Whitewash on the USS Liberty incident, Jayjg's POV running amok again Options

[gomi]

I found some concerning shenanigans around the page concerning the USS Liberty incident, the page about the attack by Israel on a US warship during Israel's Six-Day War with Egypt, an attack that killed 34 US sailors, and an accompanying article on Robert MacNamara, the then-current Secretary of Defense.

Someone (a SPA called "WorldFacts") added this para a week or so ago (somewhat de-wikified here):

Then Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara and President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] ordered Admiral Isaac B. Kidd, the President of the Navy Court of Inquiry into the attack on June 8, 1967 of the USS Liberty, to conclude that "the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary." (1) Capt. Ward Boston USN, JAG (retired), states that "it is important for the American people to know that it is clear that Israel is responsible for deliberately attacking an American ship and murdering American sailors...". (2)

(1) <ref> U. S. Congress. House (2004) Representative John Conyers, Jr. Speaking on the "Findings of Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government". 109th Cong., 1st Session. Congressional Record 150, No. 130, Daily Edition (11 October 2004): E1886</ref>
(2) ibid, E1887</ref>

This information, in addition to being in the Congressional Record here, is also the subject of a BBC article (here), and an extensive Chicago tribune article.

But Jayjg wants it out, and no "Reliable Source" is going to convince him otherwise. In those diffs, he throws the wiki-book at the two sentences, labeling them "dubious POV" and "WP:NOR and WP:BLP violations" while reverting 3 (but not 4!) times. At the same time he (stalks WorldFacts over to the Robert McNamara page and) again reverts three times (here, here, and here), his last reversion the one that stands as of this writing.

But that's not all! Jayjg then tells WorldFacts that "this is your last warning" (turns out also his first warning), and labels the IP involved a sockpuppet of "FearNoTruth", a user with only three edits back in March'08. Also interestingly, we see admin Balloonman parachuting (no pun intended) into the situation to supply reverts and warnings without any previous involvement or notification. Jayjg, in placing the sock tag on FearNoTruth, simply cites the McNamara page as "evidence" for this socking charge, despite posessing the checkuser bit, a tacit acknowledgment that he has no evidence.

He then marks the IPs page and WorldTruth's as "patrolled" (I have no idea what this means, but it is more than vaguely menacing).

Now, certainly people can disagree over the historical record regarding the USS Liberty. Veterans of that incident claim, with near unanimity, that the attack was deliberate, and Israel denies it, mostly with a "why ever would be do that?" defense. The US government, in its more official pronouncements, has denied a cover-up. But the text being inserted is from a notable US Senator reading into the Congressional record a sworn statement from a Navy JAG officer with contemporaneous knowledge that "I know from personal conversations I had with Admiral Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘‘mistaken identity’’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.". Whether one accepts that evidence or not, the statement certainly seems "reliably sourced"!

And if you look into Jayjg's edit history, you can find an incident this blatant every month or so -- simply hammering down on facts in the encyclopedia that he doesn't like, using threats of banning and any other tool at his disposal to make the editor go away. The concern here is for exactly the opposite of either truth or verifiability -- it is to exclude opposing viewpoints and including his own. In virtually all of these cases, Jayjg prevails.

Yet another reason not to trust anything you read in Wikipedia. Obvious vandalism may be funny or offensive, but this kind of thing is sneaky and pernicious.

[Piperdown]

gomi - 1st take - if its just Rep. Conyers' opinion, then present it as such. If multiple sources report Conyer's opinion, that's fine, but it still needs to be presented as that. If other reliable sources make statements that say they also share Conyer's opinion, as opposed to just reporting Conyer's statements, that adds more weight to it changing from a reliable source-reported fringe theory towards a "fact".

so what's the probelm with jayjg and his "got his back"ers in this case? he appeared to have handled it correctly.

Narson and Jayjg are in the right, imho, on the Liberty page. For MacNamara's bio, I'd just refer to the main article on the incident and not go into details on recent theories of congressmen, etc, on the Mac BLP page.

I'm with Jayjg's edits on this. He's doing the right thing on the BLP and allowing this relatively obscure item about conyers to be included on the main incident page. That level of detail on Mac's BLP is not necessary. See <main article> suffices.

This post has been edited by Piperdown: Thu 9th October 2008, 11:24pm