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![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on August 20, 2008, August 20, 2009, and August 20, 2011. |
Since the editors of this page are not following the Keith Windschuttle link, here it is reprinted in its entirety.
The comments of one reader - Chomsky's defense of Pol Pot continued for about 1 year beyond what we'd now consider reasonable. The US continued to recognise Pol Pot as the leader of Cambodia (and help to hold the UN seat for him) for 12 years after his overthrow. (Chomsky has spoken out on a huge number of issues - his error in this case is trivial in the nature of things, and I think his critics have only one other example of him being somewhat wrong). It ill-behoves a reference work such as Wikipedia to re-publish this kind of quite unwarranted personal abuse, particularily when it bears no relevance to the estimates of the deaths in Sudan.
Secondly, organisations such as Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and so forth have to be very, very careful about criticisms of national governments. Check out what MSF said about being driven from Afghanistan after 24 years (it was there all the way through the Russian occupation and the rule of the Taleban). You'll have to read quite carefully to realise the devastating allegations they're making against the latest occupation.
Thirdly, Sudan has most recently seen a vast catastrophe, brought about by easily witnessed violence, and the news has still struggled to get out. The claim that some 30,000 deaths of disease were caused by the unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation is not seriously undermined by what we're seeing in the above account.
The article you linked to does not mention that the famine took "only" 3,000 in all of Sudan, but 3,000 in Ajiep alone (in a five month period, incidentally). With that in mind 30,000 seems abysmally low a number. Hmmm.
This seems to be written from the POV of the Clinton admin. In fact the presence of EMPTA has never been credibly *confirmed*. Given what we now know about the plant, there is no reason to suspect that the test was anything but an error. Mirror Vax 09:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Why specifically is the neutrality tag on this article? Apart from perhaps the Malaria deaths bit (which has a rebuttal in the next sentence) I don't on first glance see anything wrong with it (although it could do with some citations and maybe cut out the weasel words, e.g. on Clinton/Lewinsky connection). It does however seem reasonably balanced. If no-one can justify what specific changes need to be made in the next few days I will remove the tag. Badgerpatrol 01:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
This article badly needs organization. The various claims about the justification for the attack - Daniel Benjamin's CYA quote from the Weekly Standard and the quotes from the State Department bureau that investigated the justification for the attack and found it weak - should not be separated like this.-- csloat 10:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Article is linking to a wrong 'Leo Casey' —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.177.36.2 ( talk) 11:50, August 20, 2007 (UTC)
Also, it might be worth noting that the site has been levelled and is being readied for new construction as of end 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.102.67.137 ( talk) 17:07, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
I found a couple of minor spin-type niggles in the article, which, not being a properly registered user, am not bold enough to correct on my own. These two are: in the Bombing subsection, "processing the most deadly nerve agent"; while "most" can be used in the same way as "rather" or "quite", in modern usage it'd lead the reader to understand that the nerve agent in question is The Most Deadly Nerve Agent Known The Man (misspelling intended) by some objective measure. Suggest removing the word "most" from the sentence, as replacing it with "quite" or "rather" would merely trade one flavour word for another. If on the other hand this sentence comes from a press release or some such, it should be enclosed in quotes and the appropriate citation be put in place. (This is why I'm reticent to go and modify the article myself.)
The other bit is "[...] to where bin Laden had moved following [...]", in the same subsection. I'd think this calls for a citation needed marker, or a "supposedly" or an "allegedly" immediately after the "had". In any case no source is cited for the detail, and as such the phrase comes off like something written by a PR department of the US intelligence apparatus, or possibly a knee-jerk apologist; hardly appropriate for an encyclopedia. 194.187.213.95 18:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
There are two tags at the top that link to a discussion on this page that does not exist. Can someone spell out what the concerns are about "neutrality" and "tone"? If not, I'd like to remove the tags. csloat ( talk) 20:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
It is written: "According to The Guardian, "Despite growing support for Idris's case in the US and Britain, Washington refuses to retract any of its claims and is contesting the lawsuit."", this is wrong, see here: http://www.twf.org/News/Y1999/0507-SudanMistake.html there is written: "The Clinton administration will not challenge a lawsuit filed by a Saudi businessman, and has agreed to release $24 million in assets that the businessman, Mr. Saleh Idris, had deposited in U.S. banks." -- 84.56.239.92 ( talk) 11:26, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
[1] (search for Sudan)
Keith Windschuttle gives three sources for international aid agencies in Sudan who reported no malaria medicine shortage.
see also [2] for another assessment of the humanitarian situation in Sudan not mentioning a malaria medicine shortage and detailing the $US110 million Sudan received from the U.S. Agency for International Development (mostly from the Bureau of Humanitarian Response) in 1998.
