Talk:Winter Soldier Investigation (temp) - Definition and Overview

Russell Tribunal

The relationship of the 1967 Russell Tribunal to WSI is fairly tangential. I think it would make more sense to remove the discussion of it from this article and to add a link to Russell Tribunal as a "See also". JamesMLane 21:13, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The Winter Soldier Investigation and the National Veterans Inquiry are actually Americanized knock-offs of the Russell Tribunal held over a year earlier. All had their roots and origins with the same Russell foundation associates, but WSI was later taken over as an exclusive project of the veterans. The veterans hoped to seperate the WSI from the more "political" and "international" reputation of the Russell folks, and increase it's credibility and stature by making it a completely American Veteran event.

The disputes on this section in the past usually revolved around SEWilco trying to stress or imply a perceived "anti-american" bias among the Russell foundation, as well as de-emphasizing the legitimacy of the previous Russell Tribunals so as to imply the WSI also wasn't that legitimate.

I think mention of the Russell Tribunal is appropriate, but I wouldn't be adverse to a more streamlined version of the discussion. -Rob

It seems to me that mention anti american bias among the Russell foundation probably belongs on the Russel tribunal page, not here. I like James idea of removing the discussion, but i don't like see also links. IMO it's better to have something in the article that explains why the Russell tribunal is relavent to WSI. Rob - if you had to streamline the the russel tribunal mention down to (say) just one sentance, what would that sentance be? (I'm off to bed now, I'll take a look tomorrow) Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 23:45, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Reduce the Russell Tribunal subject to just one sentence? I can do better than that. I can reduce the first three lengthy paragraphs under the Origin header to this:

Prompted by the revelations from numerous investigations into war crimes, such as the Russell Tribunal, National Veterans Inquiry and Citizens Commissions of Inquiry, leaders of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War saw the need for a large scale public hearing. With the murder trials for the My Lai Massacre making front page news, and the disclosure by members of the CIA's Phoenix Program of its record of terror, torture and murder, the VVAW was determined to expose what it saw as a broad pattern of war crimes based on American war policy. Thus the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) was organized to show that criminal incidents like My Lai were not isolated and rare occurrences, but were instead the frequent result of official American policy.

There. The Russell Tribunal has received all the mention it requires. There are plenty of links (Russell, NVI, CCI, VVAW) the interested reader can follow to learn more about what inspired the format of the WSI. Now here is the ironic part - the above paragraph is almost identical to what existed several months ago. However, other editors felt the need to elaborate on the connections to controversial figures such as Bertrand Russell (he's been seen in the company of communists, don'tcha know) or the colorful activist Jeremy Rifkin and the notorius Jane Fonda, among others. Thus we ended up with a quite detailed history of the origins of the WSI. This brings me to my next question of you...

Do you think we should strive for Detail? Brevity? Conciseness? Inclusiveness? Expansiveness? -Rob

Where to draw the line about detail versus brevity is always a problem. I'm an enthusiast of the "daughter article" approach: Article length is kept under control because any section that gets fairly detailed is spun off into a separate article, replaced in the main article by a summary and a wikilink. On the particular points here, I think the tie to CCI is more direct. According to the article, it was CCI that reached out to VVAW and got VVAW involved in the whole "hearings" idea, so I think that's worth keeping in more detail. (By the way, CCI is a red link, but the NVI article suggests that CCI was just a part of NVI, although the NVI article doesn't say that. The relationship among these entities is confusing.) As for the Russell Tribunal, I agree with you that throwing mud at Bertrand Russell is beyond the scope of this article. The "temp" version here names three people who testified at the Russell Tribunal, two of whom are never mentioned again. The later reference to Donald Duncan, however, describes him as "(the Green Beret who had testified at the Russell Tribunal in Denmark)." I'd suggest changing this parenthetical to "(a Green Beret who had testified at the 1967 Russell Tribunal in Denmark)." Noting that specific connection would be an adequate reference to the Russell Tribunal. JamesMLane 11:46, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

re: "daughter articles" - always a good idea, but I doubt the origins of the Winter Soldier Investigation will ever warrant a spin-off article all to its own. I've noticed an interesting trend among wiki-editors: Events tend to receive far more attention than the organizations that spawn them. For instance, we have a wiki article on the Russell Tribunal, yet nothing on the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation that organized that event. We have an article (well, stub by SEWilco anyway) on the National Veterans Inquiry event, but no article on the Citizens Commission of Inquiry group that organized it. Even this WSI article dwarfs the article on the VVAW organization that spawned that event. Anyway, the confusion you mentioned regarding CCI (a group) and NVI (an event) might stem from my reference to CCI as an event in my sample paragraph above. The CCI group held many hearings across the United States, the most notable one called the National Veterans Inquiry, and the others referred to simply (and confusingly) as "CCI hearings" or Citizens Commissions of Inquiry. Another quick clarification on the above comments: Russell wasn't the target of mud when he was included in the WSI article; he was the mud itself (or so the editor hoped).

Mentioning the Russell Tribunal as part of the introduction of Donald Duncan is fine. Duncan testified at both the Russell Tribunal and the WSI hearings, and he helped with the organization of the latter. -Rob

OK so Rob or James could you rewrite the above origins paragraph? Take into account James' points, then put the paragraph into the origins section of the temp article. We can then look and see how much material has been removed and decide if it's enough to start a daughter article. When TDC comes back he can then tell us if the new origins paragraph is acceptable. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 19:45, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Per Theresa's suggestion, I have replaced the 3 introductory paragraphs in the Origin section with a single, more concise paragraph. As it turns out, almost all of the removed material is duplicated in the subsequent Origin subsections (Organizers and Purpose) anyway. James indicated he felt the "CCI getting the VVAW involved" information was relevant, so I made a small edit to the "Organizers" subsection to more clearly reflect that connection. -Rob

Theresa, if you can get these guys cooperating, I think I'll leave the tropical heat of this issue and return to the relatively cooler Middle East. --Uncle Ed (El Dunce) 20:33, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)