, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, well, I fixed all of the Sudan references except the one on "Washington refused". There are second-hand sources there but this data is so old now that it won't be easy to find a credible report to fit in. Thoughts? By definition you can also say they refused -- sanctions were not only left in place, but strengthened in November 1997 as we noted. Perhaps the logic of that will allow you to leave it in..... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 05:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * One last comment for the evening/early morning here. My comment about Washington refused comes from the fact that when I met Berger and Rice after visiting Sudan and carrying back the conditional response, they refused that. I was basically stating what I know to have happened as a first person accounting. The public domain information of course supports that, but we run once again into the ability to catalog events from an era when internet compiling was just starting. I think this statement must stay in but it will be tough to source it on any other basis than the hard fact that existing sanctions continued at the time with an increase in sanctions pressure in November 1997 when the idea of reconciliation or "constructive engagement" had evaporated from the administration's consciousness. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 05:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 24 MAR 2014
I found an appropriate reference on the sanctions refusal statement here: http://articles.latimes.com/1997-01-23/business/fi-21252_1_anti-terrorism-act. The article, written by a Washington Post reporter who reported often on Sudan, states in the second paragraph that April sanctions remained in place, although it also says that Clinton exempted Sudan on oil development only to allow Occidental Petroleum to go in and bid for the Southern Sudan's oil reserves. That's the closest I could come -- when I say Washington refused, keep in mind I'm talking about "reverse sanctions" Sudan request of US in return for "counterterrorism cooperation" US need from Sudan. That's what was refused. Perhaps that helps clear it up. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 10:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * After the Sudan section is dealt with, we need to have a conversation about what to do with the Assertions on Osama bin Laden section which I have recommended be cut due to the number of inaccurate statements contained in it and the highly politicized non-NPOV objective of the section as it was written by those who wanted to excoriate me on taking Clinton to task for his perceived failures in counterterrorism policies. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 10:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * And then finally the Memogate section.... which I've already made my recommendations on. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 10:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as Commons, see this, which I wrote several days ago at the bottom of a thread in which someone mentioned your request to have the images deleted. Thanks for explaining about citation #1 being Miniter; maybe I wouldn't have asked had I been less sleepy.  Sanctions: is there perhaps some database in which one can look up every non-US country by trade-or-other-sanctions level?  I was imagining something that would tell (1) whether any US trade-or-other sanctions are in place against it, (2) if there are, what they are, (3) a history of modifications to each current sanction, and possibly (4) a similar history for sanctions that were enforced until being removed in comparatively recent years.  It would probably make a better source than an LA Times article, although the article's good enough to use for now.  However, we need something talking about your meetings with al-Bashir, LHH, Berger, and Rice.  I see no source for the final sentence ("Ijaz ended his efforts..."), but I'm not sure it's needed, since if we end the section with a remark about the new sanctions, we're implying that that's the end of the story.  Memogate I think we can go with this text; once the necessary referencing is in place, it should be ready to copy over.  "Assertions on bin Laden" I think this would best fit in with the Sudanese negotiations section.  We could have something like "Capturing...2011.  Writing in various opinions, both alone and with Clinton administration officials, Ijaz asserted...embassy bombings."  Following that, the 9/11 Commission bit should be brought in, although with modifications.  Since it's related to the Sudan situation of the previous section, I think we ought not remove it wholesale.  Nyttend (talk) 13:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, lots to respond to. I do this point by point below:
 * Sudan section referencing -- I've put the necessary references in -- used a Vanity Fair article in one case and a Washington Post piece in the other. Some of this stuff I know exists but the electronic files that you could read are not readily available. On the Sanctions lists, you can try http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/sudan.aspx, which is pretty comprehensive, although it's just facts and no context in political terms.
 * Memogate -- will you put the references in where they need to go or do you want me to do that? I thought it might be fun for you to actually go through it since I've already been through that bloody hell for 3 years.............. SMILEY FACE! I would like to point out again that you need to visit the Husain Haqqani article Memogate section when we are done because a user named Ajmal66 has done what I believe are blatantly biased edits under WP:NPOV rules. While that section in his article can certainly have a different take which views it all from his perspective, there are certain facts that are unalterable.
 * Bin Laden assertions -- again, perhaps you would consider drafting in a few sentences as to how you see it and I will edit yours. In this particular case, I think I'm too close to the data to do it myself, and since it is perhaps the most controversial two sentences in the entire article, I would prefer you do that first and let me respond with clarification editing.
 * Fox News stuff I added in the referencing that I believe works -- can we now draft in those two sentences I requested?
 * Thank you for your time this morning. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 13:55, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

(unindenting) you can find the Ottaway article here: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-718226.html but you have to sign up for a bunch of stuff that I did not see the point in doing. But it's all there.... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:02, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Sudan section now done, if I've done all that you noted above... If I left anything out, please let me know. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:23, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Memogate section now done. References added in and checked against facts. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 17:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the Ottaway article link; I'm unfamiliar with Highbeam, so I wasn't sure what you meant. My inability to find the article with ProQuest made me guess that you'd made a mistake on the citation; all I can guess is that our database isn't as complete as I thought it was.  Note that the sanctions database idea was basically "if available, we should use it", not "we have to use it", so I'm not going to hesitate at using the LA Times article.  With the Vanity Fair piece in place, I'm going to move that section to the article.  I'll check back and respond on whatever one of the other three pieces I feel like checking next.  By the way, bold text and italic text work, but a simpler method of producing bold and italic text is bold text and italic text .  Nyttend (talk) 21:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks on the Sudan move. You forgot to delete the Osama bin Laden assertions section as it is now completely redundant. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:04, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, I didn't forget — I was intentionally ignoring it, desiring to handle it separately. I've now moved over the memogate stuff, so I was planning on handling the bin Laden assertions next.  Unless I'm missing something, the bin Laden assertions and the Fox News contributor are the only things remaining.  Please remind me of anything else that isn't checked.  Nyttend (talk) 22:13, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The inherent challenge of communicating through this mode..... Thank you. I am reading through everything beginning to end now very carefully, so you will need to give me a thirty minute window to check things. I would like to introduce one more photo image and change the weightlifter image to the deadlift one because it shows more raw energy of what powerlifting was about. Hope that's okay -- will do some minor scaling once all the text is in and settled. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:18, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I just realised that there's massive overlap between the sections, more than I had thought — no wonder you thought I'd ignored it! I'm sorry for confusing you.  I appreciate the "wait a bit", because it's going to take me that time (and more) to figure out the text I'll propose to you.  Nyttend (talk) 22:22, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I thought we had agreed last evening or over the weekend that the Assertions section would go out and we would incorporate the important sentences into Sudan section where it actually belongs. Assertions is simply not relevant anymore. It should be cut in its entirety because the key points have been taken above already. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:25, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm too badly confused to know what was agreed; I'll go back and re-read. Nyttend (talk) 22:26, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, think of it this way.... you've learned all about stuff you probably never dreamed of thinking to know!
 * I've gone through Sudan and Memogate and I'm happy with both, although I might tweak the re-written sentences you put in just a bit later on. I saw some of these: and don't know whether those are your markers for something or what....
 * From my point of view, we just have the Fox News issue and the removal of the Assertions on Osama bin Laden section and that's all. I want to explore with you at a time when you are less busy the idea you had for a final section on my media collaborations or something that looks like a bibliography of my writings or something -- I have to go read in our notes what exactly you had proposed.
 * And I would appreciate you taking a look at the Haqqani Memogate section -- it is in serious need of a re-write.....
 * I think we should also formally agree that the way we leave it when we both sign off is one that we agree on -- perhaps you might consider protecting that version for a while since the article has undergone such a major transformation.
 * Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Good evening -- perhaps you are busy in other pursuits, but I had one or two small items to go through and then I'm done with my inputs.


 * Memogate sentence modification -- add one word
 * I suggest this sentence:
 * Following testimony by Ijaz, the Commission deemed him a reliable witness whose credibility Haqqani had sought to undermine.[57]:112
 * be modified as follows:
 * Following testimony by Ijaz, the Commission deemed him a reliable witness whose credibility Haqqani had unsuccessfully tried to undermine.[57]:112


 * IMAGES
 * I intend to add this photo image into the Kashmir section, unless you have an objection -- I will take care of scaling and all that -- File:Bill Clinton & Mansoor Ijaz at the White House, 1997.jpg and replace this one -- File:1982 US National Weightlifting Championships (IJAZ SQUAT 374 lbs).jpg with this one -- File:1982 US National Weightlifting Championships (IJAZ DEADLIFT 418 lbs).jpg.


 * Fox News and Assertions
 * Only remaining unresolved issues then are wholesale delete of Assertions section and addition of my suggested or some modified version of my suggested language on Fox News
 * Thank you, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 00:46, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Apologies for taking off suddenly; I had agreed to go to a scheduled event and suddenly realised that it was time to leave. I've removed the bin Laden section entirely.  I had misunderstood what was going on, not noticing that you'd incorporated it into the Sudan negotiator section — otherwise I would have removed it earlier.  Good point on "unsuccessfully"; I'll change that momentarily.  I'm unclear why you want the 1997 image in the Kashmir section, since the section barely mentions the USA.  I'd suggest a picture with a high official in Pakistan or India, and if no such image is available, we'd do best with no image there — an image in a section suggests that the people in the image are relevant to the topic of the section, so a picture of Clinton would make the reader expect that Clinton would be a major part of the "action", rather than simply being the recipient of a letter.  I'll revisit the Fox bit and come back with text for you to think about.  Nyttend (talk) 01:37, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, media commentator and related matters. I repeat the text you suggested above:"Ijaz has also served as a media commentator, frequently writing opinion pieces and appearing on television news programs over the past two decades. He was exclusively retained by Fox News in the period immediately following the September 11 attacks, appearing on Fox programs over 100 times. He was a popular guest on the network's Special Report broadcast."Do you have any source that states all of this, and/or a collection of sources that together state this?  In this situation, we can't simply cite your opinion pieces, because no single opinion piece is good for "frequently writing", and taking a bunch of opinion pieces and saying "see, it's frequently" is the kind of thing addressed by our no-original-synthesis standard.  "Appearing on TV news..." This is slightly different, since a few references to TV appearances over the years would establish that you weren't a one-time guest, but again a secondary source would help by demonstrating that TV appearances were significant.  Although I know you're not a mediæval soldier, the retainer thing is a rather specific detail that really shouldn't appear unless we have a source for it — could you find something published by Fox, or something from somewhere else, noting that they'd officially retained you?  As I noted above, I looked for sources of this sort but was unable to find them.  Finally, about a Further reading section — do you know of any books that talk about you at length in a favorable light?  I'd like to present the Al Franken book together with a similar work from the opposite perspective.  Nyttend (talk) 02:13, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Here are two good examples of where my introductions on television news programs of repute introduced me as a frequent op-ed columnist:


 * http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media-jan-june02-pearl_1-29/
 * http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism-july-dec01-powell_10-15/

There are probably four or five more like that, and if I dig hard, I can find the same intros on CNN and other news channels during my appearances -- this was part of how I was known in the media world at that time. If you accept that Peter Bergen, a nemesis of mine, wrote in his hatchet piece on me during the Memogate hearings that I said openly how many op-eds I had written (about 170 since 1996), you can use that as a source too.

I'm now working on Fox News, although on its WIKI page, if you look under regular contributors and guests, you will still see my name listed there. Contributor is another word for "paid".... or "retained". Frankly, I don't really care anymore how you do this part. We've done such a marvelous job together on this that the Fox News thing is a triviality in comparison. The point I tried to make, which you still have not fully taken on board, is that my media life was a shield. I went out and did hard things to make the world a better place. The only way I could defend myself, or present my ideas in my own crafted words was to write or appear on television and pontificate. (It = media writing and television appearances below)

It allowed me to hold Benazir Bhutto accountable.

