Wednesday, 21 February 2007
 

And the stonewalling continues

Part 50 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post.

Back to the Board
Confederate Yankee

Last Thursday, I provided Associated Press Media Relations Director Linda Wagner with confirmation that a January 4 Steven R. Hurst article appears to be 180-degrees from the truth. To date, neither Wagner nor any other AP contact has deemed to provide any sort of response. Frankly, I didn't expect one. The Hurst article was a CYA piece written to provide cover for shoddy Associated Press reporting, and it is not in their personal interests to admit that they've been caught apparently fabricating that story from the ground up.

I've thus resorted to contacting several members of the AP Board of Directors with the following letter sent out just moments ago, hoping that they will display the integrity that neither AP reporters nor senior management seem to have any interest in maintaining.

If they decline to investigate this extended "Jayson Blair" moment, then their integrity and credibility as a news organization, to put it mildly, is shot.

Here is a copy of the letter, with links added for context and HTML formatting added: ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on February 21, 2007 at 03:51 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 15 February 2007
 

What's in a name?

Part 49 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post.

The Jamil Hussein Name Game -- Iraqi General Weighs In
PJM in Seattle

What’s in a name? When it comes to one that starts “Jamil Hussein,” and involves the credibility of the Associated Press, quite a bit. From “Is AP Iraq source Jamil Hussein for real?” the story has morphed into “Who, exactly, is the source and what is his real name.?” Blogger Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee has been bulldogging this story from his sources in Iraq. Here’s his latest update in this game of “Now we name him. Now we don’t.”

Special Report by Bob Owens @ Confederate Yankee

The highest officers of the Associated Press, including Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, International Editor Daniszewski, and Media Relations Director Linda Wagner have long maintained that their long-time but disputed Iraqi police source named “Jamil Hussein” was one “Jamil Gholaiem Hussein.” AP Writer Steven R. Hurst triumphantly reported on January 4th that Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf confirmed the AP’s contention:

The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media. ...

This morning, Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) liason to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Bill Costlow, provided me this morning with a direct quote from the above referenced Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf regarding Jamil Hussein. This statement flatly contradicts what Steven R. Hurst claimed BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf said in his January 4th article.

Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf stated:

“We couldn’t identify CPT Jamil right away because the AP used the wrong name: we couldn’t find a “CPT Jamil Hussein” — but later, when we saw the name “Jamil Gulaim Hussein”, it became obvious that they were talking about CPT Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX [Name redacted for security reasons — Editor]” as the only ‘Jamil Gulaim’ assigned there (ever) and whose assignment records show he previously worked in Yarmouk, as also reported by the AP. Since the issue for us is the release of false news into the media, we’re satisfied that the AP is no longer quoting a questionable source.”

The General flatly states that Jamil Hussein is not Jamil Hussein as AP still contends, but is instead, CPT Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX. ...

More extensive background information on this story is available at Bob Owens’ personal blog, Confederate Yankee.

Contributed by Bill Faith on February 15, 2007 at 06:09 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 06 February 2007
 

Of online snipers and columnists who can't shoot straight

Part 48 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post.

"An online sniper" 
Michelle Malkin

My friends at Davids Medienkritik take a look at a moonbat smear in Germany. ...

***

FAZ's Dishonest Smear Targets Malkin - Bloggers
Nina Rehfeld's Attempted Hit Job - Or How it Backfired
(By Ray D.)

A small German blog recently chronicled a particularly suspect article authored by correspondent Nina Rehfeld for the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - one of Germany's most respected daily papers). The piece, entitled "Debacle for the Online Sniper" can only be described as a hit job gone terribly wrong. The "online sniper" in question is none other than journalist and top blogger Michelle Malkin:  [image]

The FAZ piece reads as follows (our translation - this is the entire article):

"Blogs
Debacle for the Online Sniper
By Nina Rehfeld, Phoenix

[...]

Memo to FAZ: The Outcry is Not Silenced

Rehfeld would be right if the only aspect of the AP story brought into question by bloggers was the existence of source Jamil Hussein. In reality, there are two elements of the original AP story that remain controversial: The first, Mr. Hussein's reported claim that four mosques were "destroyed" in sectarian violence, has been proven demonstrably false. The second, that six Iraqi Sunnis were burned alive as Iraqi soldiers looked on, remains uncorroborated and has been disputed by other sources. Bloggers continue to discuss both - Ms. Rehfeld completely fails to acknowledge the controversy surrounding either.

***

If Michelle's an online sniper, what am I?
Posted By Uncle Jimbo

MM has a piece up where David's Medienkritik takes apart a report published in the Frankfurt papers. It's the same garbahj about the AP's Jamil Husseining, and the many gaping holes still remaining in their reports. MM wiped up the floor with them many times, yet this reporter parrots AP's lies to an audience unlikely to have access to the real story.

My question is, if MM is an online sniper, what am I?

I like the implication that she puts precision-aimed fire on well-defined targets, but I am a bit more of a blunt instrument than that.

Online attack helicopter- I like the gun on the Apache that swivels when the pilot turns his head.

Online A-10 Warthog- The growl of that gun and the scunion it rains down are tempting too ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on February 6, 2007 at 12:43 PM in Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 03 February 2007
 

The AP's non-correction correction (Updated and bumped)

Part 47 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post.

This may be the last post I write about Jamilgate [or not]. What else is there to say? al-AP got caught in a lie and is never going to fess up. The truth's on the web where it's available to anyone who cares enough to track it down.  It is interesting to note the lefty reactions to the situation, as Bob notes here:

Oh, the Hysteria!
Confederate Yankee

I'm rapidly losing faith in America's public education system.

I wrote a post yesterday titled The Case For Outing Jamil?, where I asked readers a rather simple rhetorical question:

Should I "out" Jamil Hussein, revealing his real, full, and complete name?

I stated specifically that I was leaning against publishing his name, but wanted to hear readers debate the pros and cons.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised at how so many of the middleweight liberal blogs decided to twist what I actually wrote to make the claim that I was attempting to get Jamil Hussein killed. ...

[List deleted. I don't link to sites like that.]

Please keep in mind that many of the bloggers, and especially their commenters, seem to be afflicted with Tourettes, so if you don't desire to read truly foul language, you might want to skip these links. ...

The delicious irony of all this, is that for their collective hysteria to have any merit whatsoever, then they would have to believe that the Associated Press is dishonest in this post where they claim Jamil Hussein's real name is... drumroll please... Jamil Hussein. ...

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 12:30

The AP's non-correction correction 
Michelle Malkin

Wow. Just wow.

The Associated Press puts its advocacy spin and institutional arrogance on naked display in a story hot off the wires. You know those four mosques that AP reporter Qais Al Bashir and AP source Capt. Jamil Hussein claimed had been "destroyed" and "torched" and "burned and blew up"? The ones we showed were attacked, but not destroyed, in our Hot Air video report and NY Post column 10 days ago?

Well, newsflash: The AP has just acknowledged that the "destroyed" mosques are still standing. The headline: "Sunni Mosques Still Show Damage in Iraq." Here's the lead paragraph, which mischaracterizes the AP's initial reporting and description of the mosques:

Four Sunni mosques attacked in late November in the embattled Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad still bear scars from the attacks and all are now either under Shiite Muslim control or closed.

Immediately after the Nov. 24 incidents, an Associated Press story quoted an Iraqi police captain saying the four mosques had been attacked and six men doused with fuel and burned alive at one of them. In some early versions of the AP story, which was updated several times as more information became available, the police officer referred to the mosques being burned or blown up.

Nowhere does the AP acknowledge that it reported that the mosques were destroyed. ...

***

Jamilgate: The AP non-corrects again
Bryan Preston

Michelle has the AP’s latest on Hurriya and her response, to which I have very little to add.

Except one thing. In its initial report, the AP accused the Iraqi Army unit on the scene of standing by while Shia attackers dragged six Sunnis out of a mosque, doused them with kerosene and then set them alight, killing them. The AP’s latest report on Hurriya just glides right past that serious and unsubstantiated allegation.

The AP’s original and so far unretracted report, sourced to Jamil Hussein, was a smear of the Iraqi Army. According to the US military’s official report, the responding Iraqi unit, the 1/1/6 of the IA, called the local fire station to put out the fire at one of the mosques and attempted to capture the attackers. The unit, which included an Iraqi general, remained on the scene until the situation had calmed. That’s what they’re supposed to do.

The AP and Jamil Hussein smeared them by accusing them of standing by doing nothing while the attackers murdered six Sunnis with kerosene fire. Kerosene doesn’t burn quickly–it has a high flash point and burns slowly. The murders would have taken a few minutes, long enough for any IA unit on the scene to put out the fire and capture the militia fighters who started it.

But of course, none of that actually happened according to the military’s official incident report. And there’s no evidence beyond the word of Jamil Hussein that it did happen. It’s hard enough to stand up the Iraqi Army when it’s in the middle of a war inside its own country. Media smears when they do the job our troops are training them to do don’t help at all. ...

***

AP Owes, But Does Not Give, Correction
Patterico

Is this a correction?

Four Sunni mosques attacked in late November in the embattled Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad still bear scars from the attacks and all are now either under Shiite Muslim control or closed.

Immediately after the Nov. 24 incidents, an Associated Press story quoted an Iraqi police captain saying the four mosques had been attacked and six men doused with fuel and burned alive at one of them. In some early versions of the AP story, which was updated several times as more information became available, the police officer referred to the mosques being burned or blown up.

Uh, AP? You also reported that Sunnis had claimed the mosques were destroyed:

Sunni residents in a volatile northwest Baghdad neighborhood claimed Friday that revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen had destroyed four Sunni mosques, burned homes and killed many people, while the Shiite-dominated police force stood by and did nothing. ...

So were four mosques “destroyed,” as the AP claimed in stories still available on Nexis? It sure doesn’t sound that way:

Since then, the AP has confirmed damage at three of the four mosques, including burn damage at two and slight damage at a third.

Unless “destroyed” has been redefined to encompass “slight damage,” it looks like the AP finally owes readers a correction.

This isn’t it, AP. A correction entails owning up to your mistakes and explaining how you got it wrong.

*** Update and bump. Previous timestamp 2007.01.31.15:33

AP (and Now Sadly, No!) Owes a Correction
Patterico

Recently I quoted an AP story that reported that Sunnis had claimed that four mosques were “destroyed” in Hurriya back in November. I then said:

I understand that some ill-informed leftist bloggers have claimed, without proof, that this language was out there for 20 minutes and never made it into an actual story. I’m not linking these morons out of principle. You can easily find their stupid posts yourself. The name of their moronblog rhymes with the phrase “Madly Ho.” My response to these dunderheads is simple. Uh, ill-informed leftist bloggers? Meet Lexis/Nexis.

OK, fine. I’ll break my rule, just this once — for the entertainment value.

I was referring to this post, in which Sadly, No! blogger D. Aristophanes said that the term “destroyed” is

a term that appeared in a raw AP feed for approximately 20 minutes, and which was removed before a single story was published.

In my recent post, I said that Sadly, No! was wrong to say that this language was out there for 20 minutes and never made it into an actual story. Then Gavin M. doubled down — big-time. Referring to my post, he said: ...

***

Painting the Other Side with a Broad Brush is Fun! And Fun Trumps Accuracy!
Patterico

Brad from Sadly, No! says to me:

I said that the AP should have run a correction of its initial report, since the language didn’t accurately describe what actually happened. I don’t know what more you want me to say about it. Oh wait, yes I do. You want me to admit that the AP is involved in helping the terrorists.

Oooooooh! The conservative boogeyman thinks the AP is in league with the terrorists! Ooooooooh!

Except, of course, that I don’t — as a cursory search of my site reveals. For example, here’s my post from January 5:

You’d have to be crazy to think that there is a widespread conspiracy of AP reporters to help the enemy. Most of them are out there doing a dangerous job. I don’t always think the information is reliable, which is in part a function of the nature of Iraq in general . . . but we should recognize the sacrifice they are making to try to tell us what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Brad’s howling pack of monkey-commenters shrieks that folks like me are simply trying to hide the fact that things are bad in Iraq. A guy calling himself “fridgemagnet” is typical: “This has never been anything except a tactic to distract attention from the actual events.” I have quoted Allah’s take on this before, but in light of the monkey-shrieks, maybe it’s worth the effort to quote it again, with my emphasis: ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on February 3, 2007 at 02:33 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 30 January 2007
 

The Case for Outing Jamil?

Part 46 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post.

