Talk:Iraq Study Group

Content so far

This looks really good so far; two minor requests. First, at one point, the text says "Opinions in mainstream media were divided", but goes on to give only one example (on one side); can we have another one? Second, it describes French newspaper reaction as "a searing indictment of the Bush administration's incompetence"; instead of using such acerbic language directly (which could be taken as a CZ editorial comment), can we do it as a quote? Other than that, great job on such a difficult topic. J. Noel Chiappa 09:18, 20 May 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the compliment. The sentence about the "searing indictment" is indeed a quote from somewhere (I'll have to find it again!). This is still work in progress. Researching this is not very hard but it is slow work. I'm doing it in chunks. More to come! Michel van der Hoek 07:08, 27 May 2008 (CDT)

Correction: My use of the words "searing indictment" are a rewording of pretty strong language used to describe the response by Le Monde (see the footnote). Do we really need to quote this text directly? The footnote will direct the reader to that article. I think the CZ text captures the tone of the Le Monde comments quite well. I'll leave it this way for now, unless other people think it's too tendentious. Michel van der Hoek 09:20, 27 May 2008 (CDT)

Well, the IHT quotes Le Monde as saying "stinging statement of failure of the policy", which to me isn't as strong as "searing indictment". (Which is a good part of why it's good to quote original words - avoids questions over whether the summarization/rewording is apt.) I'd love to see the original article, see if the IHT (or whoever they got it from) translation is good (or toned down :-). Anyway, if it's not too big a problem, I would prefer the direct quote (of the IHT). J. Noel Chiappa 13:28, 27 May 2008 (CDT)