Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim:

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.)

Pseudonyms? Why should I care about pseudonyms?

Curiouser and curiouser...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:03 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Joseph Rago doesn't seem to like bloggers much. His WSJ op-ed The Blog Mob states that blogs are "Written by fools to be read by imbeciles."

That may be, but I must wonder: How many people check the Wall Street Journal web site several times each day specifically to see what Mr. Rago is going to say?

For all of the things he may or may not have right in his op-ed, I think I detect a touch of jealousy.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:37 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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So the cheesesteak-eating surrender monkey declares that "Militarily we have lost" in Vietnam Iraq. A bold declaration, considering we've never lost more than a skirmish. For anyone familiar with Murtha, these pronouncements are the typical, defeatist, and dishonest rhetoric we've come to expect from him. He has no desire to win any conflict against terrorism, and has staked his political future on a U.S defeat. Ideologically, he surrendered long ago.

That said, Col. Abscam does illustrate a point; we do tend to be quite myopic, and focus on military success as the be-all, end-all measurement of success or failure in Iraq. In particular, our media and leaders seem focused lately almost exclusively on the rise and fall sectarian violence in Baghdad. While Baghdad, as Iraq's largest city and capital is undoubtedly the single most recognizable city in Iraq, does it necessarily follow that images of conflict in Baghdad accurately reflect the state of the nation?

The simple fact is that there are other factors affecting the success or failure of the Iraqi State, and many of these events are happening outside of the Iraqi capital.

One of those "other factors" is the state of the overall Iraqi economy, which as the media will not readily tell you, is booming:

In my December 10th entry, I observed that the Iraqi economy is doing quite well. I wrote, "This economic news also shows is that Iraqi nation may be slowly evolving into three federal sections since most of the economic progress is happening outside the Baghdad." Newsweek is now reporting what others such as Strategypage.com have been showing for the past couple of years, the Iraqi's economy is booming. And just as I wrote, much of this is occurring is outside Baghdad. Newsweek reports, "With security improving in one key spot—the southern oilfields—that figure could go up." But this is not all. Newsweek added, "Even so, there's a vibrancy at the grass roots that is invisible in most international coverage of Iraq. Partly it's the trickle-down effect. However it's spent, whether on security or something else, money circulates. Nor are ordinary Iraqis themselves short on cash. That's boosted economic activity, particularly in retail. Imported goods have grown increasingly affordable, thanks to the elimination of tariffs and trade barriers. Salaries have gone up more than 100 percent since the fall of Saddam, and income-tax cuts (from 45 percent to just 15 percent) have put more cash in Iraqi pockets." What Newsweek is describing supply side economy and guess what, it works in the United States, and it works in Iraq!

The Futurist was even more bold, building upon work done by the Brookings Institute's Iraq Index and a summary of their report, making the case that Coalition forces and the Iraqi government will defeat the insurgency in 2008 in two posts:

We Will Decisively Win in Iraq...in 2008 - Part I

All three of these blog posts hit upon the fact that the burgeoning economic successes felt by Iraqis will push them to desire more stability. Is this a logical thought process?

I'd argue that these theories make sense in a westernized mind. If I have little or nothing, I'll be willing to fight to get something, if just to provide the basics for my family. If I'm doing well, however, and see the potential of doing even better (Iraq has the fastest growing economy in the Middle East), then I'm going to want to be able to enjoy that prosperity. That thought process works for me, but what we don't yet know is if that thought process applies to Iraqis, probably because we simply don't understand the Iraqis more than we understand any other Middle Eastern culture.

Hopefully, that gap in cultural understanding will eventually begin to close and the War on Terror will transition away from physical to information battlefields if our leaders are smart enough to follow the advice in this lengthy but informative George Packer article. Eric Martin builds on the Packer article with points certainly worth considering, though I'm not certain if either man is 100% correct.