In addition, Sudan had an economy the size of $US71 billion GNP in 2003, showing the country surely had enough money in 1999 (along with the described foreign aid resources) to replace its drug supply.
This myth was probably encouraged by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark's reckless speculation:
The [Al-Shifa] plant produced 50% of the pharmaceuticals available in the Sudan... It produced 90% of the antibiotics used for malaria which is the leading cause of death there... A single U.S. missile attack destroyed the single most important health facility in the Sudan and will cause thousands of deaths.”
(Letter to the U.N., November 1998)
If you're going to throw the term 'bullshit' around, you might want to find functional links while cherry-picking for your argument. Also, its worth noting that 'this particular individual disagrees with you' isn't quite the same as 'this conclusively proves you are wrong,' unless you are a hopeless ideologue and/or practicing hero worship - and I wouldn't recommend hero worship of someone like Windschuttle who has their head so far up their backside that they use the term Marxist-Islamic; even a casual understanding of either concept should make it hard to say with a straight face unless your some kind of propaganda-recycling hack. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.156.133.205 ( talk) 04:08, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Is the only "evidence" of links with Al-Qaeda or nerve agent manufacture a "report the discovery of EMPTA in a soil sample taken from the plant during a CIA clandestine operation" and a rumour that bin Laden had invested in the plant? Is there nothing more. Even if both were true, that is not ample evidence of links to terrorist use of nerve agents or co-operation with Al Qaeda. The billionaire bin Laden had wide investments - he probably owned shares in companies operating out of the Twin Towers. That is no reason to blow up any building that he as an investment in! As for the soil sample, if that even existed it was clearly a false reading. It seems that the evidence of these links was a strong as the evidence of Saddam's WMD. I suggest sections on "legality" and "Intelligence failings". Royalcourtier ( talk) 23:37, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
One criticism of Clinton's decision has been that the stated concerns about chemical weaponry and al-Qaeda were pretextual, and that the real reason for the bombing was Clinton's desire to retaliate for the embassy attacks.
The current version of this article states, in the introductory section:
The U.S. government stated several reasons for its attack:
- Retaliation for the 1998 United States embassy bombings against the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.
- The alleged use of the factory for the processing of VX nerve agent.
- For alleged ties between the owners of the plant and al-Qaeda.
There is no citation for the implausible assertion that retaliation was stated by the U.S. government to be a reason for the attack. Statements in the introductory section don't need citation if they're summarizing statements further down in the text that are properly sourced, but there is no such sourcing here.
It seems to me that the first bullet point must come out unless someone can produce support for it. JamesMLane t c 07:42, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
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I wondered about putting in more about the Leo Casey take.
At the moment, it simply says, "Leo Casey disputed..." without really referencing where it comes from, which is (as far as I can tell):
https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-chomskys-arguments/213531
Or who it's by, which is Leo Casey, who seems most likely to have been an official of a teacher's union at the time.
WattStreetWhiteStreet ( talk) 09:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
I know this is a contentious article so I want to add that information - and properly cite it - without it being seen as pejoritive in some way - it's not intended to be as Chomsky responded to it and that's referenced, but it seems odd that this isn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WattStreetWhiteStreet ( talk • contribs) 15:05, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
In one Chomsky interview on this topic he mentions a report by the Near East Foundation regional director for field work in Sudan. From this Intercept article it seems likely he's talking about Jonathan Belke, who wrote this 1999 article in The Boston Globe claiming "Thus, tens of thousands of people—many of them children—have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases." Are there any further articles, studies, etc. or is this the end of it? Is it worth including in the article? Andrew Helwer ( talk)
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||
|
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on August 20, 2008, August 20, 2009, and August 20, 2011. |
Since the editors of this page are not following the Keith Windschuttle link, here it is reprinted in its entirety.
