Misplaced Pages

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The List

• Tump's transition team dismissed the CIA's conclusions regarding 2016 United States election interference by Russia, stating: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." SPECIFICO edited Misplaced Pages to read: "The statement falsely said that those at the CIA who concluded Russian interference in the election, were the same individuals who asserted in 2003 that Iraq leader Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction." As evidence, SPECIFICO cited this 2015 interview with Michael Morell, which has nothing to do with Trump or allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election but in which Morell acknowledges "the administration intentionally misrepresented intelligence" on Iraq's WMD. SPECIFICO's edit is synthesis and original research of the crudest and most blatant variety.
• SPECIFICO fabricates citation out of whole cloth, "refuting" the Trump transition team's statement about the CIA being "the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction" by adding the qualifier: "A 2008 Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded that the Bush Administration's claims on the subject were 'not substantiated by the intelligence'." Really, SPECIFICO? What an astonishing—one might say highly improbable—fact! Unsurprisingly, the source says exactly the opposite of what SPECIFICO wants readers to believe:
  • "Before the October 2002 NIE, some intelligence agencies assessed that the Iraqi government was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program, while others disagreed. The NIE reflected a majority view that it was being reconstituted." cf. 2008 Senate report: "Statements by the president, vice president, secretary of state, and the national security advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by the intelligence community, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community."
  • "The intelligence community consistently stated between the late 1990s and 2003 that Iraq retained biological warfare agents and the capability to produce more." cf. 2008 Senate report: "Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraq's possession of biological agents, weapons, production capability and use of mobile biological laboratories were substantiated by intelligence information."
  • "The October NIE said that Iraq retained between 100 and 500 metric tons of chemical weapons. The intelligence community assessed that Hussein wanted to have chemical weapons capability and that Iraq was seeking to hide its capability in its dual-use chemical industry. However, intelligence assessments clearly stated that analysts could not confirm that production was ongoing." cf. 2008 Senate report: "Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraq's possession of chemical weapons were substantiated by intelligence information. Statements by the president and vice president prior to the October 2002 NIE ... did not the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing."
  • Michael Morell: "Does the CIA get everything right? Absolutely not. Was Iraq WMD one of our biggest failures? Yes. But the CIA gets most things right."
  • How, then, does SPECIFICO generate the extraordinary conclusion that the CIA never claimed Iraq had WMD? Apparently, SPECIFICO based their edit on the Nancy Pelosi tweet Glenn Kessler is fact-checking: "The intel didn't state that Iraq had WMDs. The Bush-Cheney WH made that misrepresentation." Pelosi's talking point is obviously a revision worthy of Orwell's 1984, but SPECIFICO has a history of uncritically regurgitating talking points from top Democratic Party officials and then demanding that Misplaced Pages be rewritten based on those talking points: See, e.g., "the Trump team ... endorsed and requested Russian interference" (implying that the release of 19,252 DNC emails on July 22, 2016 may have been inspired by a joke Trump made on July 27—rather than the reverse—a meme Hilary Clinton personally went to considerable lengths to propagate); "Putin's snarky put-down presumably of the campaign of Sec'y Clinton, whom he despises, is not relevant to this article" (is there any actual evidence that Putin "despises" Clinton besides the post-election speech in which she blamed Putin's "personal beef" for her failures?—If not, why does SPECIFICO think Misplaced Pages should regard HRC's every word as gospel truth?).
  • The rest is simple fraud: The "not substantiated by the intelligence" quote has nothing to do with WMDs, but rather "Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaeda and by extension the 9/11 attacks, which were thin and nonexistent"—and the source specifically notes "the Trump team kept its complaint isolated to intelligence findings that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."
    • SPECIFICO also tried to "add context" to the Trump team's statement by including the following quote from John McCain: "Facts are stubborn things. They did hack into this campaign." Here's why I find that so funny: In the same Face the Nation interview, McCain explained his doubts that Russia was consciously trying to help Trump: "Whether they intended to interfere to the degree that they were trying to elect a certain candidate, I think that’s a subject of investigation." However, when I attempted to add this caveat to the "U.S. Senate" subsection specifically devoted to the views of McCain and his colleagues—to complement the uninformative "The facts are there" soundbite already included—SPECIFICO immediately deleted it with another classic edit summary: "rv cherrypicked, off-topic remark. Redundant reiteration of McCain's view that Russians interfered should not be used for the SYNTH that follows." Should we politely pretend not to notice that McCain's stated beliefs are "off-topic" when SPECIFICO just doesn't like them, but so profoundly important they must be discussed in both the "U.S. Senate" and "Donald Trump" subsections when SPECIFICO does like them?
    • Earlier, far more minor example of SPECIFICO fabricating citations: Attributing a truly random, cherrypicked criticism ("Hillary's America may well be the single dumbest documentary that I have ever seen in my life") in the WP:BLP Dinesh D'Souza to the legendary (but long-dead) film critic Roger Ebert.
• SPECIFICO cites this Daily Beast article for the following assertions: "While there is solid evidence of Russia's interference, the incompleteness of the report encouraged skeptics it called 'truthers' and those who argue that Trump's and Assange's denials are valid, despite years of cybersecurity industry research that invalidates their claims." I've read the article twice now, and used ctrl + f to search for keywords like "truthers" and "Assange"—desperate to find anything even remotely resembling SPECIFICO's edit. But there's just nothing there: Nothing about Assange or his "denials," no mention of "truthers," no conclusion that the "truthers" had been "invalidated." SPECIFICO made it all up (again).
  • Update: SPECIFICO later claimed their text was based on a second, unrelated Daily Beast article by a different author, which they forgot to add—note that conflating these two sources is blatant WP:SYNTH, and that SPECIFICO failed even to accurately summarize the second article: "Truthers" are invoked in the sensationalist headline, but are still never mentioned in the body of the text. Moreover, this admission undercuts SPECIFICO's original edit summary: "Adding what the article says to give context and vitiate cherry-picked snippet. Previous version misrepresented the cited source." SPECIFICO implies that I egregiously distorted the contents of a source by omitting all the damning stuff about "truthers," but the fact that SPECIFICO actually had to go elsewhere to find such language proves that my account was entirely accurate: I am not guilty of distorting the "cited source," but rather the source SPECIFICO wished I had cited! Crucially, SPECIFICO appears to be incapable of grasping the basic fact that the section devoted to the FBI-DHS Joint Analysis Report (JAR) will focus on the contents of and reaction to that report—instead, SPECIFICO wants to "balance" the widespread criticism of the JAR with more information on how private cyber-security firms uncovered much better evidence of Russian involvement, but that is already covered elsewhere.
• Removal of reliably sourced direct quote with the inimitable edit summary "Delete BLP violation SYNTH smear. Do not reinsert this per Arbcom BLP sanctions and ARBAP2"; SPECIFICO refuses to explain how any of these policies apply, instead offering a patronizing definition of the term SYNTH and resorting to threats. Guccismasclub points out that SPECIFICO's "edit summary consisted of false statements and threats. you need a better rationale for deletion."
• Calling material quoted nearly verbatim "unsourced."

Much bigger list

• See Netoholic's huge compilation of SPECIFICO's "Insertion of errors into articles" here. Very astutely, Netoholic writes: "Its very hard to tell whether a lot of this is POV insertion/disparagement or good faith incompetence - I suspect its more a combination."

Background

• Topic banned for stuff like this.
• "Frivolous threats": , ,

Valuable tool