Taken all together, and combined with reading the extended works of embedded journalists Yon, Fumento, Totten, Roggio, and others, and we're forced towards a disturbing series of conclusions.

First, the Iraq War was a decisive military victory in 2003, but since that time, American civilian and military leadership has utterly failed to understand the nature of the insurgent and terrorist conflicts, or how to address it on a strategic level.

The Iraq War and larger War on Terror are information wars that our leaders have expressed little interest in, or aptitude for. We (and I include myself here) have for far too long fundamentally considered the War on Terror to be a military endeavor, and certainly there is an important military role to be played in defeating Islamic extremists. The truism remains that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

The problem remains, that for far too long we've simply relied upon killing people once they've metastasized into terrorists; if we follow the advice of those mentioned in Packer's article and others to learn the culture and social networks of the societies that generate our enemies, we can possibly take steps to prevent them from becoming militants by defeating jihadist organizations ideologically. We don't necessarily have to make them like us as so many dhimmis in the United States and especially Europe seem inclined, we simply need to make the effort to understand what triggers those who dislike us to make the jump to acting against us, and eliminate that trigger mechanism.

Despite the lamentations of the defeat-minded media, Democratic politicians and a liberal pundit class under the delusion that a U.S. defeat in Iraq is (a.) inevitable, and (b.) something they can turn to their political advantage; we seem to have a very strong chance of winning in Iraq if we can change our perceptions of how best to fight both this war, and the larger War on Terror.

Despite the increasingly apparent strategic incompetence displayed thus far by our civilian and senior military leadership, our soldiers and marines in the field have performed brilliantly on the tactical level, enabling us to achieve unqualified tactical victories in any direct conflict with terrorist or insurgent forces in Iraq. As MTTs (Military Transition Teams) work with Iraqi Army units impart discipline, professionalism and tactics, the Iraqis are increasing responsible for finding, engaging and killing "Ali Babba"—their term for insurgents—on their own. As a result, we've been able to maintain a stalemate in Iraq, even as we've thus far refused to act against the Syrian and Iranian governments supplying the various insurgency, terrorist, criminal and sectarian forces focused on Balkanizing the country.

Without a doubt, we can win in Iraq. The problem is that we don't seem to be directing our military where they would be the most effective, nor are we doing the other necessary things discussed in Parker's article to personalize and localize success through non-military means.

There are still some major combat operations yet to be waged—al-Sadr's Madhi Army being an almost certain target, and belligerents Iran and Syria are on the horizon and angling towards a direct conflict —but as our MTTs become more skilled at imparting knowledge, the need for U.S. soldiers in direct combat roles should decline, even if the overall number of troops remains close to current levels.

We do do the right things in fits and starts. Today, we handed over Najaf to the Iraqis. In Ramadi, where despite the comparative absence of media attention when compared to Baghdad, the real war against the worst elements of the Sunni insurgency is being fought and won, block by block, over time.

Unfortunately, as time goes on, it seems that our leaders and institutions are unwilling to change, and our population too fickle, to commit to the adaptation of the kind of paradigm shift needed to fight an information-based war that as a media nation, we are quite well-suited to win. As we did in World War II, we seem committed to winning though our overwhelming industrial might and inertia. That is an important element of an eventual victuroy,but we are not in a shooting World War. We could potentially accomplish far more with subtle and not so subtle cultural methods than we could with riflemen and tanks.

Draft Hollywood. Have David Zucker and his equivalents releasing Arab-language satire mocking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muqtada al-Sadr, and Osama bin Laden. Have conspiracy theory-minded director Oliver Stone deliver a JFK focusing on the Machiavellian schemes of Hassan Nasrallah and Bashar Assad, release it in Lebanon, and see how popular Hezbollah remains.

Lend Hollywood behind-the-scenes talents to Middle Eastern casts in pro-Arab democracy, anti-insurgency, anti-terrorist, and anti-Sharia films and television shows. We are well equipped to succeed in a propaganda war in venues large and small, and yet we do not fight this battle, acting if propaganda is a dishonorable way to wage a conflict between cultures, even as the enemy uses those same methods to combat us through our own complacent and perhaps willing media.