The comments of one reader - Chomsky's defense of Pol Pot continued for about 1 year beyond what we'd now consider reasonable. The US continued to recognise Pol Pot as the leader of Cambodia (and help to hold the UN seat for him) for 12 years after his overthrow. (Chomsky has spoken out on a huge number of issues - his error in this case is trivial in the nature of things, and I think his critics have only one other example of him being somewhat wrong). It ill-behoves a reference work such as Wikipedia to re-publish this kind of quite unwarranted personal abuse, particularily when it bears no relevance to the estimates of the deaths in Sudan.
Secondly, organisations such as Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and so forth have to be very, very careful about criticisms of national governments. Check out what MSF said about being driven from Afghanistan after 24 years (it was there all the way through the Russian occupation and the rule of the Taleban). You'll have to read quite carefully to realise the devastating allegations they're making against the latest occupation.
Thirdly, Sudan has most recently seen a vast catastrophe, brought about by easily witnessed violence, and the news has still struggled to get out. The claim that some 30,000 deaths of disease were caused by the unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation is not seriously undermined by what we're seeing in the above account.
The article you linked to does not mention that the famine took "only" 3,000 in all of Sudan, but 3,000 in Ajiep alone (in a five month period, incidentally). With that in mind 30,000 seems abysmally low a number. Hmmm.
This seems to be written from the POV of the Clinton admin. In fact the presence of EMPTA has never been credibly *confirmed*. Given what we now know about the plant, there is no reason to suspect that the test was anything but an error. Mirror Vax 09:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Why specifically is the neutrality tag on this article? Apart from perhaps the Malaria deaths bit (which has a rebuttal in the next sentence) I don't on first glance see anything wrong with it (although it could do with some citations and maybe cut out the weasel words, e.g. on Clinton/Lewinsky connection). It does however seem reasonably balanced. If no-one can justify what specific changes need to be made in the next few days I will remove the tag. Badgerpatrol 01:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
This article badly needs organization. The various claims about the justification for the attack - Daniel Benjamin's CYA quote from the Weekly Standard and the quotes from the State Department bureau that investigated the justification for the attack and found it weak - should not be separated like this.-- csloat 10:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Article is linking to a wrong 'Leo Casey' —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.177.36.2 ( talk) 11:50, August 20, 2007 (UTC)
Also, it might be worth noting that the site has been levelled and is being readied for new construction as of end 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.102.67.137 ( talk) 17:07, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
I found a couple of minor spin-type niggles in the article, which, not being a properly registered user, am not bold enough to correct on my own. These two are: in the Bombing subsection, "processing the most deadly nerve agent"; while "most" can be used in the same way as "rather" or "quite", in modern usage it'd lead the reader to understand that the nerve agent in question is The Most Deadly Nerve Agent Known The Man (misspelling intended) by some objective measure. Suggest removing the word "most" from the sentence, as replacing it with "quite" or "rather" would merely trade one flavour word for another. If on the other hand this sentence comes from a press release or some such, it should be enclosed in quotes and the appropriate citation be put in place. (This is why I'm reticent to go and modify the article myself.)
The other bit is "[...] to where bin Laden had moved following [...]", in the same subsection. I'd think this calls for a citation needed marker, or a "supposedly" or an "allegedly" immediately after the "had". In any case no source is cited for the detail, and as such the phrase comes off like something written by a PR department of the US intelligence apparatus, or possibly a knee-jerk apologist; hardly appropriate for an encyclopedia. 194.187.213.95 18:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
There are two tags at the top that link to a discussion on this page that does not exist. Can someone spell out what the concerns are about "neutrality" and "tone"? If not, I'd like to remove the tags. csloat ( talk) 20:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
It is written: "According to The Guardian, "Despite growing support for Idris's case in the US and Britain, Washington refuses to retract any of its claims and is contesting the lawsuit."", this is wrong, see here: http://www.twf.org/News/Y1999/0507-SudanMistake.html there is written: "The Clinton administration will not challenge a lawsuit filed by a Saudi businessman, and has agreed to release $24 million in assets that the businessman, Mr. Saleh Idris, had deposited in U.S. banks." -- 84.56.239.92 ( talk) 11:26, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
[1] (search for Sudan)
Keith Windschuttle gives three sources for international aid agencies in Sudan who reported no malaria medicine shortage.
see also [2] for another assessment of the humanitarian situation in Sudan not mentioning a malaria medicine shortage and detailing the $US110 million Sudan received from the U.S. Agency for International Development (mostly from the Bureau of Humanitarian Response) in 1998.
