CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 17 -- Continued from this post.

Looking for Jamil Hussein: Accepting Eason Jordan's invitation
Michelle Malkin

Eason Jordan reports on his new website, Iraqslogger, that his team is in Baghdad looking for Jamil Hussein. They have not found him yet--which is newsworthy in itself--and get this: He has offered to pay for me to join the search in Iraq and accompany me:

Who is Jamil Hussein? Michelle Malkin is leading the charge for an answer, and she put that question to me in her blog. The AP is in the midst of a public firestorm regarding whether supposed Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussein actually exists and, if so, whether he was a legitimate news source for a disputed November 24 AP-reported story saying Shia thugs in Baghdad "grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene." The U.S. military, the Iraqi government, and many others insisted the AP story was false and that Jamil Hussein either was fictitious or was not an Iraqi police officer, as asserted in the AP's report. The AP has issued two strong statements defending its initial report and produced fresh statements from witnesses of the alleged crime, but the AP has not produced Jamil Hussein himself.

So the search for Jamil Hussein is on, and rightly so. IraqSlogger's team in Baghdad is working to track him down. If we find him, we'll get back to you with details. If we can't find him, we'll report that, too. If Michelle Malkin wants to join the search in Baghdad, IraqSlogger will pay for her trip, and I'd even be willing to accompany her. Stay tuned.

I e-mailed my acceptance of Jordan's invitation this morning. No way should we just take the word of they guy who admitted covering up for Saddam Hussein and who resigned from CNN after baselessly slandering the U.S. military (maybe we'll find the Davos tape while we're on the search). Plus, it'll be an incredible opportunity to see Iraq and our troops firsthand. I have many friends, heroes, and contacts there I'd like to meet in person.

I also e-mailed to ask Mr. Jordan whether he would pay for Curt from Flopping Aces, the blogger who first broke open the story and is leading the charge for an answer (see, Jordan got his facts wrong already), to come on the search as well if he is able to do so.

So, indeed, stay tuned.

The search for Jamil Hussein continues...

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1036am Eastern update: Jordan says he will pay for Curt's trip. ...

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Ed Morrissey: Guess Who's Back In Business?

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Jamilgate: Michelle heading to Baghdad? Update: Michael Yon on the case, too?
Allahpundit

Man, Eason Jordan hit the ground running, didn’t he?

I don’t know if he meant his offer sincerely or if it was a gambit to expose her as a keyboard warrior unwilling to take the risks she expects from the AP.

If so, he forgot to factor in one thing. ...

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Back to Iraq
Confederate Yankee

I just got an email from Michael Yon. He'll be flying out from Singapore and be in Baghdad via Kuwait on the 19th 25th-26th. I asked him to see if he could make it to Hurriyah while he's in town. He does happen to be pretty good with a camera.

AP's Kathleen Carroll should be breaking out in a cold sweat right about now...

Update: If there at the same time, Maybe Michael can have lunch with Michelle Malkin, who has accepted Eason Jordan's invitation to come over and hunt for the elusive Jamil Hussein, which is pretty much like looking for Nessie in the desert.

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Eason Jordan's Back
Posted By Blackfive

Eason Jordan supports the truth like Jon Carry halps the troops.

Michelle Malkin notes the new website for Jordan and has been invited to accompany Jordan in search of Jamil Hussein...whatever is going on, it's sure to be interesting.

As Michelle points out, Bill Roggio is in Iraq and Mike Yon and Bill of INDC Journal will be there shortly, too.  A good percentage of embeds will be bloggers (9 -12 there now, I believe). ...

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In Search of Jamil Hussein & Other AP "Problematics"
Gateway Pundit

Michelle Malkin has accepted an invitation from Eason Jordan to join him in Iraq to search for "Jamil Hussein" the notorious AP stringer of the "Six Sunni" bogus story.

Curt at Flopping Aces also got an invite.

That sounds exciting to say the least!

While they are there, I hope they can look up a few other "questionables"...

