This is an archive of past discussions about Phil Shiner. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
It's worth bearing in mind that Shiner's original work concerning the events leading to the death of Baha Mousa was genuine - his later misconduct is absolutely unforgivable, but doesn't detract from that. If there hadn't been real cases of abuse by British forces, e.g.the 2011 Helmand Province incident (regardless of the situations and the provocations behind them) his subsequent allegations would never have had any credence whatsoever. JezGrove (talk) 23:12, 2 February 2017 (UTC) JezGrove (talk) 23:12, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, JezGrove. I've now briefly mentioned his success in the Baha Mousa case, and we also already mentioned his awards. But I'm not sure this is quite enough, either in relation to saying there were cases of genuine abuse, or in relation to giving an NPOV 'balanced' view of Shiner. On the other hand I'm not sure that this is the right article for criticisms of the British Army (the Baha Mousa and Ihat articles presumably deal with that, and we now link to both). And I'm not sure how much more, if anything, is needed in his defence to be NPOV about him. Do you (or anybody else) have any suggestions in relation to this? Tlhslobus (talk) 20:18, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Hi Tlhslobus, your hard work at this page is genuinely appreciated and I certainly don't have any problems concerning NPOV; I also agree with you that this isn't the place for criticisms of British forces in Iraq (or elsewhere). I was really just noting that Shiner's story isn't a straightforward one: as The Daily Telegraph quoted Shami Chakrabarti as saying (in an article that was highly critical of her views), 'he had done "very good work", before apparently "losing his way"'. Given the polarised views concerning the Iraq war - anti-war campaigners seized on his claims, pro-military ones denigrated them and celebrated his subsequent fall from grace – a balanced view is one that is never going to be easy to achieve, but hopefully this article has managed to achieve it. Best wishes! JezGrove (talk) 20:19, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks again, JezGrove. I've now made use of your above link, treating the criticism of Chakrobarti as a consequence of his misconduct, and thus also quoting what she said in his favour, which thus may help with 'balance'/NPOV by giving a sample of the views of his former supporters and of their critics. If necessary some of these 'consequences' could perhaps be switched to some sort of new 'Assessment' section, but I'm not sure that's really needed, so I won't bother doing it myself, but I'll be happy enough if somebody else does. Tlhslobus (talk) 02:06, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
