Talk:Robert Delahunty

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Somebody from Minnesota (where the subject lives) keeps trying to whitewash his contributions to the Bush Administration's torture policies. Whoever it is writes like a bad lawyer (the subject is a lawyer), replacing phrases like "repudiated" with "deemed 'not authoritative for any purpose'", or replacing "ignore the First and Fourth Amendments" with "rights may be subordinated to successful prosecution of war". They removed the reference that called his legal memos "notorious", alleging it was biased, and then claimed that the word notorious wasn't supported by the source material. Check the history if you have any doubts.

Gnuish (talk) 02:55, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

1. Whitewash? Please. God forbid that someone should clean up your mess by using, you know, actual quotations from the source documents in place of your accusations and misrepresentations. Sounds like a bad lawyer, you say? Perhaps that's because the documents quoted and cited were legal memoranda that were written by lawyers. Your insistence on publishing your caricaturization of the memos rather than a summary of their contents quoting their actual words is a dead giveaway of the bad faith underlying your edits to this article. You clearly want to go the character-assassination route, but that's not going to fly. If you want to denigrate Mr. Delahunty for sport, go start a blog. Here, neutrality and accuracy are the names of the game.

2. Don't mistake my edits for those of the anonymous person who came after me, whose edits were reverted. Your conspiracy theory is cute, but unconvincing, and your insinuations are as tiresome as they are unfounded. Your repeated reference to Mr. Delahunty as "torture memo author" cannot change the fact that he did not contribute to the so-called "torture memo." Nor can your insinuation that Mr. Delahunty or a conspirator is editing the article (subject lives in Minnesota! subject is a lawyer!) make it so.

3. The issue is not the identities of the people who edit articles, but the quality of their contributions. One of the edits you complained of was reverted. The other was legitimate, notwithstanding your attempt to categorize it with the improper edits. Your edits reveal animosity toward Mr. Delahunty and a total lack of interest in accuracy where the facts don't line up with the agenda you wish to advance. I don't care who you are or where you live or what you think of Mr. Delahunty; I do care that your contributions are, by and large, at odds with the facts. Get it right or knock it off.

Yes, by all means, Wikipedia powers-that-be, check out this article's edit history.

Yourlocalnerd (talk) 04:19, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Again someone User:Olin157 removed substantive references from major publications, replacing the text and references with a whitewash that fundamentally misstates the notability of the subject. WP::WELLKNOWN. Delahunty is notable for writing legal memos for the Bush Administration that (1) were kept secret while being relied upon to justify unprecedented and controversial policies, (2) were found to be fundamentally wrong after open publication and public examination, (3) were repudiated by later authoritative lawyers at OLC, or courts, and (4) in some cases, were seemingly designed to prevent any future prosecutions of the perpetrators of torture or war crimes. Whether or not he contributed to the most famous of John Yoo's torture memos is not the issue; he wrote many other memos that were used in similar ways.

Then User:Yourlocalnerd came in with further 'cleanups' that dilute the flow of the article (e.g. reinserting a sentence about Delahunty's later job into the middle of a paragraph about what he did at OLC), and removing his name or "His" from sentences about memos that were written by Delahunty. This is the only article that Yourlocalnerd has ever edited (under that identity).

He seems to be saying that when a legal memo is later deemed "not authoritative for any purpose", it has not been "repudiated", because he's made that edit twice now. Perhaps he could explain the difference here.

I restored the article to its status pre these edits, and then rolled in the useful edits from Yourlocalnerd, as well as editing other text to bring the article closer to NPOV. I also added further sources including the Supreme Court case that overturned the Geneva Conventions policy Delahunty had originated, and the judge in a John Yoo civil trial who found that lawyers who give bad legal advice are legally responsible for the later effects of those who used that advice to commit wrongs or crimes.

I have never met Delahunty, do not know or "know of" the man, and bear no personal animus towards him. Yet I continue to put in editing time so that his actions and the results thereof are accurately documented for history and the public, so that those of us who lived through the excesses of the post-9/11 spasm are not condemned to repeat them. I am not sure what motivates the person or people who continue to "play down" Delahunty's contributions to public policies (especially those later found fallacious).

Gnuish (talk) 10:41, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

1. You now have my IP and my Username. Feel free to search and see if I've secretly been making anonymous edits somewhere else. I am not sure if you are trying to insinuate that I'm editing articles under other names, or that my edits are less worthy than yours because this is the only article I've edited. Perhaps you'd like to explain why anyone should care that I haven't made edits elsewhere?

2. I agree that User:Olin157's edit was improper. It also messed up the organization of the article. I don't think your edit has fixed that problem, and saying "Delahunty's supporters say ..." to introduce a fact (Delahunty was no longer employed by the gov't at the time Yoo wrote "the" torture memo, ergo he did not have a hand in writing it) does not comport with NPOV. The sentence re: Delahunty's job in 2002-2003 belongs in Paragraph 1 because it overlaps with the time he was employed by the OLC. It certainly doesn't belong in the middle of a paragraph about his education and teaching. The sentence re: Delahunty declining to debate his critics does not belong in P.1, nor does any reference to Mengler's defense of Delahunty. In short: Paragraph 1 still has issues.

3. The memo, as a whole, was not repudiated. Certain of its elements were, as indicated by "ALSO repudiated" in the following sentence. There's no need to use the word twice, and no reason not to use the documents' own terms. Perhaps you could explain why it's necessary to use "repudiated" again and why direct quotation from the document is not appropriate? Furthermore, your summary of the memo's contents is inaccurate. Perhaps you could also explain why you insist on using your interpretation of the memo's conclusions rather than language that mirrors what the memo actually says?

4. It is not strictly accurate to call the memos "Delahunty's" because they were co-written by Delahunty and Yoo--a fact that the reader already knows by the time s/he reaches paragraph 2. Thus, referring to the memos as "the ___ memo" is both more accurate and less repetitious than your suggested language.

5. Your use of the phrase "play down" clearly indicates that you assume a particular motivation for my edits. In fact, I'm looking for an accurate article that comports with the NPOV standard. According to the evidence available, the extent of Delahunty's participation in the making of policy was his CO-authorship of several memos. I will continue to correct any language that implies a higher degree of involvement unless credible sources come to light that show otherwise. Since you have yet to make an edit that is *not* geared toward casting Delahunty and/or his work product in an ever more negative light, mine necessarily tend to pull the article back in the other direction. For example: You added a paragraph about Delahunty's purported responsibility for the govt's actions, yet curiously failed to include the opposing viewpoint. You keep replacing a description of the 10/11 memo that mirrors the memo's words with your (inaccurate) summary that uses more inflammatory language. You keep adding negative adjectives to the footnotes for already-sourced textual statements. Your edits tend not to include new factual information, but rather to be comprised of third parties' negative reaction to and opinion about the facts. This pattern certainly gives the appearance that your interest is in filling the article with as much anti-Delahunty rhetoric as you can. I hope that is not the case.

6. I fixed (again) the inaccurate summary of the 10/01 memo. I also removed (again) the unsourced list items in the paragraph discussing the memo authors' responsibility for the end results of their legal analysis. Other fixes, if any, will have to wait.

Yourlocalnerd (talk) 08:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)