Here is the long list of problematic Iraqi Police/Ministry of Interior spokesmen quoted by the AP and others that the military says it cannot verify as legitimate employees of the IP/MOI published at Flopping Aces: ...

I wrote Centcom a few times since last week and they are still searching for answers from the Iraqi police. Centcom responded and is looking into this latest "questionable" source used by the Associated Press in their report on the car bombings at the Iraqi market. This AP writer reported that Lt. Ali Muhsin reported that 91 were killed in the blasts. Later reports put the total somewhere around 50. ...

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Truth Good
Jules Crittenden

The great thing about this business is, you always get a second chance. To smack around a world-class moron.

Bobbing to the surface again is CNN's ex-president Eason Jordan, who resigned in disgrace in 2005 after telling lies about U.S. war crimes, suddenly interested in the truth from Iraq.

Because I had personally witnessed the circumstances leading up to two journalists' deaths in Iraq, later falsely portrayed as a war crime, I was somewhat agitated by Eason's remarks. This is what I had to say about Eason, CJR's Steve Lovelady, CPJ and RSF at the time.

Mudville Gazette invited me to elaborate. It was my pleasure.

Jay Rosen had a good round up of the Lies and Fall of Jordan Eason.

I actually crossed e-paths with Eason a couple of times. The first time was when he revealed that CNN had soft-pedalled on Saddam's torture thing in order to be able to stay in Iraq and report Saddam's lies. That was the same week I was accused of being an International Art Thief from al-Jazeera to Pravda to the New York Times. Poynter Institute Ethicist Bob Steele equivocated about Jordan's tolerance for torture, while roundly condemning my purloining of a cheap Saddam painting. Cut on the Bias thought it would be fun to change the names around and see what happened.

Cut on the Bias was right. It was fun. In the ethics department, what Eason is to shamelessness, Steele is to gutlessness.

While I'm at it, I should add I'm no fan of Greg Mitchell, the shrill leftie E&P editor who penned this latest drivel about Eason. ...

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Curt writes:

... I have to say, I am honored that she thought of me to go along and find the fraud we know as Jamil Hussein.  But alas with a day job as a police officer I first have to get approval from my department for the time off, which won't be easy.....so stay tuned. ...

Still kinda blown away by all this but will update with the results of my time off request soon.

UPDATE II

I worry, as others have,  that this may be a set-up of some kind.  Think about it.  Eason Jordon should have a easy time of finding Jamil Hussein since the AP has said they have been talked to him for over two years.  I have blogged many times that there may indeed be a man named Jamil Hussein but my argument has always been he is a fraud.  It has already been confirmed that he is NOT employed by the Iraqi government so why would we go skipping around Iraq in search of someone the AP could supposedly produce in a heartbeat? 

Picture this, we are tooling around Baghdad and then Eason say's "AH-HA!"  There he is.  Jamil produces a fake police ID badge and then asks us to comment.  When we say that we would like him to come with us to the Ministry of Interior and have the MoI verify he is indeed a employee Mr. Jordan would spin it as "big time journalist (Michelle obviously, not me) refusing to accept proof that Jamil is real."  His story would be "Jamil found" and thats how it will be filed across the land.

Eason Jordan has already proven to us all that he is void of any ethics when it comes to journalism so why should we trust him now?

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AP Hospital Claims Make No Sense
Dan Riehl

Research suggests the hospital / morgue aspect of the now infamous AP story is in even greater doubt as it would have required Sunni individuals from Hurriyah to travel further then they needed to in order to find a hospital. Also, the hospital in question is in a dangerous Shi'ite area, while a closer hospital was in a friendlier Sunni zone. And that at the same time it's reasonably well-known that death squads have targeted Iraqi hospitals in the past. Items I uncovered by parsing several news accounts and consulting a map now make the story even more difficult to believe.

ref. Two workers at Kazamiyah Hospital said the bodies from the clashes and immolations had been taken to the morgue at their facility. They refused to be identified by name, saying they feared retribution.