The Case for Outing Jamil?
Confederate Yankee

I'm presenting working on what will likely be my last post on the Jamil Hussein/Hurriyah mosque attacks debacle. I've got some emails out to several sources and the AP itself attempting to tie up loose ends, and I won't write a final draft until those addressed have a reasonable amount of time to respond.

I did, however, have one question I addressed to all of those I queried, that I'd like to ask my readers as well:

Should I "out" Jamil, revealing his real, full, and complete name? ...

As long as there's any chance whatsoever that AP simply made up a name that by pure coincidence bore a similarity to a real person, I wouldn't.

According to Haider Ajina (in his 40s, Iraqi immigrant ~20 years ago, still has family there, US citizen, emails me sometimes but I'm quoting Gateway Pundit here) Iraqi boys named Jamil are almost as common as American boys named Sue. I figure it's 99.9% likely if AP was quoting Jamil Someone you have the right Jamil. But... what if some reporter made the name up thinking it would be like quoting "Mr. Susan Owens" and scored accidentally?

***

Jules C: New Media on Old Media

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 30, 2007 at 12:56 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 29 January 2007
 

Jamil Safari

Part 45 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post.

Walkback?
Confederate Yankee

In the wake of my January 25 letter to the Board of Directors of the Associated Press concerning the news organization's inaccurate reporting of the November 24 Hurriyah assault by Shia militias on Sunni mosques--a letter in which I provided to the Board of Directors the real name of AP source "Jamil Hussein"--the official Associated Press web site containing all of AP's official responses regarding Hurriyah has curiously withdrawn the January 4 article by AP reporter Steven R. Hurst claiming that Jamil Hussein is Jamil Hussein.

A screen capture of the AP web page from January 8 containing the Hurst article is captured here.

A screen capture of the AP Web page, minus the Hurst article, as captured this morning, is online here.

Is the Associated Press beginning a walkback of it's Hurriyah coverage? If so, quietly attempting to scrub their reporting to date is perhaps not the best way to do so.

Perhaps they should start with a formal retraction acknowledging their comedy of errors. ...

***

Others linking: Jules Crittenden

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 29, 2007 at 12:04 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 26 January 2007
 

Part 44 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post.

Right to the Top
Confederate Yankee

One thing I've learned over the course of my 35 years, is that when you have a customer service issue and the lower level support staff won't help you, it helps to go to their supervisors to get a satisfactory resolution. So what do you do when the person blocking your attempted to remedy the situation is senior management?

You go straight to the Board of Directors.

[...]

Dear Publisher Inskeep, President Lord, Publisher Mitchell, Publisher Rust, CEO Singleton, and President Smith:

I write to you today as members of the Board of Directors for the Associated Press, asking you to write a wrong that Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll has steadfastly refused to address, even after being confronted with the evidence.

On November 24, 2006, a series of stories was published by the Associated Press concerning a series of Shia militia attacks upon Sunni mosques in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq. Two these reports have been attached as PDFs, as they were published by Gainesville.com and the Jerusalem Post (gainesville11_25_26.pdf and jeruslampost11_24_06.pdf, respectively).

[...]

The problem I've written to you to address, as the Board of Directors of the Associated Press, is that every single claim listed above is highly questionable; some have been proven to be exaggerated with photographic and videotaped evidence, and it is quite likely that some of the claims were fabricated entirely.

Once you read the evidence compiled below, I hope that you will consider having the Associated Press run an article correcting the mismanaged Hurriyah coverage issued so far, and perhaps several other issues as well. ...

***

Jules liked it too.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 26, 2007 at 08:23 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 23 January 2007
 

Part 43 of a series. Continued from this post.

CRACKDOWN: Iraqi PM Locks Down Official
Media Access to Key Government Ministries
Confederate Yankee. Hat tip: Bryan Preston

An anonymous source from within Baghdad's Green Zone has provided me with a copy of a document issued from the office of Iraqi Prime Minster Nouri Al-Malki, ordering the shutdown of contacts with the world press on "any topics that relate to security issues."

The document was directed to "the official speakers or the media advisors" within the Iraqi Interior and Defense Ministries.

No context was provided.

This will likely mean an increased reliance upon anonymous sources in regards to security-related news coming out of Iraq.

This is not a good development for transparent government nor for Iraqi democracy. ...

***

Meanwhile, E&P's all over the story.

***

Yep, jumpin' right on it. (H/T: Michelle)

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 23, 2007 at 02:56 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 21 January 2007
 

Jamilgate: U.S. officers tell Michelle Malkin
“burning six” incident didn’t happen

Part 42 of a series. Continued from this post.

Lt. Col. Steven Miska, commander of the Dagger Brigade at Forward Operating Base Justice, observed: "Part of it is, if you're relying on Iraqi reporters, well, what are their biases? What clans are they from and tribes? Why are they telling me this? What's his underlying motivation? And if you quote a police chief, well, those guys have underlying motivations, too . . ."

"I've gone out and found police chiefs on the street and said, 'What happened here?' Something just blew up and he told me, 'Well, U.S. airplanes just bombed this building.'

"I said, 'What are you talking about? It was freakin' insurgent rockets that just hit the building, I picked them up on radar.' " But he just told the reporter on the street that U.S. warplanes bombed the building and killed 13 people. 

I picked a bad day to sleep in. Rather than try to pull longer excerpts and tempt you not to read all of what Michelle wrote I'm going to settle for saying make sure you read her entire Post column here and her longer blog post, complete with pictures of the "destroyed" mosques, here. Hat tip: Allahpundit.

***

Hussein of Cards
Confederate Yankee

I've continued to do some digging into one of the stories sourced to Jamil (not really) Hussein, the alleged assassination of Iraqi Police Captain Amir Kamil on June 20, 2006.

According to AP:

Elsewhere in the capital, police Capt. Amir Kamil, who provided security for Yarmouk hospital, was shot to death Tuesday at a bus station, Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

Unlike most of Hussein's rather vague claims, this one provided specific detail I could attempt to follow up on. We know the name of the victim, who he worked for, where he worked, and at what rank, and even know how and where (in general terms) he was killed.

Unlike all of AP's other stories sourced to Jamil Hussein (including the Hurriyah attacks), this story even has a picture associated with it.

[image]

A caption provided with the picture in a sidebar here reads:

Two friends of police Capt. Amir Kamil comfort each other at al-Yarmouk hospital after he was shot...

It seems like this story could be easily verified, doesn't it? Alas, that is not the case. As I noted previously, I was unable to find any English-language stories from other news agencies corroborating the AP's claim of Captain Kamil's assassination. A reader with Lexis-Nexis access reported the same. ...

***

Don't miss Curt's excellent related post here.

Patterico's post here is also well worth your while.

***

Captain Ed: Baghdad Mosques Still Standing

***

Jules C: Keep the Hussein Fires Burning

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 21, 2007 at 02:19 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 20 January 2007
 

Dodging behind a stonewall

Part 41 of a series. Continued from this post.

AP: The Art of the Dodge
Confederate Yankee

Almost two months after the Associated Press ran the story that six Sunnis were pulled from a mosque in the Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah, doused in kerosene and set ablaze, the Associated Press continues to dodge a series of very simple questions surrounding their alleged deaths, and the deaths of 18 other Sunnis their reports claim were murdered.

Four days ago, I sent a simple series of direct questions to Linda M. Wagner, Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs for the Associated Press.

[...]

Late Friday afternoon, Wagner finally offered a response... just no direct answers to any of my questions:

[...]

Despite providing some interesting reading, Wagner still avoided answering the questions I asked.

Stripped of the background information, I asked Wagner a total of 10 questions: ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 20, 2007 at 03:16 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 18 January 2007
 

Here a Jamil, there a Jamil, everywhere a Jamilmil

Part 40 of a series. Continued from this post.

Special on Jamil Husseins
Jules Crittenden

AP: I say, my good man, I’d like to see something in a Jamil Hussein.

Babu: Yes sahib, if you look here, you will see I have many Jamil Husseins. These three are Palestinian. Only the finest Jamil Husseins in my shop.

AP: No, that won’t do. I require an Iraqi Jamil Hussein. A police captain, if you will.

Babu: Oh no sir, no Iraqi  police captain Jamil Husseins. ...

***

My Three Jamils
Confederate Yankee

Right idea, wrong Jamil(s). Well, maybe not.

Jamil Hussein—all three of them—have been arrested in the West Bank:

In the town of 'Azzoun, Israeli forces arrested three brothers: Mahmoud Mohammed Jamil Hussein, Bilal Mohammed Jamil Hussein and Maher Mohammed Jamil Hussein.

Palestinian security sources report that Israeli forces have intensified its military operations in the city of Qalqilia in recent times. The number of military operations has risen and the number of political prisoners from Qalqilia in Israeli prisons is currently around 600.

Up to 150 of them are Jamil Hussein... actually, I'm just making that part up.

That said, if there were more of the Iraqi Jamil Hussein's—the guy we now know is actually Jamil Gulaim "XX" (not Hussein), despite AP protestations to the contrary followed by their sudden silence—it would go a long way towards describing how one of the Associated Press' most prolific sources could possibly be reporting from almost everywhere in Baghdad except his own location as shown in this map (red areas indicates Jamil XX's assigned neighborhoods, orange areas neighboring neighborhoods, and the red sunbursts indicating the location of the attacks he alleged occurred): ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 18, 2007 at 01:10 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 17 January 2007
 

Back from Baghdad // Assessing Iraq

***

It looks like this is going to turn into Part 39 of my Jamilgate series. Part 38 is here.

***

Back from Baghdad
Michelle Malkin

My HotAir.com colleague Bryan Preston and I are back from Iraq. Thanks to Allah and Ian for holding down the fort at HA and thanks much to guest-bloggers Mary Katharine Ham, See-Dubya, and the Big Lizards for filling in here during my absence. Be sure to bookmark their blogs.

Our first Hot Air in Baghdad video report is here.

Bryan's first post-trip essay, a thorough assessment of "mistakes, fumbles and ways forward to win--and what victory actually looks like," is here. He's also got video stills of our encounters with shady operators on both sides of the sectarian divide while on patrol with U.S. troops.

My syndicated column today provides an overview of the counterinsurgency efforts we witnessed first-hand--and I'm posting the column below, illustrated with photos I took throughout the trip.

We'll report on our investigation of the Associated Press's media malpractice in an upcoming New York Post exclusive.

And we'll both be publishing much more over the next several days,  ...

***

Assessing Iraq
Bryan Preston

Michelle and I spent four days patrolling the environs around Forward Operating Base Justice in north and west Baghdad last week. FOB Justice is near one functional neighborhood, Khadimiyah, one mostly recovered neighborhood, Al Salam, one dysfunctional neighborhood, Al Hurriyah, and an al Qaeda-influenced area the name of which I never learned.

FOB Justice sits in a mostly Shia area, but it is just across the Tigris from Adamiya, a Sunni area that produced pops of AK gunfire every night and, on a couple of occassions, we heard the sound of mortar fire coming from that direction. But the convoys we were on were never shot at, and our troops never fired a single shot, which by itself is significant considering the fact that we were in Baghdad and did drive and walk through some sketchy areas. Most people in the states don’t realize that most of Baghdad’s violence is confined to areas where Shia and Sunni mix. No one so much as threw a rock at us, and the troops were greeted in a friendly manner nearly everywhere they went. Only in Hurriyah did we see overt hostility, but it never went beyond the sly insult stage.

This isn’t to say that everyone in Iraq loves US troops or that FOB Justice’s area of operation is Disneyland. Troops from FOB Justice frequently run across Haifa Street (including the trip bringing us back from the International Zone, hours after a fierce fight had taken place there) and troops from Justice have unfortunately been killed in combat or by IEDs; last fall a colonel was killed by one of the sophisticated Iranian-made IEDs. IEDs are a constant threat across most of Iraq. We ran across Mahdi Army militia fighters a couple of times on one patrol (and I have video); their intent was to check up on the Americans while staying far enough away to avoid a clash.  ...

***

Jules links here. (Check out his new digs!)

***

Confederate Yankee has an excellent related post here, including some new questions for al-AP.

***

Curt takes note here.

***

Audio: Michelle talks Iraq with Laura Ingraham
Allahpundit

The first major media appearance by the boss today related to her trip.

Update: INDC Bill’s still on the ground in Fallujah and snapping pics aplenty. Here’s what remains of the “Valentine’s Day Massacre” in that city. You’ll have to follow the link for details.

[image]

Part 39 of a series. Part 40

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 17, 2007 at 06:02 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Monday, 15 January 2007
 

Audio: Captain Ed spars with NPR over Jamilgate

Part 38 of a series. Continued from this post.