It allowed me to hold Bill Clinton accountable.

It allowed me to hold Sandy Berger and Susan Rice accountable.

It allowed me to hold Pervez Musharraf accountable.

It allowed me to hold the entire Zardari government accountable -- three men lost their jobs because of my writings about their wrongdoing....

and I can go on. The point I have tried to make is that you cannot trivialize the importance media played as an instrument of capacity in my lifetime and the way in which it molded my personality. If this article is truly about me, you cannot trivialize this component because it is the single most visible manifestation of my Herculean efforts to do good against evil and right the many wrongs that affect people with no voice. I leave it here with you..... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:34, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not trying to trivialise it — it's simply that I've not yet seen any solid, reliable sources that talk about these things. I'll be happy to implement changes that you suggest if we can back them up with good sourcing, either independent stuff or Fox-produced stuff, that talks about your rôle with them.  Nyttend (talk) 02:40, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this will assist -- it is a dedicated page to either the hosting of web chats I did for Fox or articles I wrote as exclusives for them or stories that covered what I was doing -- all in all, it gives a comprehensive look, and when they refer to me as "Fox News Foreign Affairs Analyst" or "FNC Terrorism Analyst", the fact that they put Fox News in front of whatever moniker they give me is the indication of exclusivity under contract to the channel. Hope that helps -- if not, then let's just drop it because Fox is not in the business of publicly announcing who they retain as exclusive analysts or contributors. They just do it.


 * http://www.foxnews.com/topics/world/mansoor-ijaz.htm


 * mighty kind of you, dear Sir. Would you mind if I went in and did a little editing of a word here or there on that last bit? meanings stay the same --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:06, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Go ahead, and please switch out the images if you feel like it. Nyttend (talk) 03:15, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * [edit conflict] Thanks, but I've just finished putting in some things that I finally was able to find: the BBC, PBS (the article you gave me), Columbia University, and an older Fox profile of you. What do you think of it now?  One big weakness is that I wasn't able to figure out when you ceased to be with Fox.  Back to your previous statements, to which I hadn't responded.  On the 112, see rp and its documentation.  It's crucial to include the page number when citing a multi-page source, and while your method of giving a separate complete citation for each different page is completely acceptable, it's a little simpler to provide a single citation to the whole document and then append the page number with the rp template.  When I wrote the Ellerbusch Site article, I included thirteen citations to one document and fifty to another, so using rp shortened the References section hugely.  On protecting the article, unfortunately this isn't in line with our protection policy, which says that protection should not be used as a preemptive measure.  Nyttend (talk) 03:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Please would you have a look in the Sandbox at how I propose the media write in to read and how I organized the paragraphs so we bring media in before memberships? Thank you ever so much -- we are all good if the media paragraph edits work for you. And thanks for the information above. All understood. Please keep my page on your Watchlist and keep and eye on it -- it's an example article now, I hope. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Rearrangement performed (I should have thought of putting media above the Rebuilding Afghanistan board membership!), along with several of your wording changes. I left out the lifetime CFR membership (the source doesn't address lifetime status), and I didn't introduce anything about the 2006 contract ceasing because the Columbia source didn't mention it.  Again, with something published directly by CFR and by Fox respectively (or by an independent reliable source, for either of them), these bits can be put back, and I hope they can be; it's just another necessary part of relying on our sources.  Nyttend (talk) 03:37, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Here is a SAJA http://www.sajaforum.org/2007/11/prez-politics-m.html that should get you close enough on the Fox contract end date to use the language I had proposed. Working on the CFR matter now. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:40, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Also, why do you mention Los Angeles Times and not The New York Times and why do you keep the "the" outside the embedded link when the formal names of these papers are properly The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times? Just curious -- --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:42, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Still uncomfortable with the SAJA thing because it's not a major media source or anything else that's likely to be deemed a WP:RS-compliant. "the" is simply confusion on my part — I can never remember when publications include it (and I've never understood why they do it in the first place), so if I didn't use the correct names, it's purely a mistake by me.  The choice of publications was basically stylistic.  Since the BBC article mentioned that those were some of many, I didn't deem it necessary to include all of them.  That being said, I wanted to include the LA Times because it provides geographical balance, since everything else is eastern.  Originally, I had the NYT instead of the WSJ, but that read rather repetitively: Financial TIMES, New York TIMES, Washington Post, Los Angeles TIMES.  If the two were named "New York Journal" and "Wall Street Times", I would have included NY and omitted WS.  Nyttend (talk) 03:51, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

SAJA is an organ of the Columbia School of Journalism and was founded by its current dean, Sree Sreenivasan. It is the largest single grouping of South Asian journalists anywhere in the world and is as credible as The New York Times in terms of sourcing. The reason I gave it is because it is linked to the Columbia Journalism School as your first source was. I completely disagree with your characterization of it as a source. Sree is one of the most honorable -- could easily be Peter Jennings on the Nightly News -- guys you will ever know about, and he runs a tight ship over there. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:56, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

without sounding nitpicky, because it's late for you and I need to get to sleep so I can be reasonably alert in the banks tomorrow, could we chisel this bit as follows:

OLD: Away from Crescent and the media NEW: Away from Crescent's daily affairs and past media obligations,

Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:59, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

and one final tiny little issue: could we make the following minor adjustment?

OLD: remaining incomplete as negotiations continued into 2014 NEW: remaining incomplete as negotiations with Lotus continued into 2014 Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:02, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'm finding significant entities treating SAJA like a reliable source. I'll put that in as requested, along with the other changes you suggest.  In short, the SAJA webpage looked basically like a blog run by a journalists' club — the writers might write for reliable sources, but the SAJA page seemed to be just informal stuff.  Thanks to your comments, I understand better now.  Nyttend (talk) 04:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 25 MAR 2014
Dear friend, this part is still not accurate the way written. And it reads as if something went wrong when it did not. In fact, I continued to appear on Fox News all the way through the Memogate hearings. So if I could ask you to go back and look at the way I did it, that was a very carefully chosen set of words that convey accurately what the situation is. Your words, in this instance only, do not -- and almost convey the opposite of the truth.

Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:33, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * How would this work for you on resolving the last issue at hand?


 * OLD: Hired as a Fox network contributor in late 2001, he appeared as a terrorism and foreign affairs analyst on the network's evening and weekend programming, although by 2007 he was no longer with the network.


 * NEW: Hired as a Fox News contributor in late 2001, he appeared as a counterterrorism and foreign affairs analyst on various network programs. In 2006, Ijaz retired as an exclusive contributor to Fox News. [ADD ONE MORE FROM LIST BELOW HERE DATED 2006-02-16] He continued periodic appearances for Fox and other networks until Spring 2012,[ADD APPROPRIATE REFERENCES HERE -- NDTV and CNN ZAKARIA GPS LINKS, FOR EXAMPLE] but withdrew himself from the public eye after the Pakistan Judicial Commission released its findings in the Memogate investigation in June 2012.


 * Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:58, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * added reference and minor edits above --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 10:04, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Good morning Sir, hope all is well in Indiana today. I have proposed above under NEW wording that is now legally accurate in terms of what actually happened in terms of my media career and is also now properly sourced to each statement made. May I ask you to review, approve or amend and if appropriately agreed then to move it over to the article?


 * I will follow up today on only two unattended items -- the first one is adding in an image into the Memogate section and the second is to do a scouring of each of the references to insure they are in the Wikified template all throughout the article (more for practice than anything else). That should do it. It has been again a real pleasure to learn from you and to work with you. I will check back in periodically to see how you are doing. I would ask you do the same to insure our chiseled work together stays in good stead and isn't marked up by hooligans.... God bless. Or as we say in Arabic and Urdu, Fi Man Allah (God be with you). --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 11:00, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Error identified in Sudan section--


 * Ijaz first met Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and other Sudanese leaders in August 1996 and reported his findings back to U.S. government officials, including Lee Hamilton, ranking member of the House Committee on International Relations at the time, and Sandy Berger.


 * You either edited out or didn't copy over from Sandbox the reference to Susan Rice, who is mentioned later in the same section but without context. I suggest we revert to the original language I proposed -- if we can still find it -- or I can reconstruct it -- or we have to then define who Susan Rice is later on because her position had changed by the time the second mention is made. She was then Assistant Secretary of State for East African Affairs by then. This is an important factual correction.


 * I'm open to doing it either way. We also need to add back in, which I will do now as a general fix, the fact that Berger, who was not mentioned before in the article, was then-deputy national security adviser.
 * Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I have fixed this in the article -- please see my fix. Hopefully that solves it. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:47, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I have noticed an error in the spelling of my father's middle name -- it is AHM"E"D not AHM"A"D. Is there a way to fix that on his Wiki article? I don't know who got that wrong when the article was created, but nowhere in the public vernacular is that spelling existing. If not, no big deal, but I thought I would bring it to your attention. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 16:00, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * No, not all is well — we had snow again this morning. It's supposed to be spring!  On more important matters...The Columbia source says nothing about you aside from the fact that you were "former" by 2011; if we want to say anything about your 2007-2011 activities, we'll need to find a different source.  I don't see any substantive differences between the other things, so I'll get them changed as you suggest.  Rice I intentionally removed, because, again, the source didn't mention her.  Find me a source that mentions her involvement, or show me that she's already there (i.e. I overlooked her appearance), and I'll happily put her back.  Your father's article has been moved; it is bizarre that the title would use "A" when the text uses "E".  Page renaming is rather simple; see Help:How to move a page.  And reference formatting help would be welcome.  WP:CITEVAR specifically says that it's good to impose a single style in a page with different styles of references, so nobody's going to object; this is the kind of thing we'd have bots doing, if only it were simple enough to be automated.  Nyttend (talk) 22:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Good evening. Sorry to hear about your snow -- I was in Detroit earlier in the winter when it was hell froze over there....

I don't know how to resolve your need for references that just don't exist. I've given you the factual data in that last sentence I want included in because that is truthfully as it happened. All I can offer is the list of available appearances that I did over the years you mention -- basically, after Memogate, my wife and family and I made a decision that I would simply drop out of any media engagements whatsoever no matter the reason. That's why I don't write op-eds anymore. That's why I refuse television interview requests or any other type of media. Once the Judicial Commission report was out in June 2012 that said I spoke the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I did not see a need to rub it in Haqqani's face, and so I just decided to drop out. The way I have written the sentence, it says that in an elegant tone.

In the listing below, there are enough different sources from across the globe, on and off Fox News, to prove that I was no longer an exclusive contributor and that I continued to appear on TV all over the place. There were appearances in every year -- some of those were uploaded to YouTube and some not, depending on the importance of the story or interview. Hope this helps sort it out -- I still believe the way I have written the ending of that paragraph on media matters is the correct way to present the factual data.