At this point, if we win in Iraq, it will be despite our Administration, which does not seem to understand key elements of the non-military conflict. It will be despite a Democratic Party that still does not seem to be able to see beyond the short-term political scraps it can lap up placating a disgruntled populace. If we win, it will be despite a media that either does not know, or does not care, how they are being used to fight against the very democracies that allow them to thrive.

No, if we win in Iraq, the victory will go to the Iraqi people, and the ability of the American soldier, sailor, airman and marines to outlast the incompetence of old generals fighting past wars and politicians more concerned about fighting each other for fickle public opinion.

We can win in Iraq, and indeed we may yet, but it will come in spite of our leadership, not because of it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:19 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Via email, from a post titled, "The ten least popular Christmas toys of the year."

See what you people give me to work with?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:42 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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In my last post, I mentioned an AP news release about Jamilgate that seemed to have disappeared. It's back and well, well, well.... What have we here?

Kind of curious that the AP has taken their response of Nov 28th off their website. The address that I, along with many other bloggers, linked to is this one.

What kind of information was given in that response?

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.

Also they said in that response that they confirmed the burning via hospital and morgue workers:

AP reporters who have been working in Iraq throughout the conflict learned of the mosque incident through witnesses and neighborhood residents and corroborated it with a named police spokesmen and also through hospital and morgue work

But guess what? The new cache version has this paragraph:

AP reporters who have been working in Iraq throughout the conflict learned of the mosque incident through witnesses and later corroborated it with police.

The same paragraph minus the bit about the hospital and morgue workers.

A little creative attempt to rewrite history by the AP, eh? Quite dishonest, trying to alter an already released story. Yet strangely familiar...

Put it on Kathleen Carroll's tab... and cue the flaming skull.

Update: Allahpundit makes a good argument that since the two versions vary slightly in the USA Today and AP.org versions of the Daniszewski statement, that the comment about the morgue and hospital workers many not have been omitted from the AP release today, because it might not have ever been there. I Googled every variation I could think of aobut the morgue and hospital workers statement, and all hits tracked back to the USA Today story, so I'm inclined to think he's right.

But AP isn't out of the woods by any stretch, as Allah also noted that they USA Today version of Daniszewski's statement came after the AP version. They still dropped the hospital and morgue workers, just not in the same release.

So far, the AP has dropped the hospital and morgue workers and reduced the number of burning mosques from 4 to one, and the number of dead from 24 to six, if my count is accurate. That is a lot of revisionism warranting a retraction, in my opinion.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:24 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 CY It's quite obvious now.. after reading your reports, Curt's and Bill's compendium...that I'm a bit shamed I didn't realize it or recognize it earlier. There were so many hints and clues. The last name is "Carroll". We are in a land with things have no name, where Somebody and Nobody reside. And you can even forget your own name. A guy in a green helmet is the Mad Hatter. Things printed previously no longer appear, as if we are moving backwards in time. We have entered the leftist world of media magic. 1) My Glass House Has No Mirrors. Welcome. Tis dankum and the flambum motts Did squeeve and choste upon the sar Wholly mezzed the everflotts And all the moops were uberflar. 2)The Garden of Live Bloggers Whence Bob and Curt and Michelle abound A captain's name might not be found And hurl reflections back again Of what is real and what's pretend Where lies are king and truth is drowned 3)Tweedledum and Tweedlemute Oh Green Hatter with helmet fair You're here, you're there, you're everywhere Upon your smiling grief I dare impose Please stay a while and strike a pose Our comrades all conceal your lair. 4)Auppity Pauppity Auppity Pauppity stole all the news Then began libeling Christians And slandering Jews And all women bloggers and all of its men Couldn't put AP together again 5)It's Their Own Convention The Ministry of Media Held court on truth and tedia Henceforth, forthwith and evermore OUR truth will land upon your door In real time, expedia 6)Queen Katherine How dare you plea upon my court You plebians, now keep it short Be thankful that I serve you gruel And bow before the Red Queen's rule I'm not the self-reflecting sort 7)Shaking You feel you've caught us in a lie A picture cropped, a source denied An article unsourced I fear We've somehow made it disappear The First Amendment behind we hide Who Would Have Dreamed It We now awake to find it's true The leftist scribes are all askew Our nation's been in hostage hell The truth's been strangled in here as well Imprisoned by those craven few Jamil has no name. He's nobody, he's somebody...and you can find him hiding between the Lion and the Unicorn.