NPR Interview On Media Credibility
Ed Morrissey

Last week, NPR invited me to do an interview with On The Media co-host Brooke Gladstone, for what was supposed to be a five-minute segment. Brooke and I ended up sparring for thirty minutes in a spirited debate, which I think we both enjoyed. NPR had to cut it down to five minutes, and I believe they did a good job in capturing the essence of both perspectives:

[audio link]

Granted, a lot of the conversation from both of us got cut out. The only point I wish they would have left in the mix, but which took too long for the segment length, was my specific objection to using a single source for such explosive stories without even asking their clients in Iraq to confirm them. The burning mosque story only had the one source, Jamil Hussein, and the AP's other clients in Iraq never heard anything about this story. I also pointed out that the AP broke its own rules by not noting the use of a pseudonym for their source, and that the use of single-sourced material in a war zone is an open invitation to manipulation by propagandists.

Hat tip: Allahpundit, who comments here.

***

Confederate Yankee: Jamilgate Hits the Airwaves

***

Was the AP Getting Played By Jamil Hussein? 
Gateway Pundit

... Tonight, I get this followup from Iraqi-American Haider Ajina:

Greetings Jim,

I first read that Jamil's last name or middle name (this is usually his fathers name for family identification Jamil son of Gulaim then the last name etc..) and started laughing. It is almost like one of those joke names.

Gulaim or Gulam are names, which were given to boy slaves or boys born into slavery often if not always black boys. This of course does not exist any more. The names literally mean boy Gulaim means ‘cute little boy’ sort of like putting the 'ita' at the end of a word in Spanish like 'Senorita'. Later until the fifties the name was often used for boy servants often orphans…

This makes it an even more peculiar name. Still possible. His father names his son Jamil, Thus Jamil Gulam means "Pretty Boy".

Now unless it is a family tradition, I would never do that to any of my Sons.

It could be that an Iraqi is playing a huge joke on AP.

***

The Media Misinformation War
Posted by Curt

Bookworm links to an excellent article which describes just one of the reasons why the media's insistence on using stringers for stories is a huge mistake:

January 15, 2007 -- JUST outside Um al-Qasar, a port in south east Iraq, a crowd had gathered around a British armored car with a crew of four. An argument seemed to be heating up through an interpreter.

The interpreter told the Brits that the crowd was angry and wanted U.K. forces out of Iraq. But then a Kuwaiti representative of Amnesty International, accompanied by a journalist friend, approached - and found the crowd to be concerned about something quite different.

The real dispute? The day before, a British armored vehicle had an accident with a local taxi; now the cab's owner, backed by a few friends, was asking the Brits to speed up compensating him. Did these Iraqis want the Brits to leave, as the interpreter pretended? No, they shouted, a thousand times no!

So why did the interpreter inject that idea into the dialogue? Shaken, he tried a number of evasions: Well, had the Brits not been in Iraq, there wouldn't have been an accident in the first place. And, in any case, he knows that most Iraqis don't want foreign troops.

The author goes on to detail the fact that interpreting has become a cottage industry in Iraq with many of the interpreters being former Saddam loyalists.

One of the more important aspects to the article is how the author, a Iranian named Amir Taheri, describes the bias in our MSM: ...

***

The Liberal Groupthink Inside Our MSM
Posted by Curt

Another day, another chance for the liberal groupthink inside our MSM to expose themselves.  Check out this article: (h/t Instapundit)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - When it comes to squandering the earth's natural resources, residents of this desert land of chilled swimming pools, monster 4x4s and air-conditioned malls are on a par with even the ravenous consumption of Americans, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The average person in the Emirates puts more demand on the global ecosystem than any other, giving the country the world's largest per-capita "ecological footprint," WWF data shows. The United States runs second.

But the oil-rich Emirates is considered a developing country, and even as a signatory to the United Nations'Kyoto protocol on global warming, is not required to cut emissions. The United States is no longer bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001.

Only problem is that the protocol was rejected in 1997 during Clinton's reign: ...

***

Ed Morrissey comments on the Kyoto story here.

Part 38 of a series. Part 39

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 15, 2007 at 01:41 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 13 January 2007
 

Part 37 of a series. Continued from this post.

Jamil, We Hardly Knew Ye
Dafydd ab Hugh

Patterico says he "just doesn't get it," referring to AP's ever taller tale of Jamil Hussein Ghdaab Gulaim Ghdaab Redacted.

Specifically, he objects to the conclusion that AP knew "Jamil Hussein" was a pseudonym:

UPDATE: Let me make clear what I’m confused about. Everyone is running around screeching that the AP knowingly used a pseudonym.

What is the proof?

The problem is that Patterico -- being a first-rate trial lawyer (prosecutor) -- tends to think like a lawyer... which is extremely useful in his chosen profession (and is probably one reason why he chose that profession in the first place), but which can lead to unnecessary demands. Specifically, I believe Patterico is waiting for actual evidence -- some AP reporter testifying that they knew it was a nom de guerre -- that will never materialize, for obvious reasons. In this case, we can get farther by just being logical about the question.

What are the possible cases? ...

***

The Latest & Greatest On Jamil Hussein
Posted by Curt

I decided to step away a bit, but not completely, on the Jamil Hussein story and get back to the crux of the story.  The whole thing has become convoluted and twisted to the point where people are not sure which way is up so I figured a little history on the story would be worth my time to convey with some additional commentary.

If you read through all of my posts on this subject from the beginning you will find that I named my original posts "Getting The News From The Enemy".  I named them that because THAT was the crux of the story.  I put in a lot of work to show that much of what was being reported by the AP should be questioned and appeared to come from stringers.  When I focused on Jamil and my suspicions turned out to be justified the blogosphere went bananas.  But in so doing everyone, including myself, focused on one man, one source, as the crux of the story.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The story begins with the Burning Six incident and the lack of any evidence to suggest that this event ever happened. ...

Read the whole thing, folks. It's long but it's an excellent summary of the history of Jamilgate.

***

Scott Johnson has a lengthy and worthy related piece here.

Part 37 of a series. Part 38

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 13, 2007 at 02:37 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 11 January 2007
 

Proven: "Jamil Hussein" does not exist! (Updated, bumped)

Part 36 of a series. Continued from this post.

J-DAMN
Confederate Yankee

And so a major Associated Press claim in "Jamilgate" takes an apparently fatal hit.

According to Bill Costlow of CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) in Baghdad, and as forwarded by Lt. Michael Dean of Multinational Corps-Iraq/Joint Operations Command Public Affairs, our now infamous police captain in Iraq appears to be definitively not Jamil Hussein.

Nor is his name Jamil Gholaiem Hussein as stated repeatedly by the Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll and other Associated Press employees.

Nor is his name Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim, as he has been called previously in other accounts. According to his personnel records at MOI, confirmed with BG Abdul-Kareem and then reportedly verified by BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf with AP's Baghdad sources, his name is actually Jamil Gulaim "XX".

The "XX" protects his second middle name and real last names, of which "Hussein" is not a part.

To sum up the current situation as things now appear to stand:

• There is no Baghdad police officer at the Khadra police station named Captain Jamil Hussein, and never has been. Jamil Hussein, and Jamil Gholaiem Hussein are pseudonyms for Jamil Gulaim Innad "X".
• The Associated Press published a pseudonym without acknowledging that fact, apparently knowing, if BG Abdul-Kareem is correct, that they were publishing a false identity. Is that a big deal? HUGE. This is a major breach of journalistic ethics.
• ...

***

The Latest On Jamil Hussein
Posted by Curt

... UPDATE III

Bill Costlow has just confirmed that Jamil does not have Hussein in his name, and he has also confirmed that the MoI spokesperson DID speak to the AP and confirmed that he was their source:

His personnel record says his name is: Jamil Gulaim xxxx xxxxx

Spokesman BG Abdul-Kareem has spoken with members of the AP in Baghdad and has confirmation that he is their source.  That said, CPT Jamil still denies ever speaking to them.

As far as the MOI is concerned, CPT Jamil gave the AP bad information: there's still no evidence the six murders occurred.

So there you are.  I have responded back to Bill with the question how the BG can confirm that he is the source if he denied being the source? 

That being said, the AP used a pseudonym for Jamil without acknowledging that fact.   Confederate Yankee did an interview with five bigwigs in the world of journalism asking about the use of pseudonym's in reports and got the following: ...

***

See also:

• Allahpundit: Jamilgate non-bombshell: AP allegedly used pseudonym

• Patterico: A Cautionary Note on Jamil Hussein and the Burning Six Story

• Don Surber: AP blew it 

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 11:34

AP: Discrediting Jamil's Sources
Confederate Yankee

A wise and well-traveled journalist spoke with me via email yesterday regarding the stupidity of mistakes made by the large and the arrogant Goliaths of our world:

...One thing they ALWAYS do, in my experience, is make MAJOR mistakes in the very beginning. Mistakes that are so major that people say, "Nope, that can't be true. They never would do something that stupid." But they do. And then the big people usually rely on intimidation...and if that doesn't work (and it's not with you on this), those initial huge errors they make become HUGE and inescapable...

And so back to the beginning I went, and indeed, the Associated Press seems to have done an excellent job of discrediting Jamil Huss—excuse me, "Jamil XX" on their own. How much did they discredit him?

To the point most rational people would question why he was ever allowed to continue as an Associated Press source at all.

* * *

Do you remember this JunkYardBlog post, where See Dubya marveled at the ability of Captain Jamil XX to be report incidents of violence from literally all over Baghdad?

See Dubya noted: ...

Read the whole thing.

***

Patterico: The Latest on Jamil Redacted: Sorry, I Don’t Get It

***

Tony Snow: “I’m looking forward to meeting Capt. Jamil Hussein”

***

Confederate Yankee: Does Tony Snow Read CY?

Part 36 of a series. Part 37

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 11, 2007 at 09:29 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 10 January 2007
 

Lt. Kije identified, facing arrest? -- Day 7

Part 35 of a series. Continued from this post. 

Nothing new to report at the moment, although a friend's cousin's friend is absolutely certain she saw Jamil having a drink with Elvis in a little bar just off the Vegas strip yesterday. Updates as I have them.

***

Flopping Aces’ “Latest on Jamil Hussein”
— Another Possible Interpretation
Patterico

Curt at Flopping Aces has a post that he says is The Latest on Jamil Hussein. Curt says he has been in touch with Bill Costlow, the CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) representative. According to Curt:

But guess what Bill just confirmed? Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf never acknowledged that there was a Capt. Jamil Hussein assigned to the Khadra station, he confirmed to the AP that there was a Capt. Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim assigned there. Apparently he is the source for the AP even though he still, to this day (according to Bill Costlow), denies being the source.

From this, Curt concludes:

So what do we have so far?

That the AP has lied again in their response. The AP specifically stated that Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf acknowledged Jamil Hussein exists when he did no such thing. He acknowledged a completely different name the AP gave him but not a Jamil Hussein.

Then, the AP’s source denies he is the source.

Color me dubious. Curt seems to be leaping straight to the conclusion that, if Costlow is right, the AP has misreported what it was told by Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the MOI spokesman. But there’s another possibility, that Curt would do well to keep in mind:  ...

Read on. You know the suspense is killin' you.

***

The Jamil Hussein Controversy, Explained
Patterico

Shorter left-wingers:

Conservative “warbloggers” are “teh stupid” (as the kids say nowadays) because they unquestioningly accepted a statement made by a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.

How do we know the warbloggers got their facts wrong? Well, you see, according to a statement made by a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior . . .

Parallels bolded for the benefit of the dimmer lefties who might not get it otherwise. ...

I got corn-fused and added a couple of things to this post that I thought I was putting in this one. I've moved them.

Part 35 of a series. Part 36

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 10, 2007 at 01:02 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 09 January 2007
 

Lt. Kije identified, facing arrest? -- Day 6

Updated and bumped -- Jamil who?

Part 34 of a series. Continued from this post. 

What Happened to the AP's Hurriyah Mosque Attack Video?
Confederate Yankee

Kathleen Carroll continues to attack those questioning her news organization’s ability to turn four burned mosques and several homes into one burned mosque, and their ability to turn 24 dead men, women and children into six, while still not acknowledging that they cited an al Qaeda-linked source to get the number up to 24 in the first place. The Associated Press and Executive Editor Carroll are still claiming to stand behind their reporting when the "facts" of the story have been rewritten in the neighborhood of 75-percent...

Oh wait, where was I going with this?

