Continued from this post   

As promised: Iraqi spokesman says AP police source is phony;
Update: NYT blog picks up the story
Allahpundit

Centcom said he’d mention it at today’s MOI presser, and so he did:

[W]e have some of the respected news outlets that deal with news fast and have a relation with many TV channels and the media in general, who distributed a story quoting a person called Jamil Hussein. Afterward, we searched our sources in our staff for anyone by this name– maybe he wore an MOI uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money. And the second name used is Lt. Maythem…

[Y]ou should contact MOI PAO for all your needs to get real, true news. Based on that, we strongly deny any relation with those two names. In order to serve you better and strengthen the relationship with MOI, do not take statements that have no meaning and do not represent any official…

Read what there is to Allah's post now, then keep checking back. He tends to "grow" posts over the course of a day like I do.

***

This stories breaking fast, I'm feeling under the weather, and I'm going to have to settle for a lot more linking and a lot less excerpting than normal today. Apologies.

***

MIchelle Malkin: Rumors and reporting in Iraq

***

Patterico has an interesting theory. I'm not sure I buy it but it's an interesting theory anyway. A “Third Way” on Fake Iraqi Cops?

***

Curt's latest is up: Getting The News From The Enemy, Update IV

***

Stop the ACLU: Iraq Gov. Says AP Source an Impostor

***

Dan Riehl: Whoops, Sorry Again, A

***

Blackfive: Media Responsibility

***

Iraq Ministry Forms Unit to Monitor News
al-AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's Interior Ministry said Thursday it had formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and vowed to take legal action against journalists who failed to correct stories the ministry deemed to be incorrect.

Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the ministry, said the purpose of the special monitoring unit was to find "fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different."

He said offenders would be notified and asked to "correct these false reports on their main news programs. But if they do not change those lying, false stories, then we will seek legal action against them."

Khalaf explained the news monitoring unit at a weekly Ministry of Interior briefing. As an example, he cited coverage by The Associated Press of an attack Nov. 24 on a mosque in the Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad.

The AP reported that six Sunni Muslims there were burned alive during the attack. The story quoted witnesses and police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

Khalaf said the ministry had no one on its staff by the name of Jamil Hussein.

"Maybe he wore an MOI (Ministry of Interior) uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money," Khalaf said.

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll rejected the accusation. "The implication that we may have given money to the captain is false. The AP does not pay for information," she said. ...

Read the rest if you must but consider the source. I think the part I've excerpted is probably true but the rest of the article goes on with more quotes from people who may or may not exist in an attempt to prove al-AP's side of things. Strawman alert: No one that I know has accused the AP of buying information or "Jamil Hussein" of lying in order to receive money from al-AP. He's lying to advance a political agenda and al-AP still seems determined to help.

***

Tonight’s Jamil ‘Captain Tuttle’ Hussein and AP (Always Paranoid) Update

***

Part 5 of a series. Part 6 is here.