In addition, Sudan had an economy the size of $US71 billion GNP in 2003, showing the country surely had enough money in 1999 (along with the described foreign aid resources) to replace its drug supply.
This myth was probably encouraged by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark's reckless speculation:
The [Al-Shifa] plant produced 50% of the pharmaceuticals available in the Sudan... It produced 90% of the antibiotics used for malaria which is the leading cause of death there... A single U.S. missile attack destroyed the single most important health facility in the Sudan and will cause thousands of deaths.”
(Letter to the U.N., November 1998)
If you're going to throw the term 'bullshit' around, you might want to find functional links while cherry-picking for your argument. Also, its worth noting that 'this particular individual disagrees with you' isn't quite the same as 'this conclusively proves you are wrong,' unless you are a hopeless ideologue and/or practicing hero worship - and I wouldn't recommend hero worship of someone like Windschuttle who has their head so far up their backside that they use the term Marxist-Islamic; even a casual understanding of either concept should make it hard to say with a straight face unless your some kind of propaganda-recycling hack. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.156.133.205 ( talk) 04:08, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Is the only "evidence" of links with Al-Qaeda or nerve agent manufacture a "report the discovery of EMPTA in a soil sample taken from the plant during a CIA clandestine operation" and a rumour that bin Laden had invested in the plant? Is there nothing more. Even if both were true, that is not ample evidence of links to terrorist use of nerve agents or co-operation with Al Qaeda. The billionaire bin Laden had wide investments - he probably owned shares in companies operating out of the Twin Towers. That is no reason to blow up any building that he as an investment in! As for the soil sample, if that even existed it was clearly a false reading. It seems that the evidence of these links was a strong as the evidence of Saddam's WMD. I suggest sections on "legality" and "Intelligence failings". Royalcourtier ( talk) 23:37, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
One criticism of Clinton's decision has been that the stated concerns about chemical weaponry and al-Qaeda were pretextual, and that the real reason for the bombing was Clinton's desire to retaliate for the embassy attacks.
The current version of this article states, in the introductory section:
The U.S. government stated several reasons for its attack:
- Retaliation for the 1998 United States embassy bombings against the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.
- The alleged use of the factory for the processing of VX nerve agent.
- For alleged ties between the owners of the plant and al-Qaeda.
There is no citation for the implausible assertion that retaliation was stated by the U.S. government to be a reason for the attack. Statements in the introductory section don't need citation if they're summarizing statements further down in the text that are properly sourced, but there is no such sourcing here.
It seems to me that the first bullet point must come out unless someone can produce support for it. JamesMLane t c 07:42, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 22:36, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
I wondered about putting in more about the Leo Casey take.
At the moment, it simply says, "Leo Casey disputed..." without really referencing where it comes from, which is (as far as I can tell):
https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-chomskys-arguments/213531
Or who it's by, which is Leo Casey, who seems most likely to have been an official of a teacher's union at the time.
WattStreetWhiteStreet ( talk) 09:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
I know this is a contentious article so I want to add that information - and properly cite it - without it being seen as pejoritive in some way - it's not intended to be as Chomsky responded to it and that's referenced, but it seems odd that this isn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WattStreetWhiteStreet ( talk • contribs) 15:05, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
In one Chomsky interview on this topic he mentions a report by the Near East Foundation regional director for field work in Sudan. From this Intercept article it seems likely he's talking about Jonathan Belke, who wrote this 1999 article in The Boston Globe claiming "Thus, tens of thousands of people—many of them children—have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases." Are there any further articles, studies, etc. or is this the end of it? Is it worth including in the article? Andrew Helwer ( talk)