...Ah yes, I remember now.

Kathleen Carroll says she still stands behind the AP's reporting from Hurriyah.

There are reportedly just four mosques in the Hurriyah neighborhood, pulled from this 2003 map:

[image]

That would be the four mosque locations noted in the bottom left quadrant. Is it accurate? Perhaps, perhaps not. It is after all, three years old, and apparently generated by a U.S.-government agency known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency . How accurately they map specific buildings in a foreign capital seems to be open for debate.

The AP claims four mosques in Hurriyah were destroyed: ...

***

Warrant Issued For Jamil Hussein
Dan Riehl

I'm not sure what's the real news in this NY Times piece - that apparently an actual warrant has been issued for Jamil Hussein, or that the NYTimes seems to be making an effort to link to blogs more and more. ...

***

Gateway Pundit has more here.

***

Eric Blowhard is rumored to have a new post up and Media Matters. I won't link to it.

***

D'oh!
See-Dubya

Arrgh! The SF Chronicle went into Baghdad's al-Khadra police station. They even talked to a policeman there, who refused to give his name. I had a few questions I hope they could have asked about Khadra's most famous Captain, but he's rarely there... ...

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 00:33

The Latest On Jamil Hussein
Posted by Curt

I've been in touch with Bill Costlow (the CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) representative) since he has been back in-country and I have a few interesting developments on this story.

First, the AP story:

Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press.

But guess what Bill just confirmed?  Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf never acknowledged that there was a Capt. Jamil Hussein assigned to the Khadra station, he confirmed to the AP that there was a Capt. Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim assigned there.  Apparently he is the source for the AP even though he still, to this day (according to Bill Costlow), denies being the source.

So what do we have so far? ...

*** 

Did the AP Lie About Jamil Hussein Being Found?
Confederate Yankee

Or is this just being lost in translation? Curt, at Flopping Aces with the apparent bombshell:

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf never acknowledged that there was a Capt. Jamil Hussein assigned to the Khadra station, he confirmed to the AP that there was a Capt. Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim assigned there. Apparently he is the source for the AP even though he still, to this day (according to Bill Costlow), denies being the source.

So what do we have so far?

That the AP has lied again in their response. The AP specifically stated that Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf acknowledged Jamil Hussein exists when he did no such thing. He acknowledged a completely different name the AP gave him but not a Jamil Hussein.

This, of course, means that Michelle Malkin nailed it on December 20. Anyone got a good crow recipe for Eric Boehlert?

I'll have more on this as I process the implications...

Update: Before I get to worked up about this one way or the other, I'm going to want some verification that Costlow is correct. This is something that Curt is asking Costlow to triple-check, and I am also asking MNF-I PAO to verifiy as well. Until then, let's agree to take this with a grain of salt.

Why?

Because if Brig. General Abdul-Karim Khalaf did not tell the Associated Press that there was a Captain Jamil Hussein at the Khadra police station, then ...

***

Boehlert Refuses to Correct Error
— in Column About Warbloggers’ Refusal to Correct Errors
Patterico

Media Matters’s Eric Boehlert has this column about conservative bloggers’ alleged refusal to admit error regarding Jamil Hussein.

In the column, Boehlert refuses to admit his own previous error regarding Jamil Hussein.

Who says there’s no irony on the Internet, Joe Rago?

It’s just not all intentional.

Boehlert’s error, you may recall from an earlier post of mine, was made in a recent column, in which he reported that Hussein “was under arrest” Thursday. As evidence, that column cited a report that said only that Hussein “faces” arrest — and which also makes clear that any prosecution is unlikely.

My guess: Boehlert wanted Hussein to have actually been arrested, so that he could pin that on bloggers. So he wished and hoped, and voila! in his mind, it was so. And so that’s what he wrote.

Is he unaware of the error? Nah. ...

***

Evolving AP Goes From "4 Torched Mosques
& Several Homes- 24 Dead" to "1 Burnt Doorway- 6 Dead"
Gateway Pundit

The evolving AP in their 6 Torched Sunni story went from "4 torched mosques and several homes with 24 reported dead" to "one burnt doorway and Six torched Sunnis".

And, The New York Times wonders why bloggers are not satisfied with the AP's story?

And, of course, the nutty Left remains clueless.

Confederate Yankee asks the AP, "Where's the video?"... He also has a map of the Hurriya neighborhood from 2003 with 4 mosques listed, however there are likely more than the four listed. The MNF-I inspected 4 Sunni mosques alone in the neighborhood after the 6 Sunni story. And, Confederate Yankee reports that the mosque mentioned in the original AP article was the Mustafa (Ahbab al-Mustafa) Mosque although this was later dropped from the AP reports. ...

***

Jamil Hussein - What's In a Name?
By Dafydd ab Hugh

According to Curt at Flopping Aces, one reason that the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior (MOI) -- boss of the National Police -- and Multinational Force Iraq (MNFI) were unable to locate Police Captain Jamil Hussein at the Khadra police station may have been... that there is no Police Captain Jamil Hussein at the Khadra police station.

Curt has a source (Bill Costlow) at the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT, Americans working in Iraq to train Iraqis in basic police procedures) who says that it turns out that the so-called (literally) "Jamil Hussein" touted by AP as their source, the source whose full name AP now claims to be Jamil Gholaiem Hussein -- is in fact actually named Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim. No "Hussein" in his name anywhere.

But guess what Bill just confirmed? Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf never acknowledged that there was a Capt. Jamil Hussein assigned to the Khadra station, he confirmed to the AP that there was a Capt. Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim assigned there. Apparently he is the source for the AP even though he still, to this day (according to Bill Costlow), denies being the source.

Bear in mind, this is by way of a heads-up; there is no independent confirmation of what Costlow told Curt. But on the other hand, as I noted over on Big Lizards, we also have not seen anybody but AP claim that Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the MOI, had admitted that "Jamil Hussein" worked at that station after all:

Since we now know that at least one Jamil exists in a disclosed location, it should be child's play for Reuters, the Times, the Times, the Post, CNN, or some other newspaper or television network to hound the guy into an interview with them: have they? For that matter, has anybody -- other than AP -- even interviewed Brigadier Khalaf and asked him about Jamil Hussein?

So we have the unsupported word of AP (which did not publish a transcript of the alleged admission) vs. the unsupported word of a blogger quoting a member of CPATT. Were I a betting man (oh wait, I am), I'd have to give the odds to Flopping Aces in this one. Especially insofar as, to this date, I don't believe AP has even acknowledged that their original story (four mosques "burned," 24 Sunnis slain) was completely wrong. They simply changed it quietly, in the dead of night, without noting the changes... which does not inspire confidence in their confident assertions today.

If true (if!), it would be a pretty darned good explanation of why MOI and MNFI were unable to find Jamil Hussein: because AP lied about his name, giving him a pseudonym then daring anyone to find him.

Here, it's just about like this: ...

Read the whole thing; Dafydd at his best.

Part 34 of a series. Part 35

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 9, 2007 at 02:45 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 08 January 2007
 

Lt. Kije identified, facing arrest? -- Day 5

Part 33 of a series. Continued from this post.

So Where IS Lieutenant Kije?
Hatched by Dafydd

At long last, after weeks of fumfahing around, the Associated Press has labored and labored and finally given birth -- to a mouse.

They managed to cajole a spokesman of the Iraq Ministry of the Interior (MOI), Brigadier Abdul-Karim Khalaf (who has also been quoted on Reuters, albeit in other contexts -- so I'm willing to accept that he, at least, exists) into admitting the existence of a Police Captain Jamil Hussein -- actually Jamil Gholaiem (or Ghlaim) Hussein -- working at the Khadra police station. So here is at least a candidate for Baghdad's own Lt. Kije! ...

I may be the last skeptic standing; but I must point out, in a loud and clear voice, that we still have no independent verification that the Jamil Hussein reportedly found by the MOI is the same Jamil Hussein repeatedly interviewed by AP. We have only AP's word for it -- and a denial by Lt. Kije himself. At the moment, the identified Jamil Ghlaim (or Gholaiem) Hussein remains as elusive as Elwood P. Dowd's 8-foot tall invisible rabbit, Harvey. (Is Jamil a Pookah?) ...

Do read the whole thing, and do not miss the big announcement here.

***

Dafydd's first two mm.com posts are up here and here.

***

Monday Morning Jamil Roundup
Confederate Yankee

While I've been busy over the weekend doing family stuff, other bloggers have kept up the pressure on the continuing on-going scandal called Jamilgate, where the Associated Press claimed that 24 people were burned to death and four mosques were rocketed, machine gunned, burned and blown up along with several homes burned in a Baghdad neighborhood on Friday, November 24, 2006.

The AP has since attempted to rewrite their story after the fact, now only maintaining that six people were immolated and that only one mosque was attacked. Though the claims made in the story have been changed by roughly 75-percent, one of their primary sources is facing arrest, another retracted his claim, and another key source was a group aligned with al Qaeda, the AP's executive editor Kathleen Carroll continues to prove she is the Mike Nifong of professional journalism.

Carroll says she stand by AP's reporting on this story, even as her reporters have dramatically changed it over time. ...

Part 33 of a series. Part 34

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 8, 2007 at 12:06 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 07 January 2007
 

Lt. Kije identified, facing arrest? -- Day 4

Part 32 of a series. Continued from this post.

Media Matters’s Eric Boehlert Gets the Facts Wrong — Again 
Patterico

Media Matters’s Eric Boehlert: ignorant? Sloppy? Or dishonestly posturing?

(Again.)

You make the call!

Just yesterday, I said:

By the way, those oh-so-careful leftists? Some of them are claiming that Jamil Hussein has already been arrested — based on a report that says he faces arrest. . . . [K]eep your eyes open for the lefties who claim Jamil Hussein has already been arrested. You’ll see ‘em. Because they’re the careful ones!

I followed my own advice, and guess which oh-so-careful leftist I caught misrepresenting the facts? None other then our favorite serial misrepresenter, Media Matters’s Eric Boehlert: ...

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

***

Two more good ones from Patterico (As noted here, I'm runnin' behind schedule):

• Jamil Hussein Not Necessarily Arrested — Reports of His Arrest Appear to Be Based on a Misunderstanding

• Jamil Hussein’s Name Spread Across the World By . . . Whom?

Part 32 of a series. Part 33

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 7, 2007 at 01:08 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 06 January 2007
 

Jamil identified, facing arrest? -- Day 3
(Updated and bumped)

CENTCOM says AP's "Iraqi police source" isn't Iraqi police -- Part 31    -- Continued from this post.

Never was the patient type. I'm ready for mugshots, or at least a CENTCOM news release. It's been a good 32 hours since the big AP announcement that Jamil's been identified and at this point all we have is their word for it. I'm more than a little disappointed with the number of right-of-moonbat bloggers who are simply taking that at face value. Guess I'll go ahead and get the framework for a new post in place, get some sleep, and hope there's big news breaking by the time I get up. In the mean time I'll still stand by the prediction I made in my last two posts:

What we're going to be hearing by Saturday is:

"Jamil's afraid of getting arrested so he's gone so deep underground that even his old AP contacts can't find him. But we really did talk to him last week. Really we did. Really!"

It'll be almost noon in Baghdad by the time I post this. Tick. Tick. Tick.

***

Shut Up and Read
Jules Crittenden

Byline's back on the E&P Jamil articles, now that "Capt. Jamil Hussein" has been "found."

By Joe Strupp

NEW YORK -- Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll on Friday criticized those who questioned the existence of an AP Iraq source, who was proven this week to be real, saying the scrutiny has now endangered the man's life.

"I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story," Carroll told E&P, referring to Jamil Hussein, an Iraq police captain. "AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq."

Carroll asks a very good question. The AP publishes hundreds of stories a day. Why should anyone give a damn if any of them are accurate? Grubby impertinent news reader people. Just because the AP's claim of four mosques torched and six people burned to death as troops looked on was outlandish, remains unsubstantiated and government officials said the source didn't exist. ...

Strupp also fails to include any quotes or material supporting his lede's claim that Jamil's "life" ... if in fact he has one ... is in danger as a result of the blogosphere's attention. ...

Read the whole thing.

***

Just a little taste of what we're up against trying to get the left half of this country to take a realistic look at this situation. Jules and I, and Michelle, Curt, Ace, Glenn Reynolds, Dan Riehl, and some guy named "Petterico," got an email yesterday afternoon from one Alexander Wolfe.  It starts off thusly ...

Well, now perhaps some of you bozos can go on over there and try to bail him out so you can get the "real story" from him.