If you consult this map (or see inset) you can see Hurriyah in the northeast of Baghdad and Al-Kazimayaz, where the Kazamiyah Hospital and morgue mentioned in the AP story are located (red stars). They are in the northwest of the city. It's a four to five mile trip.

More importantly, the individuals allegedly burned were Sunni and the Kazamiyah hospital is in the middle of a Shi'ite community known for being hardline.

ref. In Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt on a bus Monday in the Shiite district of Kazamiyah

The blue star is the location given for a hospital within a Sunni area. ...

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Citizen Journalism
Bruce Kesler

The latest challenge to mandarin journalism, that us mere citizens should accept without question the delivered wisdom of our betters who wear the robes of – for example – the Associated Press, concerns the unfolding story of where’s Waldo, er, Jamil Hussein, not to mention the purported bodies, “witnesses,” mosque damage, etc. that the AP claims – repeatedly – vouch for its reporting that six Sunnis were immolated by Shiites.

No less an authority on journalism than Eason Jordan, formerly the CNN bureau chief in Baghdad who admitted to slanting its reporting to accommodate Saddam Hussein, and then accused the U.S. military of targeting journalists, has started a new website to aggregate news about Iraq. And, at its debut, Jordan has already stepped into the midst of the battle.

I haven’t investigated all of Jordan’s site for worthiness, but what immediately struck me is that there’s no Topic for “Journalism,” one of the major fronts of the war. Not a confidence builder in the completeness of the site. I wrote to the site, inquiring about this lack of coverage, and will report back if I receive an answer. ...

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John Hinderaker:

This has the potential to be a critical moment in the conflict between new media and old media. The AP has relied on Hussein for dozens of stories, and if he turns out not to exist, or not to be who he said he was, the damage to AP's reputation will be enormous. We and many others have questioned various news organizations' reliance on local stringers in the Middle East, in part because some of those stringers have appeared to be associated with, or sympathetic to, terrorist groups.

Conversely, of course, if Jamil Hussein turns up and Jordan et al. interview him in his office in a Baghdad police station, the AP will be vindicated, and many people will forget about lots of other critiques of the news services' Middle Eastern coverage.

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Kos: It’d be “splendid” if Malkin had no security in Iraq
Ian Schwartz

“Screw them” Kos thinks it would be a “splendid idea” if Michelle leaves the Green Zone without security in her possible upcoming trip to Iraq.

Because only that way will her reporting be fully informed.

Why? Did you think he had another reason in mind? ...

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Mission: Find Jamil Hussein
Jules Crittenden

Room 241, the Hamdelah Hamdelah Hotel, Baghdad.

EJ Team Leader: OK Team, we all know the drill. Jamil Hussein. Find him. Everybody got that? Let's go.

EJ2: Sir, I was thinking. Shouldn't we have a cool name or something? I mean, if we're going to find this guy and be on TV and everything?

EJ Team Leader: We have a name. It's IraqSlogger.

EJ2: Yes sir, that's the Website's name. Very evocative. The slogging. Iraq. ... I'm just wondering if we might not want another name for the team that isn't quite so ... sloggy. Seeing as we have all this body armor and helmets and microphones and boots and stuff, and we'll be running around a bit.

EJ Team Leader: That's the kind of thinking I like. Ideas?

EJ2: I was thinking something dynamic like, "The EJectors." You know, because its going to be like we "EJected" Jamil Hussein. It has an "E" and a "J." Get it? Then, for the next episode, we can "EJect" something else.

EJ Team Leader: Hmmmm. "The IraqSlogger EJectors." That has a definite ring to it. The "E," the "J." Very results oriented. Good work, EJ2. Can we get some graphics?

EJ3: No, no wait, sir, I've got it.

EJ Team Leader: Yes, EJ3?

EJ3: Not just "the EJectors"... (pause for effect) ... "the EJectulators."  ...

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Part 17 of an ongoing series. Part 18