Jimmy Wales wrote:

Well, I don't think this is all that special. There's a controversy, so we don't take a position on it. We merely report.

As things stand perhaps the most acceptable source on whether or not Iraq has these chemical weapons would be to base our writing on the reports of Hans Blix to the Security Council. From the parts that I did hear they were full of well crafted diplomatic ambiguity.

We can *never* take a position on whether the campaign is morally justified, nor on whether it "violates international law".

Agreed, though I do have my own views. The Security Council has not yet had a public debate on the invasion. It is ultimately for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to decide.

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...which may have ramifications about whether Iraq is bound to treat POWs according to the Geneva Convention or can "legally" torture, execute or rape them.

I'm not aware that any provision of the Geneva Conventions which make torture, execution or rape of POWs legal, even if the conflict itself is somehow illegal. But certainly an NPOV discussion of what, exactly, constitutes a war crime, is valid.

The Iraqis havc stated that they will follow the Geneva Convention. The alleged violation that triggered this discussion had nothing to do with rape or torture, but with the much less serious violation of displaying the POWs on TV. I have the distinct impression that the families of those POWs were relieved to see them alive. The interviewers could only ask very basic questions because of their very limited command of the English language. One person who had been captured during the earlier Gulf War did remark on CNN that she was treated more harshly by the local troops that captured her than by those further up the chain of command who later took over custody. There's nothing surprising about this.

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The question is, how do we handle this when writing articles about the war?

NPOV. We don't take a position on anything controversial. We state what others have said.

For some of these things, our best friend will be time. There's a lot going on "in the fog of war" that simply can't be treated very well in an _encyclopedia_, until the facts are more settled and widely known.

Some of the issues that divided the Biblical Israelis and their Mesopotamian contemporaries are still unresolved. :-)

At the same time, people have always enjoyed writing current events articles, and they are a strength, so I see no reason to avoid them, so long as we're careful and so long as we understand that the full story may not come out for many years.

Since I have definite POV's on some of these issues, I find that I do best to keep away from the main themes, and limit my comments to a few incidental aspects where I can keep my temper under control.

Ec

Zoe wrote:

Shooting at downed pilots is also against the Geneva Convention, but there were Iraqi troops shooting into the river where they thought they were hunting a downed American.

Zoe

I did see that incident on TV. It seems to me that it is more typical of local military behaviour, than reflective of broader military policy. That in fact there was nobody there to shoot at is characteristic of populations that are either in panic and/or poorly disciplined. Local populations probably have never heard of the Geneva Convention.

Ec

This would be a great place for wikimedia news reporting. There shouldn't be encyclopedia articles on current events. If there is a contraversy about what the facts are, then any product that comes out will have to be unencyclopedic.

The principles of NPOV are as applicable to current as to past events. The real difference here is that articles about current events tend to get neglected once the events in question have passed. This means much attention has to be paid to proper refactoring, like on the Village Pump page when it gets too full.

I do not support the idea of a separate Wikipedia for current events at the present time.

Regards,

Erik