... and includes a full copy of this American Prospect piece -- I guess copyright laws and fair use don't matter when it's for the greater good -- which ends with

Those are not encouraging signs. When people "disappear" in Baghdad it usually means something bad has happened.

I wrote back and copied everyone but Petterico:

Or that they never existed, maybe? "Gee whiz, now he's had to go into hiding, but we really did talk to him a couple of days ago. Really. No, really!"

... to which Alex (May I call you Alex? There, that's a good boy.) responded:

Well yes, that would be the only logical conclusion upon realizing that a man whom you insisted did not exist, actually does exist. But as I said below, perhaps now someone would be kind enough to go to Iraq and pay his bail so you can "interview" him about all the stories he made up to undermine the American people's faith in the war in Iraq.

Alexander Wolfe
Bedford, TX

Actually, Alex, I'm quite confident that if he does exist he will be interviewed, thoroughly. I'm counting on it. I'm smiling about it. Sorta scary to know people like me exist, isn't it Alex? Probably scarier to know I lived in Bedford for several years and the phone number on my cell phone still starts with 817. Imagine that! One of John Kerry's baby killers lived right there in town and still considers that area home. And wants to see Jamil, if he actually exists, drawn and quartered. Sleep tight, Alex.

***

I'm not going to post Alex's next mail but I'll give him credit for being good natured about things, anyway. And, no, Alex, I probably won't be posting pics of your house on my site.

Looks like Curt and I were posting about the same time. I think there must be some delay in the feeds on the Power Line News site; I should have checked his site directly instead of just watching for PL News to say it had been updated.

The AP Whining, & Whining Some More
Posted by Curt

Funny thing, it's going on 32 hours since the AP first reported that the Iraqi MoI has admitted that Jamil Hussein is real and what do we have to show for it?  Nada.

The Iraqi MoI has not issued a statement to anyone, neither has Centcom.  ...

Nevermind that he gave false information to create even more sectarian division....let all pull out our kleenex for the poor widdle AP stringer, who was so unafraid of any possible repercussions that he gave his name, rank, and employment location in over 60 stories. 

Just like they did with Bilal Hussein, who was found with terrorist contraband, they are now crying over another source with questionable ties.

I would settle for some confirmation that this guy exists from someone OTHER then the AP at this point seeing as how we can't trust them as far as we can throw them.

***

Dafydd has an absolutely awesome series up: Media Matters In the Meme Streets of Baghdad - 1, Media Matters In the Meme Streets of Baghdad - B, Media Matters In the Meme Streets of Baghdad - iii. Gotta be honest and admit I simply don't have the attention span to write something like that and If I did I'd do something pedestrian like  calling them Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Guess that's why he gets all the traffic.

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 00:59

New Twists In The Jamil Hussein Saga
Posted by Curt

Bill Costlow, the CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) representative, has some more information regarding the discovery of Jamil Hussein:

Curt,

Here's what I can tell you:

1. Media reports about Jamil didn't use his name as he is known at  work so we had trouble finding him (Jamil Gulaim as opposed to Jamil Hussein: the initial query we got  from MNFI was for "Jamil Hussein".

2. The real issue is this:  Jamil works in Al Khadra (think of Staten Island) -- he's telling the media about Al Hurriah murders (Think of Queens -- it's a different area of the city):

• Why would any reporter consider this guy a reliable source under these circumstances?
• ...
• ...

Which throws a monkey wrench into the AP assertion that the MoI was inept in not searching for Jamil Hussein via his middle name.

Khalaf offered no explanation Thursday for why the ministry had initially denied Hussein's existence, other than to state that its first search of records failed to turn up his full name. He also declined to say how long the ministry had known of its error and why it had made no attempt in the past six weeks to correct the public record. ...

Read the whole thing. This just keeps getting better.

***

AP's Carrol Is Wrong On Jamil Hussein
Dan Riehl

As Charles at lgf points out, AP's Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll now says she is concerned for the well being of Jamil Hussein and places the blame for that on bloggers; however, that is not what the record actually reflects. Stripping away Carroll's hyperbole and looking at the facts, if anything, the blog coverage of the Hussein issue may well have done more to protect him, than did the AP.

NEW YORK Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll on Friday criticized those who questioned the existence of an AP Iraq source, who was proven this week to be real, saying the scrutiny has now endangered the man’s life.

Read Carroll's first statement on the issue:

No organization has done more to try to shed light on what happened Nov. 24 in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad than The Associated Press.

We have not ignored the questions about our work raised by the U.S. military and later, by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Indeed, we published those questions while also sending AP journalists back out to the scene to dig further into what happened and why others might be questioning the initial accounts.

The reality is this, the AP used a named source - with his approval, I assume - to report a highly controversial event which both the US military and the Iraqi ministry questioned. To begin with, Carroll's assertion of Hussein's being in danger, were it valid, would amount to a statement that under no circumstances is anyone allowed to ever question AP's reporting, or an AP named source. That is complete nonsense and reflects more of a problem with Carroll's and evidently AP's thinking, than it does any issue for blogs.

Furthermore, ...

***

Patterico has two excellent related posts here and here. I don't know how I missed them earlier.

***

Media Matters lies about HA’s response to Jamilgate
Allahpundit

Here’s what’s cooking on their front page as I write this. I’m surprised they used a good photo of Michelle; the official left-wing Malkin-as-hate-object signal is one of those goofy screencaps from her appearance on Hardball.

It must be because they’re respectable.

The headline, “Warbloggers refuse to admit their errors in making fraud allegations against AP,” links to Boehlert’s latest piece. It’s followed by an item about Brit Hume supposedly announcing that the AP’s been vindicated on the whole “Iraq atrocity story.” Alas, that’s not what Hume said, but that’s beside the point. The point is, by starting with that headline and the Hume item, MM wants you to scan the remaining items and think that they’re all examples of warbloggers responding to the news about Hussein’s existence by taking shots at Boehlert to change the subject. E.g., “Hot Air on ‘Boehlert’s disingenuousness.’” See the irony? I reacted to evidence of the Iraqi MOI’s disingenuousness by accusing Boehlert of the same because I can’t admit when I’m wrong. Wingnut.

Except I didn’t. Media Matters’s item about Hot Air links to a post I wrote in December answering Boehlert’s columns on Jamilgate.  ...

***

Patterico: Media Matters Distorts Something (Yawn)

***

Part 31 of a series. Part 32

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 6, 2007 at 01:44 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Friday, 05 January 2007
 

Jamil identified, facing arrest? -- Day 2
-- (Updated and bumped)

CENTCOM says AP's "Iraqi police source" isn't Iraqi police -- Part 30 -- Continued from this post.

Libs on Jamil 
Confederate Yankee

The overwhelming majority of liberal bloggers were dead silent from late November throughout the month of December, and into January in regards to the Jamil Hussein affair, with the rare exception of those who feverishly insisted upon misconstruing what conservative bloggers were attempting to discover about Husseins' dubious track record, and those who hoped these same bloggers would go to Baghdad unescorted and get gunned down.

Now that the Associated Press has come forth with an admission from the Iraqi Interior Ministry that Hussein does exist, and precisely where AP said he was, many of these same bloggers that refused to comment on the situation before are now bravely attacking those who questioned the AP and accepted to competency of the MOI to be able to read a list.

My favorite emerging narative from the left on this are the sudden woeful claims of concern: "What happens to Jamil Hussein now that you've exposed him? He's going to be arrested, tortured, and killed, and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!"

Get a grip. ...

***

Wuzzadem: AP Finally Gets Closure On the Jamil Hussein Story

***

SeeDubya: Thoughts on the "discovery" of Jamil Hussein

***

Kaus Sums It Up
Patterico

Mickey Kaus on Jamil Hussein:

Capt. Jamil Hussein, controversial AP source, seems to exist. That’s one important component of credibility!

Heh.

Too bad about the other components . . .

***

AP employee found shot to death in Iraq 

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The body of an Associated Press employee was found shot in the back of the head Friday, six days after he was last seen by his family leaving for work. Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28, was the fourth AP staffer to die violently in the Iraq war and the second AP employee killed in less than a month. He had been a messenger and occasional cameraman for the AP for 2 1/2 years. 

"All of us at AP share the pain and grief being felt by Ahmed's family and friends," said AP President and CEO Tom Curley. "The situation for our journalists in Iraq is unprecedented in AP's 161-year history of covering wars and conflicts. The courage of our Iraqi colleagues and their dedication to the story stand as an example to the world of journalism's enduring value."

May he rest in peace. H/T: Michelle

***

As much as it pains me to say it, go read Eason Jordan's piece here. Key graf for me:

Is Captain Hussein a reliable news source? While we now know he's genuine, he was not an authorized spokesman. His critics, including his Iraqi government bosses and the U.S. military, have challenged the veracity of many of AP reports attributed to him. Many violent incidents reported by Captain Hussein via the AP were not reported by other western news organizations, raising suspicions about whether all those incidents occurred. The controversy likely will linger in this area, with third party reporting being done to determine the accuracy of Captain Hussein's statements to the AP.

***

Haditha and Jamil Should Lead to Media Reform
Bruce Kesler

The conduct of the U.S. media in the Haditha and the Jamil Hussein stories should be seen as central case studies of, either, how the major media continued to decline or of how it regenerated itself. Present indicators lean to the former, but surely some good minds see the opportunity for the latter.

I’ll return to Jamil Hussein, after Haditha, but first a word from Rick Moran (who, by the way, has favored withdrawal from Iraq): (Well worth reading the whole Moran post.)

It does little good to point out that the real story is not whether Hussein exists but rather whether the information he was a confirming source for in 61 stories is true or false. That’s because the left doesn’t seem interested in whether or not the news from Iraq is real or imagined. “Fake but accurate” is fine with them.

A prime example of what Moran characterizes as “triumphalism” by liberal and left-wing press and bloggers can be seen in Editor & Publisher’s cherry picking of conservative blogs’ reaction to the surprise existence of Jamil Hussein, totally ignoring the more important problems with his information being unsupported.

As I wrote about Haditha:

To the extent that the prosecutors’ case relies upon the Iraqi stringers and suspect and contradictory “witnesses” used by U.S. media, their case will be both weak and will probably expose the grave shortcomings of the U.S. media’s operations in the Iraq war zone…”

Based upon these suspect sources, U.S. media largely condemned the Marines involved, and most attached that to their meme of opposition to the U.S. in Iraq.

As today’s San Diego Union Tribune update on Haditha is sub-headlined, “Experts say it could change the Marines.” I’d say, that alone, changing the most successful fighting force on earth, is a mighty significant impact of the Haditha charges. I’d also say that, conversely, it may and should change the media. ...

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 10:29

And the Questions Remain the Same
Confederate Yankee

I'd never quite appreciated how amusing the Leftist swarm could be until last night and this morning, where an Associated Press report that Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf had finally, at long last confirmed the existence of Captain Jamil Hussein hit the wires, and liberals around the country (and around the world) conflated Hussein's ability to exist with the veracity of his claims.

The illogical leap this took—to purposefully decide that someone's state of existing is an immediate and overwhelming vindication that everything he claimed was true—is massive in its undertaking, and truly staggering to behold. Rarely have so many been willing to overlook so much in the simple hope of being able to say—or in many cases shriek—"I told you so!"

But the simple fact of the matter is that simply existing does not grant validity to the stories that several someone’s purport to have occurred.

The accuser in the Duke Lacrosse rape case assuredly exists, but it is her multiple stories and the lack of evidence that throws her accounts of what happened on the night of March 13, 2006 into question. She has presented multiple accusations, and multiple versions of her accusations, and yet, nearly the overwhelming majority of people following the case to any degree feel she probably falsified the events she reported. The feel this way because her story kept changing, and while there should have been copious evidence to support her claims, none has thus far been found.

And so it is with the on-going Associated Press scandal that started with the claim of one Iraqi Police Captain by the name of Jamil Hussein on November 24, 2006. ...

Read the whole thing, people. Read the whole thing.

***

Two to not miss at Patterico's place: AP Staffer Killed in Iraq , Eason Jordan on Jamil Hussein

***

Wow! Now I'm getting my very own hate mail -- well, me and a half dozen other "righty bozos" who've been following the Jamilgate story. I'm moving up in the world! Anyway, I guess we're all supposed to tuck our tails twixt our legs and cry ourselves to sleep over this:

AP's Editor Criticizes Those Who Questioned Iraq Source
By Joe Strupp

NEW YORK Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll on Friday criticized those who questioned the existence of an AP Iraq source, who was proven this week to be real, saying the scrutiny has now endangered the man's life.