Posted by: cfbleachers at December 19, 2006 03:56 PM (V56h2)

2 cf - that's some sort of comment right there. Also, Ace has some sort of update on this, though between you and him I'm not sure where this stands.

Posted by: yeah at December 19, 2006 04:23 PM (CyjMp)

3 cfb. AP's reality has bordered on the absurd for quite some time. But I do believe we are through the looking glass people.

Posted by: BohicaTwentyTwo at December 19, 2006 04:57 PM (oC8nQ)

4 Excerpted and linked at CENTCOM says APÂ’s "Iraqi police source" isnÂ’t Iraqi police -- Part 21

Posted by: Bill Faith at December 19, 2006 05:34 PM (n7SaI)

5 Don't throw glassware in rock houses. Would you like onion rings with that?

Posted by: Frederick at December 19, 2006 07:32 PM (jSBbA)

6 Ahhh, leftists. Can't live with 'em and you can't...keep them from soiling the carpet. Bad puppets, bad lemmings, bad parrots...now use the papers we put down, they obviously aren't worth reading... Leftists live in glass houses, they like to throw stones, but apparently have no mirrors. Are there no mirrors in your glass houses? Then you are a leftist. (Want lies with that?)

Posted by: cfbleachers at December 19, 2006 07:43 PM (V56h2)

7 ?

Posted by: cain at December 19, 2006 07:48 PM (XyCyZ)

8 Kathleen Carroll's next job interview: Q: Do you do windows? A: You mean XP or Vista? Q: I don't think you understand Kathleen. I mean do you wash windows. A: ????

Posted by: Purple Avenger at December 19, 2006 10:22 PM (xXVSL)

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To quote the Bard, "What's in a name?"

The on-going Associated Press scandal known as Jamilgate began with this report from AP reporter Qais Al-Bashir. The initial report hinges exclusively on the word of Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein, a source that the Associated Press has cited a total of 61 times since April of this year, and a man the AP has claimed they have known for two years (Note that link was active as I wrote the original draft of this story, but has since disappeared).

In fact, when Hussein's credibilty was challenged, AP went further in supporting this identity, and even provided the full name of Jamil Gholaiem Hussein to bolster their case.

But what happens if it is determined that Jamil Gholaiem Hussein is not the name of AP's long-running source? What if it is a pseudonym?

I posed a generic ethical question based upon Jamilgate to quite a few people this morning. It read:

Good morning.

Can I ask you three quick questions about source ethics in journalism?

If it is determined that a reporter has been using named source in an on-going series of stories, and that name turns out to be a pseudonym, under what circumstances would this be considered unethical behavior, and how serious a breach of ethics would this be?

Would it be compounded if the reporter insisted upon the veracity of the pseudonym?

What responsibility does the reporter bear in verifying the identity of his source?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I decided on a generic approach as something of a "control;" is isn't scientific by any stretch of the imagination, but by posing this as a hypothetical, I was hoping to avoid any biases that people may harbor towards this specific story. It is, I think, far better to investigate these questions based upon the underlying principles that should drive honest reporting.