LIST OF PROGRAM APPEARANCES 2006-2012
 * Fox News Dayside Program 2006-02-16 http://just-another-inside-job.blogspot.ch/2006/02/london-mastermind-is-mi6-agent.html (Ijaz appears in FNC Contributor role)
 * Neil Cavuto Program on Fox News 2007-10-18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT43iN4Zf7Y (Ijaz appeared as Terrorism Analyst as opposed to Fox News Terrorism Analyst)
 * Neil Cavuto Program on Fox News 2007-11-06 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFoUCUE6-U0 (Ijaz appeared as Terrorism Analyst as opposed to Fox News Terrorism Analyst)
 * Neil Cavuto Program on Fox News 2011-05-03 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_r5BmtCdjs (Ijaz appeared as Counterterrorism Analyst as opposed to Fox News ....)
 * Burkha Dutt on NDTV 2011-11-20 http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/the-buck-stops-here/haqqani-reached-out-to-me-lying-about-memo-now-mansoor-ijaz/216535
 * Fareed Zakaria on CNN 2011-12-05 http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/05/zakaria-interviews-mansoor-ijaz-about-memogate/ (proves non-exclusivity to FNC)
 * Burkha Dutt on NDTV 2012-01-20 http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/i-will-be-in-pakistan-before-the-26th-mansoor-ijaz/221650

Thank you for your consideration. Stay safe in the snowy conditions. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:55, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Could be a lot worse; the snow was light and melted by late morning. On the sourcing, I misunderstood you partially.  Without a solid source, we can't write that you stopped being Fox-affiliated, but we can definitely say that you were contributing to other networks.  I'm really sorry that I've often had to say "no source, so we can't say that".  I understand that you know your own life better than anyone else, but the original research policy says basically "all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source".  I'd like to include the material in question (as I said above, I'm basically admitting a hole in the sources when I say "By 2011, he was no longer with the network"), but without the sources, I simply can't add this information to the article.  The requirement that information be citeable, and that anything potentially challengeable be cited, is crucial to maintaining the quality of the article — otherwise, anyone can come in and change around everything while saying "The Commission's investigation was a farce, and Haqqani is telling the truth.  I know it's the case!"  We know that would be badly inaccurate at best, but if we didn't require sourcing for information, we'd have to accept this kind of garbage.  That being said, we don't have to depend entirely on sources that discuss you at length, and we can use documentation that's focused primarily on another subject.  This is why I readily employed the Columbia source, for example, and why I'm asking and seeking media sources for this situation: they shouldn't be used as the basis for articles, but when details (e.g. the fact that you were appearing on NDTV) are clearly present, they're fine to include.


 * Are you available for a short back and forth chat to fix this? What you've added looks like a corn on the foot and draws unnecessary attention to an irrelevant set of issues. My contract ended. That there is no public evidence of that other than the way in which the network itself billed me is incomprehensible that we have to explain all that in a separate sentence that when you read the section screams out at you saying WHY IS THAT SUCH A BIG DEAL? Which is a question I am asking? What is the point you seek to make exactly? Who cares whether I was a Fox News analyst or not in the first place. Frankly, this all needs to be taken out. It did exaclty the reverse of what was intended. It muddled what was a clear issue. I would be happier with the first run which was to have one sentence than all this gobbledy gook now.

Apologies -- it's the first real editorial disagreement we've had, but you've just not done this one the way it adds anything of value to the article. I'm going to try a fix now myself, and if you disagree you can revert. Thank you --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:41, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 26 MAR 2014
I hope the way I have adjusted your last drafting in to the section, as set forth below, works for you now. This version says clearly with evidence what we mean to say, and re-organizes the overlaps so the overall paragraph reads smoother. Neither do we draw unnecessary attention to an irrelevant fact in the overall pathway of my life's work. If you agree, nothing else needs to be done, as I made the necessary changes and notated them as such. If you disagree, then I suppose we can revert and try it another way. I think this is a good balance and achieves the necessary Wiki requirement of anything quoted being citable. Thank you for your patience with my point of view on this. Have a good evening. Get some rest from all that snow shoveling! --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 05:44, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Good morning, Sir. Came upon some other items of interest that perhaps, in your free time, you might take a look at amending or fixing away from this article.


 * 1. Might I warrant mention on the Islam in the United States Wiki page? I won't put my name there myself, but perhaps you would consider that? I think they also have some policy guidelines laid out for inclusion of my image in the masthead of the page.


 * 2. Might you include me in the List of American Muslims and then insure it is in the category page of my article?


 * Thank you for considering these requests. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:13, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Seems like here we go again... the article is just now being completed and again we have anonymous web users starting to wholesale delete materials. I am asking therefore to have the page protected from these types of wholesale edits. Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:22, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * An article is never "complete" and one edit with an edit summary does not merit semi-protection. Please engage the other editor on the article's talk page. -- Neil N  talk to me  18:30, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I was referring to the re-write of the article -- the section removed was in fact written by one of those editors, an administrator if I recall correctly, when the complete re-write commenced. Kindly have a look at the history to see. I have already asked the other editor to have a look. Thank you for your prompt response. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:35, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I was referring to the anonymous editor, who has as much right to edit the article as you do (or more, some Wikipedians would say). If you have an issue with their edit, ask them to explain their reasoning. -- Neil N  talk to me  18:53, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I reverted the IP and changed the wording a bit. The material they deleted was properly sourced and was neither contentious nor promotional, or at least the IP didn't explain why. Mr. Ijaz is behaving correctly here by not reverting himself, but perhaps he wasn't sure how to correctly handle the situation. § FreeRangeFrog croak 19:01, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It's my first time with Internet access, other than while at work, in more than twelve hours. I agree with what's said above — protection is meant to prevent vandalism, edit wars, and comparable disruption; one edit definitely doesn't warrant protection, and content disputes (which this seems to be) also don't warrant it.  Also, please remember that when we're deciding what kind of thing belongs and what doesn't, the status of the person who wrote it isn't really relevant.  I've been "approving" your edits in the sense that I'm saying that, as far as I can see, they're neutral and without conflicts of interest; it doesn't mean that other people are bound to leave it alone.  I'm sorry that the media-involvement stuff I wrote was quite awkward (you said something about it that I can't remember well and can't now find), but it was the best I could do with the material I had.  Let me check what you've written and respond accordingly.  Nyttend (talk) 01:39, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hm, now I see that you've made the changes you were talking about. No further comments, since it would be rather pointless.  Nyttend (talk) 01:43, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Welcome back. If you permit me -- the edit was a mistake on my part. While I was waiting to hear back from you last night, I had done a draft in to see how it would look in terms of space and size of images, and I inadvertently hit Save when I went to exit because I got distracted by a phone call. Nothing sinister intended. I figured there was no point in giving you the explanation until you were back online. Feel free to revert my whole edit and do as you see fit. Hope all else is well over there -- what happened to your internet connection? bad weather? Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:54, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

One other point on the above -- I have not felt once the need to do something you did not agree with first since we started collaborating because I, like you, believe in collegiality and working together. It was just a mistake that I could not take back, and decided on the mainpage was not the place to go back and forth -- sort of oops, how do I fix that -- if you wish, I am happy to go in and revert now that I've told you what happened.--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:58, 27 March 2014 (UTC)


 * On another matter, I would like to point out why I found the edit tonight of concern. The edit was made from the same IP address that wholesale deleted a section 10 days ago that led to our rather intense collaboration. As I have political enemies, one never knows who is doing these kinds of things and what motivates them. Tonight, NeilN made the point to the IP editor that he needed to make his gripe clear. When he did, it -- at least to me -- did not have substance or reasoning strong enough to justify just coming in and doing a lopping off of entire sections of the article. That's why I asked for the semi-protect. Anyway, now I understand something else new and will count on those who insure fairness all the way around to police these types of matters. I will simply bring it to your attention in the future if you have not already seen it. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:02, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the responses. No bad weather or anything — after work, I was driving around a little bit, visiting a restaurant with no Internet, and participating in a church prayer meeting, so I simply wasn't in any places where Internet access would be expected.  I'm going to revert your edit, simply because a mistake doesn't belong in the article.  However, if you change your mind and think that it helps the article, please put it back immediately.  On the dispute In a situation like this, with one person supporting including some content and another opposing, a good course of action is normally WP:3O.  Make a neutral request there (e.g. "Should the section on F1 be retained or removed?"), leave a statement at the talk page saying why you think it belongs, and someone else will come along to offer a third opinion.  In this kind of situation, with content removed as promotional after several unrelated-to-you editors have discussed it and reworked it for a good while, the WP:3O response is almost certain to support your side, if for no other reason than that your position is well stated and the other guy's isn't really explained at all.  Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 27 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, that's fair enough on the revert. So shall we start again. Would you kindly look at my suggestions below and see if those might improve the way the article reads in the sentences affected? And please don't forget that I added in a new reference which wasn't there before -- part of the reason I was checking how it all looked once it was in (I'm a visual person, rather than just writing). Would you consider my edit request below (included the entire paragraph for convenience of read to check how it all flows together)?

Ijaz has also served as a media commentator and has written numerous opinion pieces for internationally known publications including the London Financial Times as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times in the United States. On television, he has served as a guest commentator for U.S. networks CNN, ABC, and Fox News, as well as for the BBC in the United Kingdom. Hired as a Fox News contributor in late 2001, Ijaz appeared as a counterterrorism and foreign affairs analyst on various network programming. By 2007, his appearances on Fox were no longer exclusive to the network. He continued to appear periodically for various networks in Pakistan, India and the U.S. into early 2012 as Pakistan's Supreme Court-appointed Judicial Commission began the Memogate inquiry.

User Talk 27 MAR 2014
Never mind; I can't quite figure out which of your edits was a mistake, so let's just leave things alone unless you want to do a self-revert. I failed to say anything on the bits about the American Muslims. The article's already in Category:American Muslims; I assume you're Sunni, purely because Islam in Pakistan says that Sunnis are the majority, but the article doesn't say that, so I'm not going to add a category that's not rooted in the article's text. I'm not fond of putting you onto the list of American Muslims, purely because I don't know where you'd go: it has separate sections for people in business and in politics, adding you to both wouldn't be a good idea, and adding a "businessmen and diplomats" line would be worse. Meanwhile, I don't think you should appear in the Islam in the United States article. I suppose this will come across somewhat offensively, so I apologise now: I'm doing my best to explain myself in a respectful manner, but I can't figure out how to say it. Most people who belong there are significant at least partially on religious grounds, which I don't consider you to be — I'm basically meaning that you're notable primarily because you're a businessman and have played a part in international politics, while as far as I can tell, your faith hasn't been a big part of the reason that people have paid attention to you. In other words, I get the impression that you'd get similar amounts of attention (at least in the English-language sources) if you were an atheist or a Christian; you're very different from someone like Alexander Russell Webb (known largely because he was a Muslim and would be rather insignificant otherwise), or Keith Ellison, a U.S. Representative whose faith has attracted tons of attention. Furthermore, some people not primarily significant on religious grounds belong in the article, but they're generally the individuals who are well known before converting, such as Muhammad Ali, or significant entertainment figures who people might not think of as Muslims, e.g. Mike Tyson or the rapper Ice Cube. In short, your significance doesn't appear to be related to your religion, and people aren't going to see you either as a prominent Muslim American or as an American who's not expected to be a Muslim. Nyttend (talk) 02:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)


 * as usual, you make crystal clear points supported by reasoned judgment. I correct you about the role of faith in my life -- I don't wear it on my sleeve, but I act it out through my behavior and public actions, whether in business or in diplomacy missions I choose to engage in as a private American citizen. May I point you -- when you have time -- to some articles? I will list a brief bibliography here over the next ten minutes. Just need to find the links. And I agree on the other -- let's just leave it as is, with my apologies if in any way my actions offended. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:47, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for being understanding; I was basically meaning to say that, as far as I can tell, our sources don't pay that much attention to your faith, i.e. it's not particularly important in the eyes of people who write about you, even though it's important to you. If you leave out the millions of ignorant folks who think Pakistan is in the middle of South America, most Americans will assume that a Pakistani-American businessman is a Muslim; the Islam in the USA article really should mention famous Americans whom most people won't expect to be Muslims (I had no clue that Shaquille O'Neal is a Muslim, for example) or whose faith gets lots of coverage.  Nyttend (talk) 02:56, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