"I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story," Carroll told E&P, referring to Jamil Hussein, an Iraq police captain. "AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq."

Carroll pointed out that critics should be more concerned with the fact that Hussein could face imprisonment for being a source to journalists than how AP handled the situation. "A man who is a legitimate police official who has talked to journalists is threatened with arrest for doing so," she said. "Doesn't that bother anybody other than me? Officials being threatened with arrest for talking to reporters ought to be of concern." ...

Well cry me a freakin' river! How long has AP been quoting this turkey by name, and now it's our fault the Iraqi government wants to talk to him? Yeah. Sure. Right on.

Has it occurred to anyone besides Curt and me that we still don't have a source other than the AP for Jamil's existence? We've gone from taking AP's word for his existence to taking AP's word that the Iraqi Ministry of Information says he exists. Gee, that's an improvement. If he really does exist and the MOI's been wrong all this time about all I can say is "Even Baghdad Bob kept the trains running on time." Where's the beef, people? Where's the beef? I want mug shots. I want a CENTCOM news release. What I really want is Kathleen Carroll's head on a pike, but I suppose that's asking too much.

I'm sticking with the prediction I made yesterday:

What we're going to be hearing by Saturday is:

"Jamil's afraid of getting arrested so he's gone so deep underground that even his old AP contacts can't find him. But we really did talk to him last week. Really we did. Really!"

***

Part 30 of a series. Part 31

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 5, 2007 at 06:49 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 04 January 2007
 

Jamil identified, facing arrest?

CENTCOM says AP's "Iraqi police source" isn't Iraqi police -- Part 29 -- Continued from this post.

Did I waste the afternoon writing poetry?

Ode To Jamil

"Yesterday upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
So should we care
What he has to say?

Maybe, but color this ol' dog skeptical.

Jamil Hussein development: "Faces arrest?"
Michelle Malkin

Just received this from Linda Wagner of the Associated Press:

The following news story about your recent inquiry has just moved on the AP wire.

BC-Iraq-Jamil Hussein,1116<
Iraq threatens arrest of police captain who spoke to media<
By STEVEN R. HURST=
Associated Press Writer=

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.

Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press.

The captain, whose full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, was one of the sources for an AP story in late November about the burning and shooting of six people during a sectarian attack at a Sunni mosque. ...

Full story here. More:

On Thursday, Khalaf told AP that the ministry at first had searched its files for Jamil Hussein and found no one. He said a later search turned up Capt. Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, assigned to the Khadra police station.

But the AP had already identified the captain by all three names in a story on Nov. 28-- two days before the Interior Ministry publicly denied his existence on the police rolls.

Khalaf did not say whether the U.S. military had ever been told that Hussein in fact exists. Garver, the U.S. military spokesman, said Thursday that he was not aware that the military had ever been told....

Read the whole thing, then keep an eye on Michelle's post. This one could have legs. Color this old dog very, very skeptical. So, the Iraqi Police may or may not arrest some dude and claim he's Jamil, then they may or may not put him in a line-up where the AP people can claim "Yes we see him but we aren't going to identify him; must protect our sources, y'know," and we're all supposed to just forget about all those sole-sourced stories that still don't check out? And our source for all this new-found knowledge is ... the AP?

***

AP Claims Jamil Hussein Is Real, Faces Arrest
Confederate Yankee

Well now, aren't things just getting lively?

The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.

Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press. ...

When contacted for a response moments ago, the U.S military (MNF-I PAO) stated:

Mr Owens,

The validity of the AP story below has not been confirmed at this time.

As it is just several hours after midnight in Iraq, the key players in MNF-I PAO were probably caught in bed, something probably not entirely surprising to the Associated Press. I question the timing.

As far as the AP's story goes, it does raise some very interesting questions, and I think I'll have a very entertaining weekend trying to make sense of it all ...

***

Allahpundit overreacts here.

***

You know where this is going, people. Check out this paragraph from the AP piece Michelle linked to:

Hussein told the AP on Wednesday that he learned the arrest warrant would be issued when he returned to work on Thursday after the Eid al-Adha holiday. His phone was turned off Thursday and he could not be reached for further comment.

What we're going to be hearing by Saturday is:

"Jamil's afraid of getting arrested so he's gone so deep underground that even his old AP contacts can't find him. But we really did talk to him last week. Really we did. Really!"

***

Would someone who came here from LGF please leave a comment telling me where the link is? Do I need to thank Charles or one of the lizardoid minions?

***

Curt reacts here with some reminders about some 'splainin' Capt Hussein needs to do, if in fact he really exists.

***

Thanks, Michelle!

***

Don Surber comments here.

***

Dan Riehl: Jamil Hussein Found: Questions Remain

***

Patterico: Breaking: Jamil Hussein Has Been Found

***

Armed Liberal: Jamail Found?

***

Ed Morrissey: Oh, You Mean That Jamil Hussein!

***

Jules Crittenden: Jamilblog

***

Greyhawk: Re: Jamil

***

Karl at Protein Wisdom has an awesome excellent post on the matter here.

***

Part 29 of a series. Part 30.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 4, 2007 at 05:41 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

The wit and wisdom of Jamil Hussein

***

The Humor Of Jamil Hussein
Posted by Curt

Hey, look everybody!  Capt. Jamil Hussein has his own blog:

OK, the truth is I made up the thing with the burned bodies. Big deal! Have you never made anything up? After Bilal Hussein got arrested, the AP stringers moved down a few names in the Baghdad phone book and started calling me for stories. So I said, "Hey, dude, I don't know anything."

But these AP guys protested and said "Your last name is Hussein! You have to know something!"

I told them that half the people in Iraq are named Hussein but they didn't believe me.

Plus we have some great humor at Ace of Spades HQ:

[...]

And Bob at Confederate Yankee has just received some JMail.

Meanwhile it appears many are starting to view the news coming out of Iraq with a jaundiced eye: ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 4, 2007 at 02:27 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 03 January 2007
 

Michelle Malkin, Bryan Preston headed for Iraq

CENTCOM says AP's "Iraqi police source" isn't Iraqi police -- Part 28 -- Continued from this post.

Not gonna try to excerpt something this long and this important. Read it here or here.

***

Heh.

***

Video: Brit Hume reports on Jamilgate

***

Curt has an excellent related post here. Some very interesting coincidences indeed.

***

AP says UP Yours: Newspaper Unaccountability
Bruce Kesler

The latest response by Associated Press executive editor Kathleen Carroll to the inability of any independent investigation to unearth the AP’s ghost informant, Jamil Hussein, should be headlined, “AP says UP yours,” instead of the E&P’s “Continues to Stand by Reporting.”

Ms. Carroll, apparently, feels well insulated from the public as she is from verifiable facts or accountability.

Michelle Malkin replies to Carroll’s accusation that bloggers in the U.S. are not on the scene, and thus ignorant, by announcing her own embed in Iraq. Malkin, also, invites the AP’s Carroll:

Ms. Carroll, why not leave your "air-conditioned office...thousands of miles from the scene" and find out for yourself if "Jamil Hussein" is who AP says he is? Or is it the "do as I say" standard for bloggers and "not as I do" for MSM news executives in their high-rise offices in Manhattan?

As I noted, Carroll apparently herself has little foreign reporting experience and none in combat.

One wonders how to penetrate the insularity of such media barons like Carroll. ...

***

Part 28 of a series. Part 29

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 3, 2007 at 12:21 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 02 January 2007
 

Eason Jordan calls out al-AP on Jamilgate!
-- Updated and bumped: al-AP "responds"

CENTCOM says AP's "Iraqi police source" isn't Iraqi police -- Part 27 -- Continued from this post.

When I heard Eason Jordan had crawled out from under his rock I figured the best thing to do was just ignore him, and I dang sure never expected to link to anything he wrote. Life's just full of surprises. I guess if FDR could make nice with Stalin to fight an even greater evil ...

Jamilgate: Eason Jordan goes nuclear on the AP
Allahpundit

No righty blogger will ever trust him, but give him credit for pushing this knowing that it won't endear him to his remaining fans. I look forward to Eric Boehlert's next dopey exercise in What Warbloggers Believe, in which Eric explains how a guy who once accused U.S. troops of trying to murder journalists is actually a neocon Bush-booster busying himself with minutiae to avoid facing the hard facts on the ground.

Expect some sniping at him from the left tomorrow, too, with nastiness inversely proportional to familiarity with the details of the case. Everything in Iraq is as bad as it could be, especially the things that never happened, and anyone who says otherwise is a tendentious liar who'd happily betray the Larger Truth for the, um, actual truth.

As for the post itself, ...

The AP's Jamil Hussein Scandal
Eason Jordan

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly.

This controversy and the AP's handling of it call into question the credibility, integrity, and smarts of one of the world's biggest, most influential, most respected news organizations, the New York-based Associated Press.

The back story:

[see my previous 26 Jamilgate posts]

In the absence of irrefutable evidence that Captain Hussein exists and that the original AP report was accurate, bloggers and a few mainstream media journalists kept plugging away in an effort to get to the truth about whether there is a Captain Hussein and whether six Sunnis were burned alive that day.

Five weeks after the disputed episode, key questions remain unanswered, but what is clear is the AP has botched its handling of this controversy - and it's not going away until the AP deals with it forthrightly and transparently. ..

Therefore, in the absence of clear and compelling evidence to corroborate the AP's exclusive story and Captain Hussein's existence, we must conclude for now that the AP's reporting in this case was flawed.

To make matters worse, Captain Jamil Hussein was a key named source in more than 60 AP stories on at least 25 supposed violent incidents over eight months.

Until this controversy is resolved, every one of those AP reports is tainted.

When two governments challenge the veracity of your reporting, when there are reasonable doubts about whether your prime named source for a sensational exclusive story exists, when there's no proof a reported horrific incident occurred, when the news outlet responsible for the disputed report stonewalls and is stridently defensive, when the validity of dozens of other of your reports has been called into question as a result, then that news organization has a scandal on its hands, and that is where the AP finds itself. ...

I, therefore, urge the AP to appoint an independent panel to determine the facts about the disputed report, to determine whether Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein exists, and to share the panel's full findings and recommendations with the public.

Until this matter is resolved, the AP's credibility will suffer. ...

As much as I hate to say it, read the whole thing. I've even bookmarked the site, would you believe. Hell will freeze over, however, before you see Eason Jordan listed as a "Friend" on my sidebar.

***

Jamilgate: Eason Jordan (!) Demands Panel Investigate AP
Good Lt

... We'll see how long it lasts, but the stonewalling of the AP regarding the Jamil Hussein scandal has gotten so bad that Eason Jordan (yes, that Eason Jordan) is even demanding that the AP appoint an independent panel to investigate and uncover the truth here.

And yes, I and others have been very critical of the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief, with good reason. That should indicate how badly the AP botched this incident. One can't exactly say whether Jordan is doing this out of true journalistic interest or for some other unknown reason, but it frankly doesn't matter. What's right is right.  ...

***

Meanwhile, from the news organization EJ helped create:

***

"Confederate Yankee" Bob Owens just posted two absolutely excellent related pieces. Read Gone in 60 Stories: The Grunt Work and Gone in 60 Stories, now, in that order.

***

Questions Will Remain Until the AP Adequately Addresses This 
Lorie Byrd

I have been critical of Eason Jordan in the past and will continue to be, but I have to agree with his assessment of the AP's reaction to the Jamil Hussein story.

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly. ...

To make matters worse, Captain Jamil Hussein was a key named source in more than 60 AP stories on at least 25 supposed violent incidents over eight months.

Until this controversy is resolved, every one of those AP reports is tainted.

Jordan says the U.S. military was quick to question the "Burning Six" story, but did not remind readers that what prompted them to do so was the work of Curt at Flopping Aces who contacted Centcom with questions about Hussein. This is one of those stories bloggers were instrumental in uncovering and bloggers remain the only ones really pushing hard to get at the truth of this and other suspicious sources used in Iraq and other news coverage. If Jamil Hussein is a valid source, preferably a living, breathing one, the AP should be bending over backward to provide evidence to put this to controversy to rest. The fact that they haven't does incredible damage to their credibility. (Thanks to Kim for pointing me to the Jordan post.)

Update: ...

***

Curt reacts here.

***

Bruce Kesler has an excellent related post here.