The answers to my hypothetical questions have begun to trickle in, and paint quite a dark portrait of the AP's behavior in Jamilgate if, Jamil Gholaiem Hussein turns out to be a pseudonym for someone else.

Dorian Gray?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:37 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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To answer Ace's question, a particularly interesting part of Marc Danziger's post is the apparent discovery of Uday Hussein associate and possible Baathist dead-ender Sgt. Jamil Hussein at the police station in Yarmouk.

If it turns out that this Hussein is the man claiming to be Captain Hussein, and his tied to Uday and the Baathists can be substantiated, then we've got something juicy brewing.

The association of Muslim Scholars is widely viewed as a terrorist-friendly Sunni group with ties to the insurgency and al Qaeda, and the AP uncritically and unquestioningly cited them in this story without an apparent second thought.

If it can be substantiated that the Sgt. Hussein uncovered by Danziger's work is AP's "Captail Jamil Hussein" source, and that it can be substantiated that he has ties to Uday, or more specifically has ties with the Fedayeen Saddam, then we will have reason to wonder how much of AP's reporting has been infiltrated in such a way as to promote a pro-Sunni insurgency agenda.

Update:

A short description of the Fedayeen Saddam from the Global Security link above (my bold):

Though at times improperly termed an "elite" unit, the Fedayeen was a politically reliable force that could be counted on to support Saddam against domestic opponents. It started out as a rag-tag force of some 10,000-15,000 "bullies and country bumpkins." They were supposed to help protect the president and Uday, and carry out much of the police's dirty work.

Does it get much dirtier than alleging false massacres?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I think it past time for senior executives of the Associated Press to step down for repeated failures of integrity and resposibility, and for violating so many of their organizations stated values and principles. The following is hardly a conclusive list of reasons that the AP should issue retractions and divest themselves of the failures of their senior leadership, but it is a start.

• AP should apologize for running the initial story of six Sunni men being pulled from a mosque and burned alive based upon the testimony of a single source. AP should acknowledge that single-source information has long been considered unreliable by serious news organizations and they should apologize for breaking that cardinal rule of journalism.
• AP should apologize for the multiple failures of reporting in the follow-up story, of which there were many, including:
  1. Using an embellished version of the same single-sourced account.
  2. AP should apologize for using the hearsay of an unverified secondary source as support for the primary account.
  3. AP should apologize for uncritically parroting the claims of multiple additional deaths made by the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group with suspected insurgent ties.
  4. AP should apologize for failing to check with official sources to verify the veracity of all the claims made above, plus;
  
  
  5. AP should apologize for utterly failing to check or even ask for any physical or photographic evidence to support claims which to this point, claimed four terrorist attacks on mosques and up to 24 deaths, including the 18 alleged killed at al-Muhaimin mosque, and the six men that our source claimed were pulled from a nameless mosque, doused in kerosene, and burned to death.
  6. AP should apologize for slandering the Iraqi Army, by uncritically repeating the charge that they stood by and did nothing as these terrorist attacks and murders were carried out, when we have no evidence to support that claim.

• AP should apologize as well for the multiple failures of basic editorial fact-checking and source verification that led them to continuing failures of the basic application of journalistic principles in follow-up stories to the original, including:
  
  1. stating that these attacks did not end until U.S. forces became involved, despite the fact that a simple call to the MNF-I Public Affairs Office would have verified that no U.S. forces deployed to Hurriyah that or any other day, because Hurriyah is nota U.S area of responsibility.
  2. claiming by name that the Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa mosques were attacked "with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and automatic rifles," before being burned, without taking the very basic steps of verifying through official or secondary sources that these mosques were in fact attacked.
  3. AP should apologize for slandering the Iraq Police for insisting they did nothing to stop the alleged attacks as well.
  