In no particular order, or importance of content, here are some of the articles I've written over the years about American Muslim civil liberties issues. These are intended only as an indication of how I added a voice to guide our democracy's discourse on the issue of American Muslims in US political life. I hope these perspectives will give you and other editors who care to look a better understanding of where religion fit in my life's work:


 * 1) 1997-03-14 Campaign Giving as a Freedom Tax, Los Angeles Times,
 * 2) 1998-11-06 Let Muslims deal with bin Laden, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/1998/nov/06/local/me-39819
 * 3) 2000-07-12 A System that Rewards Just Those Who Flash Cash is Bankrupt, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/12/local/me-51630
 * 4) 2000-11-05 Muslims in America Feel Betrayed, Los Angeles Times, http://www.hindunet.org/hvk/articles/1100/9.html
 * 5) 2002-04-02 Citizenship before Civil Rights, Washington Post, http://archive.is/LL3eX
 * 6) 2002-12-05 Think before jumping on Saudi-bashing bandwagon, Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1205/p09s02-coop.html/%28page%29/3
 * 7) 2003-04-01 Citizenship before Civil Liberties, Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0401/p11s01-coop.html
 * 8) 2005-07-11 Moderate Muslims must Banish the Enemy Within, Financial Times, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/488c0036-f272-11d9-8e69-00000e2511c8.html#axzz2x8EiDmli
 * 9) 2005-07-14 Moderate Muslims' citizenship duty, http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0714/p09s01-coop.html
 * 10) 2006-02-18 Islamic Truths, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/18/opinion/oe-ijaz18
 * 11) 2006-02-28 Can Islam Reform Itself?, National Review Online Debate with Andrew McCarthy, http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/can-islam-refor.html (broken link)
 * 12) 2007-11-27 A Muslim Belongs in the Cabinet, Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1127/p09s01-coop.html
 * 13) 2008-10-31 Duty of American Muslims, Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/1031/p09s01-coop.html
 * 14) 2009-09-09 Burning Korans...., CSM, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0909/If-Terry-Jones-burns-the-Koran-he-ll-also-set-fire-to-America-s-identity
 * 15) 2010-08-25 U.S. Muslims should be Americans first, Washington Post ON FAITH, http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2010/08/25/us-muslims-should-be-american-first/8931
 * Good evening, Sir. Hope you are well. As I went into my archival records about past opinion pieces written over many years, I was surprised at how often I had written about American Muslim issues and the role of Muslims in US political life. I wonder if you would agree that perhaps one paragraph (no more than three or four sentences) in the Professional life section about my pioneering role to bring American Muslims into the US political mainstream would be worthy of addition? And I wanted to also say I agree completely now as I have viewed it through your comments about not including me in the Islam in the United States article. Anyway, just some thoughts on a part of my life that was more or less neglected from the article, but was certainly a part of my path for nearly a decade. If you agree, I will leave some language as a suggestion in my Sandbox. Please help me to source it as I'm not nearly as good at that as you are. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:53, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Again, if that's covered by the independent sources, we should include it, and if not, not — we shouldn't present your writings as evidence that you've played a major rôle in that, but we can say it if someone else has. However, if we can't find anyone else talking about it, we can still put in a one-liner saying basically "Through his opinion pieces, Ijaz has advocated the integration of Muslims with the American political mainstream": it's unquestionably in the stuff you've written, and it doesn't make claims of significance — this would be extraneous in a broader article (due to irrelevancy), but since we're talking about you, your own opinions are highly relevant.  I haven't a clue where to look for sources on this kind of thing, so if that's what you're asking me to help on, I'll have to decline with apologies.  However, if you're asking for help with using any sources that you've found, I'll be happy to help with that.  Lacking any third-party sources, I'll be happy to draft the one-liner and show it to you before adding it to the article.  Nyttend (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for replying. I will have a look later to see if I can find credible secondary sources of note that comment on my opinions.


 * This is a very good sentence, just as you've drafted it if that's what you decide to do basis my inability to get sourcing in. Wasn't asking you to be my librarian or bibliographer -- just thought you have a resource data base that I don't which could be checked on the basis of what I might suggest we look for.


 * "Through his opinion pieces, Ijaz has long advocated the integration of Muslims into the American political mainstream"


 * Bold only to signify what I changed. Wish you a nice afternoon of editing. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:27, 27 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Not that it matters now, but I just found reference in a book to the fact that I had met with both Berger AND Susan Rice in 1996. The book is entitled "Trading Secrets: Spies and Intelligence in an Age of Terror" by Mark Huband, former security correspondent for the Financial Times. Link here, p122: http://books.google.ch/books?id=cYiig2iwIocC&pg=PT134&dq=mansoor+ijaz&hl=en&sa=X&ei=S7o0U8XWA8zy7AbKt4DICg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=mansoor%20ijaz&f=false --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:58, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that does matter. Since we have a good source mentioning Rice, we're actively leaving something out if we don't mention her.  I'll put her in when I get the chance; I'm about to start eating a (late) dinner.  Nyttend (talk) 00:13, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

(unindenting) To save you some time editing, I have placed the reference in the proper place and made the necessary grammar adjustments in a DRAFT that I left in my Sandbox. Hopefully that helps -- I think I got it all there in the proper spaces. Thank you for the attention to that detail -- glad I found the reference. Working on sources for the politics paragraph now. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 00:37, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 28 MAR 2014
please find below some references that I located on the proposed politics paragraph -- kindly let me know if any of these work. My proposed draft is set forth below as well. Through his opinion pieces and political fundraising, Ijaz has long advocated for the integration of Muslims into the American political mainstream. He raised significant amounts for various Democratic Party causes during the 1990s when President Clinton had paved the way for minority communities to become more active in U.S. politics, encouraging fellow Pakistani and Muslim Americans to join his fundraising efforts along the way. In 1996, Ijaz raised or contributed more than $525,000 for the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign. This brought him into close proximity with Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as other Clinton administration national security officials with whom he would later engage on Sudan, Kashmir and Pakistan's nuclear program.

Ijaz also used his fundraising results to advance his causes in Congress, appearing as an expert witness in front of committees in the Senate on extremist threats faced by the United States and in the House of Representatives to advocate for Washington to adopt a policy of constructive engagement with rogue Muslim countries affected by U.S. sanctions. As he rose in prominence in Democratic Party circles, allegations of conflicts with Ijaz's business interests also surfaced, although they were never proven. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Ijaz had a public falling out with senior Clinton-era officials, including the former president, Sandy Berger, and Susan Rice, over what he deemed failures in their counterterrorism policies during Clinton's two terms in office. In 2007, Nevada Republicans approached Ijaz to run against Sen. Harry Reid, in a bid to unseat the Senate Majority Leader, but Ijaz declined.

NOTE Reference Nos. (4), (7) and (9) appear elsewhere in Main Article. Reference (1) text appears in the Sandbox.


 * 1. text of "Campaign Giving as a Freedom Tax" has been left in my Sandbox until you verify and approve it as a reference, then I will delete it.
 * 4. refers to the Newsweek article by Fasih Ahmad.
 * 7. refers to my House testimony reference.
 * 9. refers to the Clinton let bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize op-ed piece.
 * OK I'm confused. Does this go into the Mansoor Ijaz bio, or is it rationale for inclusion in Islam in the United States? § FreeRangeFrog croak 08:35, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Nothing to do with Islam in the United States article -- I agree with your and Nyttend's assessment on that. I had commented to Nyttend yesterday evening (my time in Zurich) that as I pulled out the articles from archives which I had written I thought it might be useful to include a paragraph in the Professional life section on my role and experience in US politics. The paragraph above and related references are for evaluating its inclusion. Apologies for any confusion. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 09:35, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, so for example, Ijaz has long advocated for the integration of Muslims into the American political mainstream is an assertion that ideally should not be sourced to one of your own articles. Later we read that you have engaged in fundraising and even testified in front of Congress but it's not clear what for, exactly. Is it to advocate for Muslims or Islam in the US? I'd also drop the mentions about hosting parties because it feels like a bit of name dropping. Overall I think this needs a little more focus. We know you've been politically active, but we need to show what for, exactly. § FreeRangeFrog croak 18:01, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this terrific read of the paragraphs. On the first point, may I make the point that the sentence was first suggested by Nyttend and the only way I could find to source it was to relate it to the very first op-ed I ever wrote about the place of American Muslims in US political life. The various scholarly references I found do not mention any of us "activists" by name -- I can find mention obliquely that "a Pakistani-American Muslim was Clinton's largest single Muslim donor in 1996" etc, but nothing that mentions me by name. Is there another way we could do that bit? Or perhaps a secondary AND primary source? Your other points are well-taken and I have reworked accordingly. I also split the paragraph in two for ease of thought flow since there are two distinctly different aspects of the political life I've lead -- Muslim American activism and US national security objectives. Please let me know your thoughts. I've left a fully developed version of the Professional life section with images and scaling, etc in my Sandbox for review. Perhaps you would take a look there too. Thanks. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:19, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Much better! I edited it a bit for flow and clarity. That "[citation needed]" I added is just a marker. We'll ideally need an additional secondary source if you can find one, although it's not a huge deal. § FreeRangeFrog croak 19:47, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Appreciate the help -- does this qualify as a secondary source? It's all I could find other than a newspaper clipping during the Memogate hearings that gave this as background bio stuff.
 * http://books.google.ch/books?id=ZyUVjRM7vD4C&pg=SL4-PA639&lpg=SL4-PA639&dq=ijaz+testifies+in+judiciary+committee+sub+committee&source=bl&ots=1L7X-7e5n8&sig=ZR5sBDdrOxFmHwqa0Xf2NrpZ1R4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ltc1U6mSC-Wv7Abw34Aw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ijaz%20testifies%20in%20judiciary%20committee%20sub%20committee&f=false
 * http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-10398-Mansoor-Ijaz-also-brokered-US-Sudan--talks-over-Osama-extradition
 * Yes, excellent. Let's take it to your sandbox, I'll edit a bit and then post in the Discussion section. § FreeRangeFrog croak 21:14, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I greatly appreciate FreeRangeFrog's help; I don't see anything he says with which I disagree.  I agree that the "long" isn't warranted by a single citation to one of your op-eds; it's a good source for saying that you've advocated for Muslims to integrate, but not good for any meta-statements, whether "long" or "sometimes" or "occasionally" or whatever else.  I've made a couple of minor changes to the text up above for clarity.  Since FRF has responded to everything as I would, I don't have anything else to say, but I'll be happy to come back if you want more input.  I'm planning to be on the road again tomorrow (another 5AM departure), so please don't expect any responses from me after about 0300 UTC.  Finally, one little request — all of your Google Books links are books.google.ch, which of course makes sense since you're in Switzerland at the moment, but they uniformly don't work with a US IP address, and I wonder if they might not work in other English-speaking countries.  Could you simply retype the URLs when you add them?  I stress the "little", since it's easy for me to retype them; I'm simply concerned that we might overlook one and make it less accessible to likely readers.  Nyttend (talk) 22:05, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * We all appreciate your help. Without you involved at the beginning of this process to help me understand why the re-write had to be done, we would not have what I believe is a significantly stronger article and in much more encyclopedic form now. So I thank you again, good Sir. You are an early riser like me. I grew up on a farm where we used to milk cows and collect the hen's eggs every morning at about that time. On your minor changes, may I ask that you make those two welcome changes at the mainspace article as FRF has already moved the draft over to mainspace? On your other request about book searches, I don't think I understand exactly what you want me to do -- is it .ch vs .com or something else? I search through Google in English but the IP servers I'm on auto return those results. So do I just add .com at the end? Thank you, and have a great weekend. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:14, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