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 06:48

"It's Just A Scratch"
Armed Liberal

In a display of clueless arrogance unmatched since the Black Knight refused to yield to King Arthur, the AP replies to its critics on l'affaire Jamail Hussein:

NEW YORK A long-running dispute between The Associated Press and critics over one of its Iraqi sources show no signs of abating, despite at least two lengthy rebuttals by the news organization. The new IraqSlogger web site, founded by former CNN news chief, Eason Jordan, is out with a fresh challenge, after failing to resolve the issue in its own detective work. This has not set off a new round of examination by the AP, apparently.

Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor, told E&P today that she had not read Jordan's latest item, posted Monday, and likely would not. But she stood by the news organization's previous statements backing the existence of an Iraqi police captain, Jamail Hussein.

"I've been pretty public about what we have done to get to the crux of the criticism we have gotten about it," she added. When asked about critics' demands that AP produce Hussein to prove his existence, she said "that area [where he works] has pretty much been ethnically cleansed, it is a nasty place and continues to be."

Carroll said that Hussein "is a guy we've talked to for years," adding that "we don't have anything new to say about it, nothing new to add."  ...

Here's the problem, Ms. Carroll. We don't believe he exists. If he doesn't exist, much of your reporting from Iraq is subject to dispute. If your reporting from Iraq is subject to dispute, your credibility is pretty much blown apart - and I don't know what else you have to sell. ... 

Do read the whole thing. Un-freakin'-believable.

***

What Else Is Made Up Regarding Iraq?
A. J. Strata

Reader Crosspatch noted a series of like sounding, yet unsourced and unspecified death figures for Iraq in the comments of this post. One would have to wonder, in light of all the shenanigans discovered with AP and other media credibility on Iraq stories, whether these have any basis in reality. So I also did some searching on vague stories with anonymous sources of deaths in Iraq and found these:

(1) Oct 16, 2006 - 81 bodies found in Baghdad, from an unspecified “official with Baghdad emergency police” (CNN).

(2) Sept 13, 2006 - 65 bodies found across Iraq, from unspecified Iraq police sources (AP of course)

3) Sept 15, 2006 - 30 bodies found in Baghdad, from no source whatsoever (AP again).

What is amazing is the consistency of unspecified sources. Why would anyone be concerned about naming the death toll in Iraq? What possible reason would someone have to remaining anonymous? They are death tolls. What our reader Crosspatch noted was a series of Reuters articles that involved a common recurring source designated “an Interior Ministry source”. While some of the reporting seems reasonable to come from an Interior Ministry source, the fact is no one can trust the media anymore. After the incident with the staged photographs in Lebanon (see my posts on Hezbollah for evidence and links to others) and now the mythical AP source Jamil Hussein,why should we trust the media? After CBS News and Dan RaTher tried to pawn off forged documents as real evidence against our President why should we treat the media as credible? After the media was duped by forgeries in the Downing Street memos - why should the media be trusted to know what the truth is? ...

***

AP continues to shred its credibility by stonewalling on Jamil Hussein
By Charles Bird

Jamil Hussein has appeared as an AP source in 60± news stories. The most spectacular item was the one about four mosques being destroyed and six Sunnis being burned alive. As it turns out, at worst, one mosque was destroyed and there is no evidence that anyone was murdered via torching.

When challenged on the veracity of the story, AP editors went on the offensive and attacked those who questioned its sources, playing the typical motive-impugning game that we see all too often from the hardline Liberal-Left. Apparently, to AP, the motives of government sources are always in question yet the motives of its own sources are pure as the driven snow. AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll still stands by Jamil Hussein, even though the man cannot be located anywhere, and even though both Iraqi and American government officials deny that Jamil Hussein is a police captain or spokesman for the Iraqi police.

The latest journalist calling out AP is none other than Eason Jordan, the former CNN news executive who faced his own blogstorm and ended up resigning because of his unsupportable off-the-record remarks that American troops were deliberately targeting and killing journalists in Iraq. ...

***

Don Surber: AP's credibility self-immolates

***

Patterico:

Ms. Carroll, I’ve got “news” for you: this is not going away. The bunker mentality is not going to work.

P.S. While I want to know more about Jam(a)il Hussein, I continue to believe that it is a mistake to focus on his “existence” to the exclusion of focusing on the other problems with the AP story. I am primarily concerned with the fact that the initial AP story on the “burning six” reported that four mosques were burned. The AP later dialed that back to one mosque, but never admitted error. I’d like to see pictures of those mosques — a possibility that Armed Liberal has dangled in front of us for days. Pictures like that would be a hard fact that we could compare to Jam(a)il Hussein’s story — and if they contradict him, then Owens’s lack of corroboration for 40 other stories takes on new significance.

***

Part 27 of a series. Part 28

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 2, 2007 at 02:16 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 29 December 2006
 

L.A. Times (Almost) Admits Ramadi Airstrike Didn’t Happen

CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 26 -- Continued from this post.

LA Times revisits controversial Ramadi airstrike story
See-Dubya

Back in November, blogger Patterico spent a lot of time looking into an incident in Ramadi in which it was alleged in the L.A. Times that U.S. airstrikes killed several civilians. The incident in many ways set the stage for the ongoing questions about coverage of the Hurriya burning and the AP’s reliance on “Capt. Jamil Hussein”.

The U.S. military adamantly denied that any airstrikes had occurred in Ramadi on November 15th, and they still do. Patterico asked for a response from Solomon Moore, the Times reporter who wrote that story, but never received one.

Now Moore has responded. And, well, it looks pretty good for Patterico. The headline is “U.S. Says Ramadi Operations Didn’t Rely On Airstrikes”.

There may have been tragic collateral damage as a result of tank fire (or insurgent fire, come to think of it) that day. But Patterico’s point wasn’t that everything is perfect in Iraq. His point was that the U.S. side of this story wasn’t getting told in the LA Times.

Now it is. ...

***

L.A. Times (Almost) Admits Ramadi Airstrike Didn’t Happen
Patterico

The L.A. Times has finally reported the military’s denial of an airstrike in Ramadi on November 13 or 14, in this story.

The paper doesn’t exactly admit that no airstrike occurred in central Ramadi on November 13 or 14. But new interviews done by the paper’s mysterious unnamed Ramadi stringer have Iraqis saying they “assumed” that it was an airstrike that caused the deaths:

Several residents said that they saw helicopters and a jet fighter during the confrontations and assumed that some of the explosions were caused by airstrikes. U.S. ground units are often accompanied by air support during military operations.

The editors also appear to be backing off of the article’s original claim of 15-20 “pulverized” houses:

“Six houses were leveled to the ground and 10 others were damaged to varying degrees,” said Ahmad Hummadi, 50, a laborer. “But all of the houses were abandoned because they were no longer suitable for habitation.”

The editors appear to be demanding immediate answers from the military again:

Marines did not immediately respond to inquiries about the total number of civilian dead . . .

Why would Marines need to “immediately respond” to inquiries in a December 28 update to a November 15 story??

***

IBD Wants To Meet “Capt. Jamil Hussein”

***

Part 26 of a series. Part 27.

Contributed by Bill Faith on December 29, 2006 at 04:39 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 26 December 2006
 

A Correction About Jamil Hussein! (Updated and bumped)

CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 25 -- Continued from this post.

A Correction About Jamil Hussein!
See-Dubya

Unfortunately, the correction in question is not from the AP, but it’s a good one nonetheless. On Dec. 19th, Media Matters cranky-pants Eric Boehlert misquoted me and changed the meaning of what I said. He also wrote about the “deafening silence” from the “warbloggers” about the tragic murder of AP cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah–which I had blogged about. I set Boehlert straight here, and his latest column corrects it about as grudgingly as possible:

[...]

One could easily turn the tables on Boehlert and say, for example, “No anti-war blogger has noted the death of (specific American troop X) or (specific piece of good news Y). Therefore, they all hate the troops.” But extrapolating that from a single uncovered story would be meaningless, incorrect, and laughably transparent. It’s as false a caricature as Boelhert offers of “warbloggers”: that all of us think every foreign correspondent is basically Ramzi Yousef with a microphone.  ...

***

How Is A Priori Synthetic Journalism Possible? - Ask IraqSlogger!
Armed Liberal

I was hopeful when Eason Jordan started Iraqslogger - I really do think we need a better pipeline into news from and about Iraq, and I believed that this venture had a lot of potential. Maybe it still does.

Maybe not so much.

First, Omar, over at Iraq the Model, tears up a detail- (and error-) rich article about Iraqi media. The clear point of the IraqSlogger article was that the Iraqi media are too intimidated or politically connected to report on the (horrible) truth that is being reported in media abroad.

A few of Omar's points: ...

...there's a lot more.

I know, I know, the array of wrong facts doesn't mean the story is wrong. And in fact, Omar makes on point that may be somewhat supportive of the story.

But is it too much to ask that news 'analysis' be analytic, and proceed from fact and observation to conclusion, rather than the other way around?

Reading the level of detail in this story, a typical reader - even someone skeptical like me - will nod and see the accretion of fact as supporting the writer's conclusions. That is, of course, until the facts are shown to be a tissue of error and falsehood.

Then I go over and read the Iraqslogger feeds, and we get this gem: ...

If this is what Eason Jordan is hoping to rebuild his reputation on - a tired rehash of Democratic Underground - I'll predict a failure. But since there's an inexhaustible demand for facts and stories - made up or real - that prove the dominant narrative about Iraq, he may well get a lot of traffic while he's doing it. ...

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 00:03

Burning Memories: Watch the AP change their Hurriya sourcing
See-Dubya

Confederate Yankee thinks he’s so clever, poking holes in the AP’s version of the Sunni-burning in Hurriya. When first revisiting the story, the AP reported that “two workers from Kazamiyah Hospital” confirmed that “bodies from the clashes and immolation” had shown up at the Kazamiyah hospital morgue.

Well, CY says that according to an Iraqi Brigadier General (not named Jamil Hussein) in an exchange with Multinational Corps-Iraq’s Public Affairs Officer, there is no morgue in Kazamiyah hospital.

Think that’s a pretty good catch, huh? Maybe the AP caught it themselves, because on November 28th, when they re-visited Hurriya after more challenges, this is what a witness told them:

One witness said he and other people from the neighborhood took the six immolation victims to the Sunni cemetery near Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib suburb and buried them after the gunbattle. That witness said one of the victims was the Mustafa mosque muezzin or prayer caller, Ahmed al-Mashadani. He did not know the names of the five others, but said they were all members of the al-Mashadani tribe.

Is this how the AP corrects its stories? Whether there is a morgue at Kazamiyah hospital or not, the destination of the bodies changed within three days, without notice or explanation. Why would we presume this witness–supposedly one of their two anonymous eyewitnesses to the burning–is any more reliable than the fellow who said the bodies went into the morgue at Kazamiyah hospital? Which of the AP’s sources lied to them? ...

***

Haven't had much to say on this lately because there really hasn't been any new news. Check out Curt's post here and Confederate Yankee's here.

***

Part 25 of series. Part 26.

Contributed by Bill Faith on December 26, 2006 at 12:03 AM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Friday, 22 December 2006
 

We'll live in shame or go down in flames ...

CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 24 -- Continued from this post.

The Phantom Press Corps Song

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high, into the sun,
Down we dive, spouting our lies from under
At 'em boys, give 'er the gun,
We'll live in shame, or go down in flames,
Hey! Nothing can stop the phan-tom press corps. ...

Sorry. Fuzzy flashback.

No exciting new news today but do read Eric's post here and Curt's here.

***

Also Confederate Yankee's latest here and here.

***

Part 24 of a series. Part 25 

Contributed by Bill Faith on December 22, 2006 at 05:25 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 21 December 2006
 

Baghdad's Own Lieutenant Kije (Updated and bumped)

CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 23 -- Continued from this post.

Solvalogging: Jamil Hussein... Baghdad's Own Lieutenant Kije
Hatched by Dafydd

So John over at Power Line sez,

I assume that Associated Press reporters don't just make stuff up, and, when in doubt, attribute it to a fictitious character named Jamil Hussein.

Bah, humbug, sez I. I think that is exactly what they have done in this case!

In a 1927 short story by Yury Tynyanov, a Russian general is reading a report to Czar Paul I; the czar mishears a word and thinks the general is talking about a "Lieutenant Kije," who sounds like a brave and brilliant fellow. Czar Paul demands to hear more about him.

As it is death to contradict the czar, the general makes up several wonderful missions and adventures of the entirely fictitious Lieutenant Kije. Soon other commanders join in the fun; eventually, there is an entire cottage industry of Kije sightings, Kije adventures, and Kije romances. Lt. Kije eventually gets married -- and while the czar never seems to run into the fellow himself, the soldiers sure do enjoy all the vodka the czar supplies! ...

