Talk:Strawberry Fields (Guantanamo)

Excisions based on assertions of irrelevancy and WP:OR

This material was excised with the brief edit summary "not relevant for this article".

The deleted material concerned Ibrahim Zeidan's 2004 testimony. Ibrahim Zeidan testified, in 2004, that Abu Zubaydah was being held in Guantanamo, that he had been tortured in Guantanamo, that images from Abu Zubaydah's torture were shown to other captives during their interrogation, and that he believed his detention was largely due to false denunciations leveled against him by Abu Zubaydah, from when Abu Zubaydah was being tortured.

First, in 2004, not even the US Congress's intelligence committees were told that the CIA was torturing captives, let alone that the CIA had recorded Abu Zubaydah's interrogations "for training purposes". DCI Hayden confirmed the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, IIRC, in the fall of, IIRC 2007.

Second, there was no record that Abu Zubaydah had been held in Guantanamo until August 2010 -- other than Ibrahim Zeidan's testimony.

Information released in August 2010 confirmed Zeidan's testimony that Abu Zubaydah was held in Guantanamo in 2004, so it is highly relevant.

Readers are going to want to know what went on at this camp. Zeidan's testimony provides important information about what went on at this camp.

1. Other Guantanamo captives, at the main JTF-GTMO camps, were shown images of Abu Zubaydah's torture, from the files at the previously unacknowledged camp.
2. Interrogators bragged about the torture of Abu Zubaydah.

It is not our place to call the spread of information and files about a CIA torture program so secret knowledge of it was withheld from the US Congress's Intelligence Committees to junior interrogators at Guantanamo, and through them to the general population at Guantanamo a failure of operational security. Inserting our conclusions about this phenomenon would lapse from several policies.

Summarizing relevant facts from WP:RS, and presenting using a neutral voice is completely compliant with policy. And, IMO, suppressing relevant facts, with an unsupportable claim they weren't relevant, would be non-compliant.

I call upon the excising contributor to return here and offer a fuller explanation as to why they characterize Zeidan's 2004 reports as "not relevant". Geo Swan (talk) 16:21, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree in a number of points and i dislike your uncivil style but leaving this aside for the moment.

Your personal theory and reason for the relevance of this material is solely based on the interpretation of this 8 page long primary source.

Interpretations of primary source material is considered WP:OR what is a violation of one of our core policies.

The reason we have this policy is that personal interpretations of primary source material can often be wrong when not done by reliable experts.

As your interpretation of this primary source material, that Ibrahim Zeidan believed Abu Zubaydah where at Guantanamo in 2004 is highly doubtful and most likely wrong.

You have violated WP:OR many times in the past with the excuse that you were unexperienced and that is fine but by now this is no excuse anymore. Please do respect our policies this is becoming a bit disruptive by now. Thank you. IQinn (talk) 23:00, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I dispute that the style of this comment is uncivil. I remind the excising contributor that all wikipedians' contributions are subject to good faith review.

The excising contributor routinely asserts that wikipolicy bars the use of primary documents. Wikipolicy does not bar the use of primary documents. Wikipolicy says primary documents should be used with care. I believe the document was used with appropriate care.

The OR policy current says:

Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them... A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source.

The excising contributor's interpretation of OR, here, and elsewhere, and what it says about the use of primary documents is simply not supported by the policy itself. The reference directly quotes Zeidan's 2004 testimony, "A witness from this camp named Abu Zubaydah made these false accusations against me that are not true." This use of a primary document completely and fully complies with the policy's requirement that primary documents "may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source."

As to whether my personal interpretation is "wrong" is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because my personal interpretation has not been injected into article space. That Zeidan testified, in 2004, that Abu Zubaydah was held in Guantanamo, is simply undeniable. If our excising contributor's concern is that Zeidan was "wrong", then that would be an unsubstantiated personal opinion, and editing an article, based on it, would lapse from both WP:VER and WP:NPOV. Geo Swan (talk) 23:06, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

It is really remarkable that this editor here disputes that he has an uncivil style and then violates WP:CIVIL in the next sentence.

The excising contributor routinely asserts that wikipolicy bars the use of primary documents.

No i have never never asserted that.

That's false. You injected your wrong interpretation into the article what the text that i removed shows:

At his Combatant Status Review Tribunal Ibrahim Zeidan testified that he believed that the false denunciation that were keeping him in Guantanamo came from Abu Zubaydah, who he testified had been held in Guantanamo.

This is your personal interpretation of the 8 page long primary source. It is a violation of WP:OR and your interpretation is wrong.

Once again: :You have violated WP:OR many times in the past many times in the past in connection with the same material. Please learn from your mistakes. IQinn (talk) 00:25, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Abu Zubaydah held at Guantanamo Sept. 2003-March 2004

More detainee reports are confirmed: The Associated Press reported in August 2010 that Abu Zubaydah and three other high-value detainees had been held at Guantanamo from Sept. 24, 2003 to March 27, 2004. This is now cited in the relevant articles; trying to get it everywhere it belongs. The CIA had transferred them there believing they could keep them in secret detention. Given the pending Rasul v. Bush case before the Supreme Court, the administration worried that they might be forced to allow the prisoners to have counsel and some sort of tribunal, as it was a large habeas corpus case on behalf of prisoners. So, the CIA took back custody of the four men in March 2004 and transported them out of Guantanamo to one of their sites. They were not brought back to Guantanamo until Sept. 2006.Parkwells (talk) 20:18, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Strawberry Fields, Camp No, Camp 7

Are these the same thing? Are the first two the same thing? It's hard to tell.Parkwells (talk) 20:18, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

At googlemaps:

• 19.914007, -75.122227 Camp 7 ("Camp Platinum")
• 19.906983, -75.110426 Camp No ("Penny Lane") (CIA)
• ?????????, ?????????? "Strawberry Fields", named a "black site" and a "prison", "near the main camps"

That is, what I found. --92.226.187.67 (talk) 15:07, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Past or present tense?

Does this site still exist, or are we not sure? The article as written doesn't say, and avoids opening with a straight and simple "Strawberry Fields is/was a secret compound" statement. If its continued existence is debated, that's fair enough, but it'd be good for the article to actually say that. --Lord Belbury (talk) 14:24, 7 November 2019 (UTC)