ADDING IN THIS SECTION FROM SANDBOX TO ARCHIVE USER TALK ON NEW PARAGRAPH ADDITION TO PROFESSIONAL LIFE

28 MAR 2014 Mansoor Ijaz Sandbox Discussion

Is that the right place for the reference I gave you? I think the one you put in belonged where you had asked for the marker. I think the first one is a challenge to find that easily -- the best would be to use the  reference because all of my political life is covered in a chapter called "The Friend of Bill". Hope that is helpful. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 21:14, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry. Wrong place. I see we're missing some named refs from the rest of the article, but that's OK. We'll worry about that when this gets moved over there. What else in terms of content? § FreeRangeFrog croak 21:19, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm good. It reads well. I will do one last and give a thumbs up from my point of view. The empty reference names are all contained in the main article and will fill in automatically when you move it over -- you see, I learned that one from Nyttend already --- there's hope for me yet! --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 21:22, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm all done. Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 21:26, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Alright, ping me when you're ready and we'll make it happen. § FreeRangeFrog croak 21:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ready when you are, good sir! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mansoor Ijaz (talk • contribs)
 * We are all set. What's next? § FreeRangeFrog croak 21:36, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

(unindenting) I would ask that you have a look at the Memogate image insertion. And don't forget that really "in need of help" in the other Memogate section we discussed (HH). You have been just terrific to work with. Many many thanks. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 21:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The image is already in the main Memogate article. I'll pencil that other section for next week, it really needs some work. Actually if you have some time and would like to take what's there and fix it, that would be awesomest. We can review here in your sandbox. Otherwise I'll do it in situ later. § FreeRangeFrog croak 21:52, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I will be happy to take a stab at the required section during the weekend. two small items in the article -- could I trouble you to convert Ref. No. 30's retrieve date to same format as others so it is 2014-03-28? and do we need to add List of American Muslims to the Categories section? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 21:57, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Heh, actually well, the reason it's different is because it's an actual proper citation, unlike the other ones that are more like bare references. If you look in the source you'll see it has a template inside, cite web. Ideally all of them should be like that, but OK. Second, not sure what you mean about the category. Maybe you're confused - List of American Muslims is a more fleshed-out listing with references, etc. Your bio is already there. The category Category:American Muslims is just a grouping, and your bio is already there. Unless I'm missing what you're asking. § FreeRangeFrog croak 22:37, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * that's an interesting take on footnotes. I got the exact opposite from Nyttend when we first started, that's why I took the time one night to go in and change all of them to the format he was using. So, I guess I will just leave all that as it is because it's not important to content. On the categories, take your point, nothing further. You should look at the two changes in the second paragraph made by Nyttend as suggestions for smoother reading, which I thought were good. I asked him to put them in, but he may be busy. More appropriate if one of the two of you do that than me. I'm going to do a little re-scaling of the images and then I'm done with my bit. Have a great weekend out there in Phoenix. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:45, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the changes Nyttend suggested while I was doing some re-scaling and re-positioning of the images for better viewing. Thank you again for all your help today. Great to work with you -- your new job as Admin is well-deserved. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:03, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Responding to your comments up above, you're quite welcome. You're badly wrong on one thing, however: I much prefer to stay up until well after midnight and rise well after sunlight.  These early alarms are because I'm taking long trips to get photos (planning for 300 miles one-way tomorrow, and it's a round trip), and I might as well be at the destination by dawn to maximise the time available for photography.  About the book sources, yes all I'm asking is that you remove .ch from the URL and replace it with .com; it's what I did in the "In the early 2000s" paragraph in this edit.  Whenever I load one of the .ch links, I get told that I've reached my viewing maximum (presumably because books.google.ch isn't set up to handle IP addresses from the USA), and while I know how to fix it, someone else might not.  But again, it's a minor thing (a citation to a book is valid without any link whatsoever), so it's basically an "if you think of it" request.  On the citation formatting, see WP:CITEVAR if you want to see the relevant guideline.  If I remember rightly, what I told you before was basically "that doesn't matter now; let's get the content and sourcing now and worry about citation formatting later".  Both the handwritten citations and the cite web-style citations are acceptable, although it's always best to use only one or the other throughout the article, and I expect that's what FreeRangeFrog means.  Nyttend (talk) 23:25, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Correct, and I edited the ref to match all the other ones. Better for them to be consistent. I mean using the cite template would be super duper awesome and all, but it's no big deal in the end. Nyttend's copyedits are already in the live article as well. Cheers and a great weekend to both of you! § FreeRangeFrog  croak 00:15, 29 March 2014 (UTC)


 * May I ask one last favor of you today? As I did a close scan of the article and fixed a bunch of minor issues (see history for those), I found one place where a clarification addition is needed and feel that should be done by an Administrator. At the end of Paragraph 1 in the Kashmir sub-section, please can we add to existing text "Musharraf reluctantly agreed to back the ceasefire plan.[52]" as follows: "Musharraf reluctantly agreed to back the ceasefire plan, despite opposition from hardliners in the ranks of Pakistan's armed forces and intelligence services.[52]"


 * This is an important clarification that justified his reticence at the time. Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:09, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 02 APR 2014
I'm somewhat confused regarding your comments about the Christian Science Monitor article: you say that it's relevant to one of my comments, but I can't remember saying anything about which this is relevant. Could you remind me about the context? The Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History is vaguely in the same situation. Meanwhile, regarding the op-eds you gave me, I'm not sure that we should be using them as anything beyond "Ijaz has supported X" and "Ijaz has said we shouldn't do Y", since they're the perfect example of primary sources, and primary sources can't really be used to interpret anything: we have to have secondary sources in order to say anything beyond that, including "Ijaz has long supported X". WP:PRIMARY, a section of the no-original-research policy page, is the basis for what I'm saying. Please remember that I'm not trying to beat you over the head by quoting policy! Meanwhile, you say that these op-eds can give a "better understanding of where religion fit in my life's work" — the only spot at which I remember this coming up is the Muslims in the USA article, and for that I think we need to rely on what others have written; of course we can use the Qur'an-burning article as part of your article to say something like "Ijaz's writings have addressed [description of the issue] specifically from an Islamic perspective", although I admit that my wording really could be improved, since what I wrote sounds like I think you're one of the radicals that you're not. Have I addressed what you're talking about? I'm not sure I understand the context well enough to give you a proper answer. Nyttend (talk) 00:12, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * all of my comments on your talk page were aimed at trying to help you understand that when you wanted justification for the word "long", there was no way to give that from one particular article as a secondary source that said that specifically, but when you take the Monitor article I asked you to look at, my words were quoted by someone else on a subject directly germane to inclusion of Muslim Americans in U.S. political life, and I was quoted some 12 years after I first wrote about the role of our communities in public life. That, together with the many different pieces I wrote about American Muslims in US life, politics and otherwise, form together a record -- sort of like what Red Pen wrote at the outset of our re-write efforts where he/she made the point that for something to be included in a substantive way in the article, it had to have been part of my life for some time. I have nothing further to add to the debate -- if you feel it comes out because I have not made my case, so be it. I do not seek to have any other information added to the Political life sub-section. It reads well enough now and does not need more information added. I do think however it is justified to keep the word "long" in when thinking about longevity of advocacy. The Monitor article was only designed to be a secondary source. Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 00:20, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I have moved this discussion about the "Charitable work" proposed sub-section in "Professional life" here for ease of recording our commentary.
 * Thank you for your annotations on the new proposed paragraph. I have removed the draft from the Sandbox because as has been the case with some of the materials in the main article, the time lapse has made it difficult to obtain proper secondary sourcing. And in any event, we don't advertise our financial contributions to charitable causes as a rule. There are instances where my public appearances at Peace events and so forth led to a commitment to make a large effort, and those were well-advertised (http://www.worldpeacefestival.org/world-peace-festival/news/philanthropist-mansoor-ijaz-surprises-impressive-commitment) much to my chagrin, but we don't generally make it a rule for the amounts and dates to be made public. I address each of your comments below. But clearly, my answers cannot adequately address the issues raised for a case where secondary reference is needed for encyclopedic entries. I felt it was relevant to present this aspect of my life's work and story -- pervasive as it is in everything I have done -- but rules are rules and so I guess we have no choice but to drop the idea. If you think there is another way for us to present that material, we can have another look. Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 10:36, 1 April 2014 (UTC)


 * "source doesn't address the first sentence at all, and it basically says simply "Here's what the school is doing; it got assistance from RAF"
 * The logic of my answer herein may not stand up to the hard Wiki reference test for secondary sourcing, but if you go and look at the website's schedule of events and our invited guest lists, you will see that every event has been sponsored by my guest speakers, each of whom I brought to the events (Gen. Jones, Jim Woolsey, Gen. Abrahamson, Prince Alfred, Amb. Haqqani, Amb. Jawad, etc). We hold one major event each year, and that event raises the entire budget to fund our schools. Be that as it may, I recognize this is not hard sourcing -- I will see what else I can find. This "press kit" PDF at the RAF website contains many of the press clippings (http://www.rebuildafghanistan.org/Oct%202009%20RAF%20Press%20Kit.pdf) so I will go through those to see where it says what and how it is sourced to credible referencing.


 * "As far as I can see, the article talks mostly in generalities (basically "We're getting Afghans the education they badly need), and it mentions that the school's in Wardek, but doesn't say "for the first time" or discuss the components of the education.
 * Fair point. I cannot create content that doesn't exist, but that is indeed how it was characterized as a school in Afghanistan when it opened. I will review press clippings in our press kit, but in all likelihood the references made were to local press articles in Afghanistan and simply are not available. I guess this point proves how we who live it cannot expect others to know it unless a proper independent reference is available.


 * "your comments say basically that DIL sought to build schools to give comprehensive educations to rural children in place of religious schools"
 * actually, that's not true. What my testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations South Asia sub-committee said was as follows below. To find this yourself in the larger testimony script, go to the testimony and do a search on words "Development in Literacy" and it comes up:


 * IJAZ SENATE TESTIMONY (without being overly obvious about our contributions, I made clear what we were doing through DIL to develop literacy)
 * "Now, you can look at this problem in a slightly different way, as well. When you lose the ability to influence the minds of the people running the most powerful institution in a country that today has nuclear weapons, and at that time was developing nuclear capabilities at our behest, you lose the ability to influence events. We have lost our leverage, in my judgment, over what can happen in Pakistan today.
 * Now, what are we doing to try and correct that? And I will end my comments with this example, if I might. For the past 5 years, myself and other concerned Americans of Pakistani origin--and I am a born American citizen, as you well know-- have been trying to combat the effects of these madrassa schools, these radical religious schools, by building what I call sort of the normal example of what a school ought to be, where you do not learn just the Koran and how to shoot a Kalishnikov rifle at age 12, but you learn the Koran, you learn English, you learn Urdu, you learn math, you learn science, you learn a little bit of biology.
 * So we have been building these rural schools all throughout the northwest frontier province and Punjab, to try and combat the effects of this rising tide of radicalism that has overtaken Pakistan in a very real sense. You would be surprised to know that it only costs you $1,000 to build and operate a normal rural school, teaching up to 30 students in these very remote areas. And it only takes 5 years to get these children on the right track and make them literate as you go along.
 * So what I would like to say in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, given the time constraint, is the following. No matter how much we do as private American citizens, our program, which is called Development in Literacy, and the acronym is DIL, which in Urdu is the word for heart, it is only a microcosm of what we really need to be able to do. We need to be able to do this on a larger scale.
 * Education is a critical cornerstone. Just as we are fighting that battle right here in the United States, we have to devote resources to ensure that those problems do not reach our shores in other forms and other different religious beliefs, under different systems that we do not understand here. The young boys and girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan who face a life of illiteracy and religious zealotry have not chosen that path voluntarily. To sit idly by and do nothing not only dooms them, but I fear it will doom us as well in the end.
 * Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask that the balance of my remarks be entered into the record.
 * [The prepared statement of Mr. Ijaz follows:]"

User Talk 03 APR 2014
Good morning, Sir. Can we continue and/or conclude on the discussion above? Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:45, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

For convenience, I am setting forth the paragraph once more to which the above discussion belongs since it's been a few days that we've looked at this. I fundamentally understand all the points you are making, but wanted to see if there was some middle ground (for example including the first sentence of the paragraph below at the end of the Professional life section to indicate involvement in charitable activities, or to mention that my wife and I are Goodwill Ambassadors for Children of Peace followed by the first sentence, or something that is verifiable to Wiki standards but also includes the material to indicate involvement in those charitable matters. Thanks for your review. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:50, 3 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Ijaz and his family are active in non-profit work throughout the world, with particular emphasis on the education of young girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan to combat the ravaging effects of radicalism in those countries. In the early 2000s, Ijaz contributed to funds raised by Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation to construct Mayar Elementary School in Sheik Yassin Village, Maidan Wardak Province, Afghanistan. The school provides balanced education for several hundred young boys and girls for the first time in Wardak Province's modern history.  Ijaz and his wife, Valérie, are goodwill ambassadors for a British charity, Children of Peace, which works to reconcile differences between Palestinian and Israeli youth. He was also active in the mid-1990s in supporting Developments in Literacy (DIL), a Pakistani-American charitable initiative formed to build rural schools in Pakistan focused on educating young girls.

User Talk 04 APR 2014
I apologise for the delay; I had simply forgotten that there were any issues outstanding. Your comments at the sandbox confuse me, since we can include some of the charitable stuff; you don't have to drop it entirely. Regarding "long", unfortunately, I don't think that our sourcing standards would accept the "long" in this context when we're using this article. On one hand, it's a problem because it's essentially an opinion piece: opinion pieces, no matter who writes them, really are useful only as a source on the opinion of the writer. Even if it weren't, we need something that analyses your advocacy and traces out a pattern, saying that your advocacy through the years has basically been the same. I'm sorry, since I understand that it has been basically the same, but this is a situation in which we need the secondary source analysis in order to avoid synthesis of published material. Nyttend (talk) 01:21, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, we drop the issue on "long". I thought the article I provided gave that indication even if obliquely, but it's not important enough to keep writing back and forth about.--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

with regard to the charitable work proposal, I have left the paragraph above with my answers to your embedded citation remarks. Can you suggest what could be kept and what not? May I ask you to edit the paragraph as you would see it is supported by publicly available information? Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * With the referencing issues that I mentioned above, I'm going to start with the sources you gave me, and I'll write a new paragraph; please watch so you can alert me to errors that I've made. Nyttend (talk) 01:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm at my terminal now and will await edit. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 01:35, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, content added. Nothing from your testimony before the congressional committee — I need to reread it before doing anything with it.  Unfortunately, I've had to leave your wife out for the moment: the source doesn't say that Valerie is your wife, and without that fact, her appearance wouldn't be relevant.  Surely there's got to be something out there mentioning Mansoor-and-Valerie!  Once I have something for that fact, I'll put her back in as a goodwill ambassador.  Nyttend (talk) 01:56, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * That's funny. I will immediately give you that source now -- am I allowed to edit your part of the contribution here so I can give some inputs on language? If so, I will cut and paste here and then you can review, approve and draft in ... I would like to call that sub-section something else that "Other activities" -- please.


 * here is where, on the same website, it mentions that Val is my wife. :-) http://www.childrenofpeace.org.uk/archiveold/wedding.html --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:01, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I was actually asking for something simply mentioning her as your wife.  Something about your wedding is more helpful than what I was thinking of, since with it I could put that fact into the personal life section as well.  Nyttend (talk) 02:08, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Please see my edits to your drafted in sub-section, including a proposed name change to the sub-section. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:13, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * may I ask you to look at my modest edits of your text?

Philanthropic activities

Away from Crescent's daily affairs and former political and media engagements, Ijaz has served on the College Foundation Board of Trustees at the University of Virginia, and was a member of the board of directors of the Atlantic Council from 2007 until 2009. Ijaz is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he serves on the Advisory Board of Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation (RAF). RAF raises funds for building education infrastructure and programs in Afghanistan, including the construction of schools such as Mayar Elementary School, which enrolled four hundred Wardak Province children upon opening in late 2005. Ijaz and his wife, Valérie, also serve as goodwill ambassadors for a British charity, Children of Peace, that works to reconcile differences between Palestinian and Israeli youth. In late 2011, while addressing a peace movement conference, the World Peace Festival, Ijaz announced an intention to donate 1% of his net worth to a Humanitarian Relief Fund that would make an effort to alleviate the root causes of poverty. In noting his belief that governments have often failed to provide relief to the poor in sufficient ways over the long-term, Ijaz reached out to other philanthropists to seek similar pledges for the proposed fund.
 * Two things. (1) I've re-read the testimony, but I now can't find the chunk of text for which you originally supplied it, the page to which I said "your comments say basically that DIL sought to build schools..."  I can add comments from the testimony without seeing your proposed text, but I think I'll have an easier time fitting it in if I can see what you proposed before.  (2) Is the UVA board really a philanthropic activity?  If not, it really ought to go in some other section.  For that reason, I'm not going to rename the section, but once I know a better place to put it (or once I know that it belongs in philanthropic activities), I'll rename the section.  Nyttend (talk) 02:22, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Answers below:


 * 1) Section from testimony requested is here:


 * IJAZ SENATE TESTIMONY (without being overly obvious about our contributions, I made clear what we were doing through DIL to develop literacy)


 * "Now, you can look at this problem in a slightly different way, as well. When you lose the ability to influence the minds of the people running the most powerful institution in a country that today has nuclear weapons, and at that time was developing nuclear capabilities at our behest, you lose the ability to influence events. We have lost our leverage, in my judgment, over what can happen in Pakistan today.
 * Now, what are we doing to try and correct that? And I will end my comments with this example, if I might. For the past 5 years, myself and other concerned Americans of Pakistani origin--and I am a born American citizen, as you well know-- have been trying to combat the effects of these madrassa schools, these radical religious schools, by building what I call sort of the normal example of what a school ought to be, where you do not learn just the Koran and how to shoot a Kalishnikov rifle at age 12, but you learn the Koran, you learn English, you learn Urdu, you learn math, you learn science, you learn a little bit of biology.
 * So we have been building these rural schools all throughout the northwest frontier province and Punjab, to try and combat the effects of this rising tide of radicalism that has overtaken Pakistan in a very real sense. You would be surprised to know that it only costs you $1,000 to build and operate a normal rural school, teaching up to 30 students in these very remote areas. And it only takes 5 years to get these children on the right track and make them literate as you go along.
 * So what I would like to say in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, given the time constraint, is the following. No matter how much we do as private American citizens, our program, which is called Development in Literacy, and the acronym is DIL, which in Urdu is the word for heart, it is only a microcosm of what we really need to be able to do. We need to be able to do this on a larger scale.
 * Education is a critical cornerstone. Just as we are fighting that battle right here in the United States, we have to devote resources to ensure that those problems do not reach our shores in other forms and other different religious beliefs, under different systems that we do not understand here. The young boys and girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan who face a life of illiteracy and religious zealotry have not chosen that path voluntarily. To sit idly by and do nothing not only dooms them, but I fear it will doom us as well in the end.
 * Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask that the balance of my remarks be entered into the record.
 * [The prepared statement of Mr. Ijaz follows:]"
 * 2) on the UVA College Foundation, that is absolutely a Philanthropic activity -- we as members of the board contributed to, and raised money for, the new addition for arts and humanities at UVA. The Board of Trustees of UVA is different. College Foundation was purely a philanthropic pursuit of UVA alumni --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:26, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * My apologies, because I meant something different, for I found the testimony that you copy here. What I'm trying to find is the text that you first asked me to put into the article about your philanthropic activities, the text about which I made all the comments that currently appear at the top of the page.  I'd like to see what you originally wrote, so I can use it to fill out what I've already added to the article.  And meanwhile, thank you for correcting me on the trusteeship.  I misunderstood, thinking you were part of the entire university's governing board.  Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * here we got, I think...--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:36, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Ijaz was also active in the mid-1990s in supporting Developments in Literacy (DIL), a Pakistani-American charitable initiative formed to build rural schools in Pakistan focused on educating young girls.
 * Thanks; I'll get that into the article momentarily. I've just discovered why I said what I did — the name is "Development [singular] in Literacy" (probably a transcription mistake or an OCR error; note chunks of text such as ``foreign give-aways.'' elsewhere in the document), so I wasn't finding the relevant portion of testimony.  Nyttend (talk) 02:41, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you, good sir. May I have permission after you are done to go into the article and re-scale and re-set some of the images to meet the new inserted text and do a few bits and bobs that are purely cosmetic? Thanks --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * You're welcome; thanks for the help you gave. Please read Help:Minor edit, at least the introduction.  In short, the reason that you're discouraged from editing the article's content is to ensure that the changes are neutral.  In contrast, the changes you're now talking about are great examples of minor edits: you should always feel free to perform such edits without asking.  Nyttend (talk) 03:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I will do so now. I really appreciate your help and guidance. It's good to do a late-nighter with you every now and then -- although now I have to go live more life and do something relevant to come back and ask for your help again. Next week, I will start spending some time in helping to improve other articles for which I have knowledge, but no conflicts. Good evening, Sir. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 03:03, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 06 APR 2014
Memogate Husain Haqqani was involved in Pakistan’s Memogate controversy. On 17 November 2011, American businessman Mansoor Ijaz publicly acknowledged that Haqqani was the "Pakistani diplomat" referred to in an opinion article he had published on 10 October 2011 in the Financial Times. In the op-ed, Ijaz claimed a senior Pakistani diplomat had asked him to deliver a memorandum to Admiral Michael Mullen in the days following the raid by U.S. Special Forces on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan hideout. The memorandum asked for specific support from the Obama administration to avert a military takeover of Pakistan's civilian government, in which Haqqani was considered a close personal confidant of President Asif Ali Zardari. Haqqani denied the accusations amid highly politicized press coverage of the matter, and on 22 November 2011, tendered his resignation to Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani after being summoned back to Islamabad to explain his alleged role in the affair and his prior dealings and relationship with Ijaz.

The contents of the memorandum generated much debate in Pakistan's armed forces and ISI, each of whose service chiefs filed affidavits with Pakistan's Supreme Court as it debated whether to launch a full-scale investigation into the matter. Pakistan's opposition leader at the time, Mian Nawaz Sharif, filed petitions with the Supreme Court to launch the inquiry. On 30 December 2011, the Supreme Court found sufficient evidence existed to warrant a full investigation into the "origins, purpose and credibility" of the memorandum and ordered the formation of a Judicial Commission headed by three of Pakistan's provincial chief justices.

Subsequent to his resignation, and in light of the pending Supreme Court investigation at the time, Haqqani was placed on Pakistan's Exit Control List, effectively barring him from leaving the country without permission. He sought refuge in the presidential palace and later the Prime Minister's residence for nearly two months, citing threats to his life by extremist groups who publicly accused him of committing treason against his country. Lawyers for Ijaz and Haqqani engaged in discussions about the appropriate venue of the Commission's hearings. Haqqani's camp insisted that Ijaz return to Pakistan to testify. Ijaz' legal team argued that as he was a U.S. citizen he was under no compulsion to travel to Pakistan, where he had also received threats from extremist groups. After weeks of debate, the Judicial Commission decided to conduct its hearings by remote video link from London and Haqqani's name was removed from the Exit Control List on 31 January 2012. Haqqani attended Ijaz' cross-examination in London, but refused to return to Pakistan to be examined as he had agreed to do when the Supreme Court granted his leave, once again citing threats to his life.