Can't guess where this is going, can you? Read the whole thing.

***

Got an appointment to leave for but don't miss Sir, that’s not quite what I said.

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 02:11

The AP (non-)responds and another search comes up empty
Michelle Malkin

Yesterday, I contacted the AP about the "Jamil Hussein"/Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim/Ghulaim findings and asked these simple questions:

Ref. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006579.htm

1. Is Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim the real name of your oft-cited source, "Captain Jamil Hussein" aka " Jamil Gholaiem Hussein?"

2. If not, where is "Captain Jamil Hussein" currently working? If he is a Baghdad police officer, as AP asserts, why hasn't anyone -- not CPATT, not MOI, not Marc Danzinger's sources [nor Eason Jordan's] -- been able to locate him?

3. What is your response to the CPATT officers' report that Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim denies being AP's source?

Here is the response I received yesterday from AP media relations officer Linda Wagner:

Michelle-

I have no additional information for you at this time.

Linda

I also cc'ed my questions to AP exec editor Kathleen Carroll.

She did not respond.

In the meantime, ...

***

Media Matters says it’s raining
Bruce Kesler

A Yiddish proverb says, don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining. That seems to be the weather report from Left bloggers – it’s just rain -- regarding the Associated Press’ refusal to produce its star source for 61 reports of violence in Baghdad, including the Shia immolation of six Sunnis who, also, no one can find, nor to produce any photos or other evidence.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, a left-wing self-described truth squad aimed at conservatives, has taken liberties with the truth and the gravity of the matter by using partial and out of context quotes from conservative bloggers to claim a conservative conspiracy to silence the press.

As Wikipedia sums up, Media Matters has some truth problems about its rainmakers:

On Dec. 1, 2004 Media Matters issued a statement saying that "neither Media Matters nor its president and CEO David Brock has received any money from [George] Soros or from any organization with which he is affiliated." Three months later, it revised this statement by acknowledging support from organizations and individuals aligned with or funded by Soros such as moveon.org, Peter Lewis and the New Democratic Network, but denying direct funding by Soros himself. ...

***

Part 23 of a series. Part 24

Contributed by Bill Faith on December 21, 2006 at 05:02 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 20 December 2006
 

Tracing "Jamil Hussein's" footsteps
and ignoring anti-blog hatred

CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 22 -- Continued from this post.

In which an assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal  -- he's been working there since way back in '05! -- does not solve the Jamil Hussein mystery.

Tracing "Jamil Hussein's" footsteps and ignoring anti-blog hatred
Michelle Malkin

After receiving initial reports from a Civilian Police Advisory Training Team (CPATT) source two days ago and investigating further, here's what I can tell you:

According to two CPATT officials--one in the U.S, one in Iraq--there is no one named "Jamil Hussein" working now or ever at either at the Yarmouk or al Khadra police stations. That is what they have said along and nothing has changed.

The Baghdad-based CPATT officer says there is no "Sgt. Jamil Hussein" at Yarmouk, which contradicts what Marc Danziger's contacts found. I have another military source on the ground who works with the Iraqi Army (separate and apart from the CPATT sources) and is checking into whether anyone named "Jamil Hussein" has ever worked at Yarmouk.

There is only one police officer whose first name is "Jamil" currently working at the Khadra station, according to my CPATT sources.

His name is Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim (alternate spelling per CPATT is "Ghulaim.") Previously, Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim worked at a precinct in Yarmouk, according to the CPATT sources. Curt at Flopping Aces has received the same info.

Now, go back and look at the full name and location information the Associated Press cited in its statement on the matter:

[T]hat captain has long been know to the AP reporters and has had a record of reliability and truthfulness. He has been based at the police station at Yarmouk, and more recently at al-Khadra, another Baghdad district, and has been interviewed by the AP several times at his office and by telephone. His full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein.

Let's review: AP's source, supposedly named "Jamil Gholaiem Hussein," used to work at Yarmouk but now works at al Khadra. CPATT says the one person named "Jamil" now at al Khadra -- Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim -- also used to work at Yarmouk. His rank is the same as that of AP's alleged source. His last name is almost identical to the middle name of AP's alleged source. (FYI: In Arabic, the middle name is one's father's name; the last name is one's grandfather's.)

According to the CPATT officers, Captain Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim "denies ever speaking to the AP or any other media." I retracted information to the contrary two days ago based on a single CPATT source who said he had erroneously stated that Gulaim had admitted being the source.

To repeat: Both CPATT sources in the U.S. and Iraq have confirmed that Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim denies speaking to the AP.

That leaves a couple of unanswered questions:

1. Is Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim the real name of AP's oft-cited source?

2. ...

***

Two Imams Denied The Hurriya Immolation Ever Happened 
SeeDubya

No one disputes that there was violence in Hurriya on Nov. 24th. But the sensational man-burning thing which originated with Captain Jamil Hussein, and made it into the Times of London as well as the AP wires, was discredited as "rumor" in the Washington Post the next day (this link goes to the Boston Globe version of their story):

Throughout the day, rumors of new atrocities committed against Sunnis floated across Baghdad, including one in which six Sunnis were said to have been doused with kerosene and torched to death in Hurriyah. But two local imams denied such an attack took place.

Mad blog rabble, huh? They're talking about you, Washington Post Iraq Bureau.

Now to be fair, the WaPo does credit the "torched mosques" angle of the story, which is interesting because both CENTCOM and Armed Liberal's investigators in Iraq confirmed there wasn't such a thing, and the AP itself implicitly reduced the number of torched mosques . But the WaPo ups the number to five:

There was no shortage of confirmed incidents. In the mixed Hurriyah neighborhood, Shi'ite militiamen torched at least five Sunni mosques on Islam's holiest prayer day, police and residents reported. Other mosques were attacked by gunmen firing bullets from the rooftops of nearby houses, witnesses said. ... 

***

Hey AP! Where's The Stinking Proof You Reported... 3 Weeks Ago?

***

More here and here. Got something I need to do but I'll try to come back with excerpts later.

*** *** Excerpts inserted, defective link corrected

Jamilgate: Michelle’s sources can’t find Capt. Hussein
Allahpundit

Actually, I think they have found him but he’s probably not willing to come clean about being the source for fear of disciplinary action. Pseudonyms are a no-no according to the AP’s own internal procedures, but it may be that he gave them a false name without them knowing or being able to check.

Eric Boehlert revisited this subject yesterday in yet another episode of What Warbloggers Believe. What warbloggers believe, says Eric, is that Iraq is a magical fairyland of sunshine and candy canes where Baghdad police didn’t find 76 bodies in the streets this morning. Or, alternately, that Iraq really is in dire straits but it’s entirely the media’s fault. He’s not clear which he thinks it is, but who cares? Light your torch; it’s strawman time.

Warbloggers, all boosters of the doomed U.S. invasion, have been poring over the AP’s dispatches, feverishly dissecting paragraphs in search of proof for their all-consuming conspiracy theory that biased American journalists, too cowardly to go get the bloody news in Iraq themselves, are relying on local news stringers who have obvious sympathies for insurgents and who actively “spread terrorist propaganda,” according to right-wing blog Little Green Footballs. The result of the AP hoax? Gullible, or “average,” Americans have been duped into believing there is a “civil war” raging in Baghdad today.…

See, it’s really the AP’s fault we’re losing the war. (Plus, it’s ignoring all the “good news” from Iraq.)

I don’t believe any of that, but fine. We’re still warming up. Here’s the good stuff.

The warbloggers’ strawman is built around the claim that if the AP hadn’t reported the Burned Alive story, which was no more than a few sentences within a larger here’s-the-carnage-from-Baghdad-today article [Wrong. When the story first hit Drudge, the burning six were the only element in it. — ed.], then Americans would still gladly support the war in Iraq…

The “single story” canard is a neat example of Boehlert’s disingenuousness. He’s written two columns about Jamilgate now; there are enough links embedded in both to show he’s done his homework. Which means he knows very well this wasn’t the only story the AP’s used Jamil Hussein for. The actual number, as Michelle notes, exceeds 60. He also knows that the AP originally claimed four mosques were burned and that that claim has since disappeared into the ether without so much as a clarification. Just like he also knows, courtesy of Robert Bateman, that it’s unlikely in the extreme based on Hussein’s location that he’d be a credible witness for the wide variety of attacks sourced to him by the AP. All of which make this story highly dubious, yet none of which Boehlert sees fit to mention anywhere in his piece. Why?

Because he doesn’t care if the story’s bogus or not. He’ll say en passant that he does because he knows, as a journalist and media critic, that he has to. But it’s strictly pro forma. His position seems to be that the story’s true in the Larger Sense, as a microcosm of the brutality in Iraq, even if it’s not, you know, technically true (”as if an AP retraction would change a thing on the ground in Baghdad, where electricity remains scarce, but sectarian death squads roam freely”). In other words, “fake but accurate.” That’s his bottom line here and that’s why it’s dishonest of him and his pals to even pretend to care whether the report’s accurate. As far as they’re concerned, if Jamil Hussein turns out to be real, the story’s true; if he turns out not to be real, the story’s True. They can’t go wrong. Meanwhile the AP, if it’s guilty of bad facts to whatever greater or lesser degree, gets an almost completely free pass.

At the risk of suggesting that I know What Warbloggers Believe better than Eric Boehlert does, let me assure you that we’re not using this story as a fig leaf for the war. ...

***

Media Matters Cranky-Pants Dowdifies Me
SeeDubya

Eric Boehlert thinks we miss the big picture. He singles out several "warbloggers" for scorn over the Jamil Hussein inquiry, including yours truly:

With no facts to back up their allegations, warbloggers instead lean heavily on name-calling in their never-ending attempt to libel and smear journalists. "The Western press is negligently or carelessly (I'm not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news," announced warblogger SeeDubya at The Junkyard Blog. Talk about hubris -- stateside warbloggers claim they have a better handle on what's happening in Iraq than reporters who are actually there.

Wow. Did I say that?

No I did not. Dumbass Boehlert just Dowdified me:

As with Patterico's story, there is a range of possibilities here. In both stories, the worst scenario is that the Western press is negligently or carelessly (I'm not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news. But even the best case scenario in each one involves some notable journalistic malfeasance.

Note that Boehlert represented a fragment of a sentence as a complete sentence to make it look like I said something I didn't say. I guess it's fair that he's not concerned about the AP's accuracy, since getting the facts straight for his own writing doesn't trouble him very much.

But what really does bother Boehlert--the thing he hangs his whole preachy little screed on--is the deafening silence from the warbloggers about the murder by insurgents of AP cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, because it just didn't fit our narrative.

Well, here's what one "warblogger" said about that: ...

*** ***

***

Media Matters Isikoffs See Dubya
Patterico

Media Matters’s Eric Boehlert has “Isikoffed” blogger See Dubya.

Surely you remember that term. I invented it back in September, when I noted how Michael Isikoff had altered a quote from an Alberto Gonzales memo without noting the alteration in any way. I therefore proposed that

when a quote is altered without any hint that it has been changed, the quote should be described as having been “Isikoffed.”

This is a variant of Dowdification, which is the practice of distorting the meaning of a quote by using an ellipsis. That’s bad enough — but at least the ellipsis gives the reader an indication that something has been left out. When you “Isikoff” someone, you don’t even let the reader know that the sentence (and its meaning) have been radically altered.

Here is Boehlert:

With no facts to back up their allegations, warbloggers instead lean heavily on name-calling in their never-ending attempt to libel and smear journalists. “The Western press is negligently or carelessly (I’m not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news,” announced warblogger SeeDubya at The Junkyard Blog. Talk about hubris — stateside warbloggers claim they have a better handle on what’s happening in Iraq than reporters who are actually there.

Now here’s what See Dubya actually said, with my emphasis:

As with Patterico’s story, there is a range of possibilities here. In both stories, the worst scenario is that the Western press is negligently or carelessly (I’m not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news. But even the best case scenario in each one involves some notable journalistic malfeasance. ...

***

Mail from Curt while I was working on the above:

I decided to do up some google maps of the Baghdad area to better represent the distances of the attacks SeeDubya showed on his map.  You can check them out here.

I clicked the link to check out the maps and found out they were only a small part of a much larger post I hadn't realized was there.  It's too long and too detailed for any reasonable excerpt to be representative. Read it all.

***

Part 22 of a series. Part 23

Contributed by Bill Faith on December 20, 2006 at 03:07 PM in Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, Jamilgate, Media Malpractice | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack