Okay, so let's start writing our policy memo. The first thing we're going to do is put down a heading. It's going to tell who the memo's to, who it's from, what the memo's about, so here, closing detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the date. So we have a historic record of when this memo was written. All right, next part's going to be the introduction. Here's the key, skip it. They're really hard to write these concise, introductory synthesization of your entire memo in two or three sentences. So it's much better to write the whole thing and then come back and write your executive summary introduction. So let's get started on the background. What's our process here in dealing with the background section? First of all, the key part is, there's going to be a lot of facts. Guantanamo, of course it started way back in 2001, problems right up to the present day. You don't have time to go through the entire history. Hardest thing is to figure out which facts you want to be in and which you're going to exclude. If you can, you want to tell the background section like a story. It doesn't necessarily have to start as I said all the way back to 2011 but in what you do try to put it in a chronological order so you're not jumping all over the place. And you're trying to tell a story to the decision maker. Even though this is policy, narratives are what work and what resonate. We're used to hearing stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Eliminate extraneous facts. Sure, there's a lot of things that are interesting about Guantanamo right now. There's a big issue about whether feeding tubes, for example, is a form of torture. That's not what President Obama is focused on. Right now, his question was about how do we get this facility closed? And whether or not feeding tubes are torture is an important, vital issue, but it's extraneous to the key thing that we're trying to analyze here. So we're not going to talk about that. So get rid of any facts from here that you don't need that are not relevant to this particular decision. Now your factual section in some ways you want to present it neutrally. You don't want to seem like you're biasing the reader at this point but you are trying to lead into your argument section. So the tone, the facts that you choose to put in and exclude. All of this should ultimately lead into the position that you're going to be taking at the end. So you should use these facts to in some ways frame the arguments that you're going to be making in the future. So, example, if you are I'm going to be making an argument at the end that there are four easy steps we can take to close Guantanamo. In the factual section, you're going to be emphasizing facts that make it seem like this is doable, this is an achievable policy. However if you are going to argue at the end that gosh, Guantanamo is an attractive problem and there's very little you can do about it, the factual section should talk about those thorny facts that are going to make it very difficult for the President to close Guantanamo. So you want there to be a relationship ultimately between the factual section and the argument section. Okay, so here are the strategic decisions I made on my background section for this memo, as I said I'm going to exclude information from early on. How the detainees got to Guantanamo? A lot of the action was taken by the Bush Administration, because President Obama is just not interested in that right now. I'm going to have to provide information on all the legal barriers that were put up to closing Guantanamo to trying to explain to the President why it hasn't been closed so far. He's clearly agitated about why his initial order has not been followed through on. Have to provide some information about the remaining detainee's because they are the issue relating to whether Guantanamo can be closed, and finally I just want to point out on your factual section you do want to provide sources. I don't require in this course full blown footnotes that has the publisher's name and a website where something can be found. But I do want to know that you're gathering your facts from an authoritative source, so, for example, you'll see in parentheses after some of my sentences where I got this fact from. I got it from the New York Times, something called the Guantanamo Docket. Something might say a Department of Defense report or a book, Peter Burgin 2011. So, I know I'm getting a source from a book Peter Burgin wrote in 2011. There's other places where it's much more important to do long-term citation report. Citations but I'm not going to require for this class. Okay, so here is my background section for my Guantanamo memo. You can take some time, stop the video, analyze it, examine it if you want. But let's look at a couple of things. I first start off, I put it in a particular time, when you took office. So we know, the President knows he's talking about back in 2009 and I'm giving him all the things that he did. There were 242 detainee's, he ordered a review, he issues an executive order. And here's what his task force determined about the individuals in Guantanamo. And look at my opening sentences, I'm trying to make them nice and clear. The case-file review concluded that there are three categories of detainees. That really sets me up for a very clear exposition presentation of the facts. Now, again, in the third paragraph, in the two years after your executive order, so I'm showing there's a chronological story. You came into office, here's the things you did, here's what the review commission said, here's what happen in the two years after your executive order. Now, look at my fourth paragraph. However, there has been little progress since early 2011. Again, I'm telling the story as we move forward from 2011 to the present day. It's a nice short sentence, it tells the story. And now, I've set myself up in this fourth paragraph to tell all the different reasons why there has been little progress. It's very important to put your conclusion at the beginning of your paragraph and then have the rest of the paragraph be about supporting materials. Don't bring the reader along to a conclusion that's at the end. Tell them what you want to tell them first and then prove it, defend it. So, as you see the rest of that paragraph I explained the reasons that there have been a little progress. And then I bring it right up to the present day in the last paragraph. Currently there's a 166 detainees and I provide a little bit of information about them. I think I've set myself up nicely for my next section.