In June 2012, the Judicial Commission released a report concluding that the memorandum was authentic and that Haqqani was its "originator and architect". The report said the former ambassador "orchestrated the possibility of an imminent coup to both persuade Mr. Ijaz to convey the message and also to give [the Memorandum] traction and credibility". The justices further found that Haqqani was not loyal to Pakistan and had sought to undermine the security of the country's nuclear assets, its armed forces, intelligence services and the Constitution. The Commission exonerated President Zardari from having any prior knowledge of Haqqani's actions and noted that the justices were of the "considered view" that Haqqani had led Ijaz to believe the memorandum had the Pakistani president's approval.

Haqqani criticized the Commission's report as one-sided, consistently defending his patriotism, and has thus far refused to return to Pakistan under his still standing commitment with the Supreme Court to face the Commission's findings. He continues to maintain his innocence, and has found significant media and academic support in the United States for his pleas.

References

Discussion - Haqqani article Memogate section re-write This is looking better but we need all the references! § FreeRangeFrog croak 22:09, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The issue is that I need blind eyes with no knowledge of the subject (meaning you have no real knowledge of this) to read it and put a marker at each sentence that you feel should be marked up with a reference. The references used by the original source for this material is simply nonsense stuff that adds very little to the vernacular. So I will go bring the sources, but I need to know what someone who has no knowledge of this feels needs some referencing.
 * On the other matter I referenced at your talk page, I am going to paste in a new section below this that will show I would see it looking on the page. If you feel it is okay, feel free to draft it in. If not, edit away and let me know what else needs sourcing. Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Please note the constructive comments from Nyttend with respect to the proposed Charitable work paragraph. I've done as much as I can to address the concerns and am still poring through some old clippings to see if we can find online support for the wording. Would appreciate hearing your comments and that of any other editors on this -- it's a good test case in many respects of how to source difficult to find material that in some senses is obvious as well. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 17:17, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Everything needs a backing source. It would have been more efficient perhaps to start off with the (bad) section in the Haqqani article and work from there, possibly adding more references if needed. As to the charitable activities on your bio, while we cannot rely on your personal recollections, remember that sources don't have to be online. If you have the physical material in front of you and you can construct a valid citation for it (publication, author(s), page(s), volume/issue, etc) then that's perfectly acceptable. We'd prefer that everything was online of course, but it's not necessary. § FreeRangeFrog croak 18:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * On the Haqqani article section, that's precisely what I did. I just didn't carry over the references used there because most of them were not credible. I will go in and source the section as I see it needs it now and then you and any other editor who wishes can have a look.
 * On the Charitable works section, I am reviewing those materials now to see how it can be done, if it can be done. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:14, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I have now added the relevant references -- annotating virtually every sentence, as each has important differential data from the others. Hope this re-write is editorially sound now. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 00:03, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Did a bit of copyedit, I think this is looking good. Certainly better than what's there right now. I'm not sure if Nyttend wants to give it the once-over as well. The only thing I would be concerned about is the use of the PDFs, which could be considered "primary" sources, but that might be nitpicking considering their weight in relation to the rest of the section. § FreeRangeFrog croak 07:52, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The PDF in this case was being used (as Nyttend and I did in the edit of the Memogate section in my article) because the quoted materials are quite strong, and it was just best to have that from the primary source in this case. Reference No.11 contains all the necessary secondary sourcing as well, so we have both in fact. I will leave it to you to reach out to Nyttend -- I already asked, but he hasn't been around editing much the past day or so. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 07:59, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Your copy edits are good. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 08:21, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Good morning, Sirs. I presume you are both busy, but I wanted to ping as a reminder that we have this mini-project outstanding. Can one of you take a look and move it forward? I've withdrawn my request on the Charitable work section of the article Mansoor Ijaz. Would appreciate it that Nyttend has a look at my comments on the word "long".... Thanks and both of you have a nice day. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:38, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I just incorporated the draft into the Haqqani bio, thank you for that. I did preserve some of the material but the previous mess is gone. I have not looked at the other material re: Charitable work, but I will tomorrow. I also posted a review for comments at the COI noticeboard here. Hopefully there will be no objections, but just in case. § FreeRangeFrog croak 03:35, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the review. On the Charitable work, while you were busy in other matters, Nyttend and I managed to get a pretty good go at it and have drafted into the article a paragraph that he wrote and I did some light editing to -- "Philanthropic activities" -- please have a look. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 07:04, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I apologise, but I'm just about out the door and don't have time to give the subject a fair treatment. I'll try to remember to come back later today if FRF doesn't, and if I forget, be sure to let me know.  Nyttend (talk) 16:32, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks. I left the same message for FRF at his talk page. Let's revisit later in the day. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 16:35, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Pinging as we had discussed earlier.... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:24, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay; I had a few hours of work, then went to a social event at my church, and then went back to work until past 10PM (I set my own hours for this job). I'm not completely sure what you're wanting me to address with the WSJ quote: copyright or neutrality?  This much quotation is appropriate from a fair use standpoint: since we're discussing the American media's reaction to the situation, quoting some of the reaction is helpful (it's like providing a copy of a famous painter's artwork to help us understand his style), and if we're using the WSJ, we need to use the whole quote in order to understand their argument properly.  It's definitely a transformative use of the text.  Now as far as neutrality Because the article currently mentions him getting only support from American media, we can't really balance it out with anything, unless of course he got opposition as well, in which case we need to mention that in the first place.  If he got basically nothing except support, and if the WSJ is representative of that support, we don't have any need to change anything, as far as I can see.  Of course, we could switch to another publication providing an equally representative view, but that's not a clear-cut situation for which I could say yes or no: we'd need to discuss it.  In short Either we should leave the WSJ quote, or we should replace it with something comparable.  Nyttend (talk) 03:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

(unindenting) Using your logic, then we should also quote more extensively from the Commission's report in article Mansoor Ijaz and article Husain Haqqani because that is where the underlying findings that lead to the potential charges of treason come from. There are at least half a dozen more key statements that should be really included in the findings of the Commission report that would then balance out such a large quote of a single source article. Shall I quote those in the Sandbox for consideration?--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 09:38, 6 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Here is a quote, for example, that explains, correctly in my view, how the whole matter that gave rise to the Commission's inquiry was not my doing -- other than the op-ed being a starting point.


 * This is taken from a Christian Science Monitor article http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2012/0125/Who-is-Mansoor-Ijaz-The-US-businessman-behind-Pakistan-s-Memo-gate:
 * “Pakistan has failed to set up institutional systems for analyzing and dealing with issues so often, you have freelancers who take it upon themselves to act as surrogates for the government,” says Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, adding: “The matter only took a life of its own when [opposition leader] Nawaz Sharif filed the court petition. So it’s not so much Mr. Ijaz’s doing as much as Mr. Ijaz having the spotlight being thrust upon him by domestic squabbling within Pakistan.”


 * or this one, taken from a Newsweek article http://newsweekpakistan.com/who-is-memogates-mansoor-ijaz/:
 * And not everyone in Pakistan agrees with the [Zardari] government’s uncharitable assessment of Ijaz and his utility. “It is unfortunate and unfair to question Mr. Ijaz’s credibility,” says Sartaj Aziz, vice chancellor of Beaconhouse University and a former minister in the Sharif government. “Being an American citizen of Pakistani origin, he has been quite instrumental and useful in acting as an interlocutor between Pakistani and American officials,” he told Newsweek. Aziz credits Ijaz for the passage in the U.S. Congress of the Brown Amendment, which allowed Pakistan to circumvent the earlier Pressler Amendment and receive American military hardware.


 * Using your argument, one of these quotes, probably the second one, is a balance to those in the US press who berated me on this whole matter. The larger point I make is the whole purpose of re-writing the Haqqani article section is that the original version sounded like a blaring advertisement for Haqqani that completely glossed over the salient facts and findings of a Commission that in the final analysis based its conclusions on FORENSIC TESTING of computers, blackberry devices and so forth. When I had drafted that into the re-write of my section, it was taken out, even though it was the MOST SALIENT POINT of the entire process of analyzing who did what to whom, when, why etc. If the WSJ comment is carried in full in his article, then there is a need to balance by either inserting a greater extent of the findings of the Commission or allowing my article to also carry a quote from a news article by a prominent voice.


 * I could also by the way come up with an entire section of notable quotes from prominent news outlets that defended my decision to make sure the truth came out in this matter. Such a section would mimic what FRF did in the Haqqani article, meaning, I had the same support and could put that out there for consumption, but felt that violated NPOV standards in Wiki BLP --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 10:09, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
 * There's a big difference, in that the Commission's report is a legal finding, while the American media's position is purely opinion, regardless of the position that they take. We need to report on the legal findings neutrally (nobody's going to disagree on what they said), treating them as an episode in the controversy rather than as a reaction to it.  The only things that would be useful to counterbalance the Commission's report would be a contradictory finding by another commission, by someone writing a scholarly book about the situation, by scholars writing journal articles, etc.  We really need to segregate news media's reaction from official and scholarly opinions.  As far as the quotes, if we're going to quote something in opposition to the WSJ, we ought to have an American thing that addresses Haqqani directly — from an opinion perspective.  The paragraphs you quote here are basically reporting the positions of specific people; we need to balance opinion with opinion.  Nyttend (talk) 13:08, 6 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Noted. Thank you for the clarification and perspective. I understand the point. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:19, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 09 APR 2014
(WP:CHECKWIKI error fix #26. Convert HTML to wikicode. Do general fixes and cleanup if needed. - using AWB (10072))

Disambiguation link notification for April 9

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Timothy M. Carney, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Columbia and Vanity Fair (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 08:54, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Moved this Discussion section to talk from Sandbox --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion of Timothy M. Carney article redevelopment - OPTIONAL PARAGRAPH IN SUDAN SECTION In September 1996, Carney was briefed in Khartoum by an American businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, whose political ties to senior Clinton administration officials had opened direct channels of communication to Sudanese leaders, including Turabi and Bashir. Ijaz, of his own initiative and in coordination with Carney, negotiated and then delivered Sudan's April 1997 unconditional offer of intelligence assistance to Clinton administration officials. Carney and Ijaz would later argue that not responding to the Bashir offer was a missed opportunity by the Clinton White House to unravel Al Qaeda's sprouting network in Sudan long before the events of September 11. They recounted how the early 1996 diplomatic entendre with El Fatih Erwa had resulted in an offer by the Sudanese official to capture and hand over bin Laden, first to Saudi Arabia, and then to U.S. authorities when the Saudis refused to take bin Laden, in return for sanctions relief before deporting him under U.S. pressure.

User Talk 14 APR 2014
I'm sorry, but I'm crazily busy, and I don't think I'll be able to help here. Nyttend (talk) 21:20, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Good article nominations
To get feedback on the Robin Raphel article, you may want to submit a request at Good article nominations. -- Jreferee (talk) 06:55, 14 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your note. I did indeed try to nominate two articles -- Robin Raphel and Timothy M. Carney -- and both were deleted by Legobot almost immediately, citing "Maintenance" in the history logs. I suppose I did something wrong there. Is it possible that either you explain to me how to do it, or that you do it for those two articles so the same error is not made? Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 12:54, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

WP:GAN nominations
Please follow the instructions at WP:GAN so that the bot does not undo your nominations like it just did.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:38, 14 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the tip -- I have now nominated the articles through proper procedure. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 14:27, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 17 APR 2014
I'm sorry that I've been so busy. If you have anything comparatively simple with which I can help, either tonight (9:45PM here now) or tomorrow evening, please let me know. I'm on the road from Friday noon until late Monday and won't have any substantial periods of Internet access during that time. Nyttend (talk) 01:45, 17 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I have completed Robin Raphel and Timothy Carney articles in terms of edits -- would love to have your feedback. I am presently preparing a draft in my sandbox on Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz with help from FRF. Please feel free to have a look at the skeleton. We can work on the more substantive things when you are back. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:03, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Saw your sandbox. I must apologise for the fact that I've tagged File:MujaddidAhmedIjaz1987.jpg and File:Dr. Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz, 1983.png for deletion: the former image is marked as an Olan Mills work, and the latter image is clearly the same scene, so I have to conclude that they're both copyright infringements.  Do you have any other photos of your father that could go in the infobox?  As for the article itself, I like the section structure.  The use of an image such as File:Mujaddid & Lubna Ijaz with their grandchildren, Summer 1991.png is highly unusual, but I think it's great — informal photos with family members just aren't available for most biographies, and this kind of image helps to highlight his personal life in a way that professional images and simple text can't at all convey.  No comment on Raphel or Carney, but I'll go look at them and come back.  Nyttend (talk) 02:15, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The Olan Mills photos are owned by us. We paid for them and own the copyright therefore. We had those made as a part of normal family gatherings. I don't see how they could be considered copyright infringements. I would have no problem getting Olan Mills to give us a copyright release if you tell me what we want from them. Can we sort that out, because while I have other photos of my father from our private collection, this one suits his dignified way perfectly for public attribution. Thank you --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 02:20, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
 * If you've gotten a specific copyright release for the Olan Mills images, I have no complaint, but for reasons I can't understand, this kind of photograph is not considered a work for hire, so they retain copyright unless you specifically arranged with them that you would own the copyright. Since releases by professional photography companies are so rare, I think our copyright specialists would accept only an email directly from someone at Olan Mills.  You'd do best to ask at WP:MCQ, the copyright help desk, because I don't know how else to advise you; I'm sorry.  Nyttend (talk) 02:31, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
 * On the Raphel and Carney articles, I was going to suggest a bunch of small changes, but then I observed that it was pointless: better to make the changes myself than to waste my time describing them and your time making them. No additional comments.  Nyttend (talk) 02:46, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your good form c/e on the Raphel and Carney articles. I hope you found them in general to be stronger and more informed pieces now than the originals.--Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:32, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

(unindenting) On the image copyright issue, I left a note at the page you suggested and asked for a day or so to obtain the proper permission slip from Olan Mills. That will be no problem -- they know our family well and in any event they have a public website policy that allows the use of the image in these types of forums, so I don't see a problem in getting that done. Would appreciate perhaps that you consider re-structuring "speedy delete" to normal mode so I can get that done in time. Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:32, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Commons policy actually says that they still need to be tagged for immediate deletion, but it shouldn't be a problem if you get a release. Many OTRS agents administrators are also OTRS agents (FreeRangeFrog is a good example), and if you get an appropriate release (after deletion) and it's recorded by an agent-and-administrator, the image will be undeleted speedily.  On the other hand, if the agent is not an administrator, a non-administrator OTRS agent finds the same email, s/he will ask admins for undeletion, and it would be wholly inappropriate for an admin to refuse undeletion in such a case.  Nyttend (talk) 04:39, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 19 APR 2014
Thank you for nominating Mansoor Ijaz as a good article. I have also reached out to Olan Mills legal today on the copyright issue. They were closed but we should get that resolved shortly after Easter. They will give us what we need. In the meantime, I continue to re-develop Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz as my next project on Wiki. tag is not working you'll have to get creative and trim or insert more breaks between them. § FreeRangeFrog croak 22:49, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * My pleasure. We'll see how the assessment goes (it will be a while before they get to it). I'd say the photograph you have there of your dad is better, but given the response I got from Commons, it's up to you if you want to go ahead and seek the release from them. § FreeRangeFrog croak 22:14, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * can you help me figure out how to expand the width of an INFOBOX -- too many long names and I can't abbreviate them easily, and the box looks a mess when they don't fit one line. Is there a standard way to do that? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:44, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Infobox widths are fixed (except where the image affects it, which it shouldn't). If the
 * Good morning, FRF. I was wondering if you might help me understand the logic of your rescaling of images in the article yesterday? Was that to fit WP:GAN criteria or just a personal view of how it should look? Curiosity to understand c/e process, nothing more. Thanks, and Happy Easter! --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 15:45, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, see WP:MOSIMAGE. I'm hoping they won't complain about the weightlifting one that's left-aligned, we'll see. In the meantime, please look at the External Links section and see if you can possibly incorporate some of them as references (if appropriate) in the body of the article, or remove them selectively. I've been going over some GA assessments and I'm pretty sure they'll complain about the number of links there. § FreeRangeFrog croak 22:50, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * On images, I see the point, although by putting the weightlifting image, that gives a lot to the article in terms of depth and diversity, on the right, you basically mess up the entire flow of the article. So I would say that should stay where it is. On the links, I am going in now and deleting the ones that are already included elsewhere in the article. That's a fair point. Thanks, and hope all is well for your Easter egg hunt tomorrow. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 22:57, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

fixed the External Links section. That was an easy fix. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:00, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Excellent! I did a bit of a tweak in the link titles. I agree the weightlifting image should stay, it's just a question of how. We'll leave it as is and see what the assessing editor says. § FreeRangeFrog croak 23:13, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * May I comment on your tweaks? The reason I made the changes that I did last night is because generally with a small JPEG, it seems unsightly to have too much caption. So I tried to reduce the captions to understandable but short lengths that kept them all to one line except the one for Jones. Either you should allow me to re-scale the images to slightly larger size, or go back to the captions I had. Everyone, for example, knows Clinton was president in 1996. So we could make that Pres. Clinton or Bill Clinton and keep it all at one line. Just as an example. With your feedback and permission, I would like to fix that because the Bill Clinton and Jones images now impinge on other paragraphs and disrupt flow. Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:18, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure, no problem. The last change I did (you'll see it in the log as "awb") is to remove multiple wiki-links in the body. So Osama bin Laden for example was linked multiple times, as was Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, Formula One, etc. The MOS guideline for links is that they should almost always appear only once in the article. Florida and Tallahassee for example are already linked in the infobox, so they shouldn't be linked in the Personal Life section. We should also avoid contractions, like "Pres." or "Gen.". Beyond that, captions should be as descriptive and precise as possible. § FreeRangeFrog croak 23:25, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * good stuff. I made two small pixel adjustments so the existing captions fit the image in one or max two lines. Keeps flow good. All else remains the same. As usual, our interactions result in a stronger result. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:35, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 23 APR 2014
The images in Commons have been restored :) § FreeRangeFrog croak 19:02, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help on this. I had seen they were back up a bit earlier and then left you this message at the Commons page that was dealing with the undelete. The two images restored overnight have an OTRS notice on each images' home page that has an obvious error which needs fixing. This is how the text of the notice reads:


 * An email has been received at OTRS concerning this file, and can be read here by users with an OTRS account. However, the message was not sufficient to confirm permission for this file. This may, among other reasons, be because there was no explicit release under a free license, or the email address that the permission came from is not associated with the location where the content was originally published. For an update on the issue, please contact the user who added this template to the page, or someone else with an OTRS account, or the OTRS noticeboard.


 * To address the section in bold print above, I have researched the fact that Olan Mills Studios, that originally made the image, was sold to Lifetouch, Inc on November 9, 2011. The Wikipedia entry for Olan Mills states that as well does this source here: . As I do not have an OTRS account and cannot access the file to correct the template as it is instructed to do on the image's home page OTRS notice, can I ask you to do that please?


 * As far as the "sufficient permission" issue raised in the OTRS Notice, it was made very clear in the Lifetouch release that Lifetouch understands by giving CC-by-SA licensing rights, they must respect the free license usage offered to anyone who accesses Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. The Lifetouch release says the following:


 * By granting a limited purpose use of "CC-by-SA", Lifetouch acknowledges that Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia are universally accessible and available portals to users of these encyclopedic entries, and that as such, Wikimedia and Wikipedia data must be freely available to all its users.


 * Can I ask for some help in making sure this is cleared up so we can use the images without fear of having them deleted again? Lifetouch worked with us as best they could within their constraints and accepted everything I asked them to do. And they granted us the right to use the image. Thank you. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 19:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Let's wait a week or so and see if the ticket is examined by someone else, which was my intention to begin with (just to make 100% sure the release is appropriate). Otherwise I would have done it myself. If I don't see changes by next week I'll change the permission tags myself and hope for the best. But the images won't be deleted outright as they were before, not with the OTRS pending tags they have now. § FreeRangeFrog croak 20:56, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Roger that..... --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 20:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 25 APR 2014
Sandbox I've looked it over and there are some sections that could use a more neutral perspective... I can give it a go tomorrow if you want. § FreeRangeFrog croak 05:33, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * absolutely. would appreciate that. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 06:53, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Good afternoon, please let me know when you have had a chance to look over the Sandbox and make the desired corrections. I will then begin inserting the necessary references where they exist and perhaps during the weekend we can start migrating the article to mainspace. Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 20:17, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I might not be able to get to it until tonight or tomorrow morning, sorry. "Real world" work getting in the way... § FreeRangeFrog croak 21:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I made some tweaks to the final sections. I am a bit hesitant to remove or edit some of that information as it might be important to you, but something that would help is to have sources (other than oral communications) to verify. I would recommend trimming the legacy section, and the last paragraph of the Death section will need strong sourcing (because of the claims), if not I recommend it be removed. As I've said, it's possible no one will bat an eyelash over that, but you know how it is around here. Anyway, once you've added sources I'll take a look again, I have it in my watchlist. § FreeRangeFrog croak 17:47, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for taking a look. I reviewed your cuts and am happy with all of them. Do you feel I need to trim more than what you have trimmed already? By this I mean the Family life section and its related sub-sections. As for the "last paragraph" of Death section, consider it removed. It was superfluous for me as well, but the purpose of putting everything there is to see what an independent set of eyes looks at as relevant and what not. How did the rest of the article read? Will get to work later tonight on referencing it all up. Best, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 18:01, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the rest is fine, all you need is some sourcing and you'll be all set. Minor issues with wording, flow, grammar, internal linking, etc. can be dealt with once everything is sourced (because it always helps to read the sources). § FreeRangeFrog croak 21:02, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

User Talk 29 APR 2014
Hey Froggy, I wonder if you have a minute to stop by the Sandbox and see my cuts to the article -- I've done some radical surgery to bring it to a reasonable length and insure it is fully referenced on available data. A lot of the nuclear stuff is now cut because we just cannot document that adequately due to the sensitive nature of those disclosures. Thanks, and for the help on the image matter. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:03, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Took a quick look, it's much better now. I mean it would have been fine with everything else if it could have been sourced Any idea on when you'll finish incorporating the refs inline? § FreeRangeFrog  croak 06:34, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * the article has been cut down further today after overnight edit recommendations from my mother and two brothers who obviously also knew the facts and circumstances surrounding my father's life pretty well. I am not entirely comfortable with all of their edit suggestions -- I have the feeling they want to re-write history a bit by leaving certain people out of the article that are presently included on a factual basis. I have resisted those types of edits, but where the edits made sense, I did include their views. This is now basically the article length I believe is appropriate for the mainspace section. I will begin on Thursday (May Day here) to populate the article with references and then you can review for move to mainspace. Thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 19:48, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a plan. § FreeRangeFrog croak 19:51, 29 April 2014 (UTC)