  
• AP should also apologize for attacking those who questioned all of these easily noticeable inconsistencies.
• AP should apologize to their literally billions of readers that they failed, to which they have an obligation to report facts, not propaganda, and not a convenient "truthy" narrative.
• AP should apologize to the U.S military for doubting their honor and integrity. When they put their names and reputations on the line, AP hid behind anonymous stringers and apparently false witnesses.
• AP should apologize to the Iraqi Police, the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Ministries of Defense, Interior, and Health for slandering their employees.

I'm sure there are more specific apologies in order, including apologizes and promises to fix the AP's fatally-flawed stringer-based methods of reporting that have little to no editorial checks, and allows those with apparent insurgent ties to infiltrate and propagate false reports. AP executives should also issue apologies to the thousands of news organizations around the world that until now trusted the APÂ’s reporting, and internally, they should offer apologies to the overwhelming majority of honest journalists who work for the Associated Press around the world.

It will take months to rebuild the failed policies that led to the collapse of the AP's reporting efforts in Iraq, and double that time to implement those changes. Until these new methodologies are born out by time, the AP will have to suffer the loss of confidence that their flawed product created.

Of course, no error in judgement of this scale is complete without senior management acknowledging their failures.

If they truly care about the integrity of reporting in the Associated Press, Executive Editor Kathleen Carol should end her list of apologies and retractions with a resignation, as should AP international editor John Daniszewski.

Then—and only then—can we begin to look back through the 60 other stories to which Jamil Hussein was a source, and see whether any more of these accounts require retractions and apologies.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:20 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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The final votes have been cast and tallied, and the winners of the 2006 Weblog Awards have been announced.

Check out the final results, and if you have a moment, congratulate the winners, the finalists, and the nominees that made it happen.

On a personal note, I'd like to thank those of you who voted for Confederate Yankee, and for those of you who nominated me to be a finalist for the second year in a row.

Perhaps next, year, I'll see you in Vegas.

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Glenn Reynolds linked to the following from NRA News:

There's someone out there telling folks to buy guns illegally, and I think it's time we put a stop to it. He's directing contract employees to walk into gun stores, lie on the paperwork about who's buying the gun, and walk out after making a straw purchase.

Even worse, he's bragging about what he's doing. He's holding press conferences to tell the world about what he's done, but so far law enforcement doesn't seem to be listening.

Well, I think it's time we help out the ATF agents that enforce our nation's gun laws. We need to call their Illegal Gun Hotline at 1-800-ATF-GUNS (that's 1-800-283-4867) and alert them to this illegal firearms activity. Tell them that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is hiring private investigators to initiate straw purchases in several states, and you want them to enforce the law.

Oh, I know Bloomberg says he wants to rid New York's streets of illegal guns. But he's not asking for help from local law enforcement agents. He's not asking for the help of the ATF. He's not even using his own police department.

Bloomberg is using his own private army of investigators to lie on the paperwork in order to sue the small business gun dealers, alleging that they're to blame for the lies they've been told. And once he sues, he offers the trapped gun dealers a devil's bargain: Give Bloomberg all of your business documents, and the lawsuit goes away.

Unless the law works differently in New York City than it does elsewhere, it appears that Mayor Michael Bloomberg may be involved in a criminal conspiracy to break federal firearms laws.

Strawman purchases—roughly defined as someone legally allowed to purchase a firearm illegally acting to purchase a firearm for someone not legally allowed to own a weapon—is a felony. At the sporting good store where I work, we have multiple notices posted for customers letting them know that such a sale can lead to up to ten years in jail and a substantial fine, and they are not the only people at risk.

Gun store owners and employees are extremely aware of the threat that illegal purchases pose to not just their industry, but their own immediate welfare. Knowingly selling a gun to someone we suspect may be a strawman is also a crime.

As a result, most gun store employees interrogate potential purchasers to a certain degree to attempt to determine if the potential gun purchaser is indeed attempting to purchase a firearm for himself. If we suspect that something might be fishy with the buyer, we have a right to stop the transaction from occurring, even when the federal government, through the FBIÂ’s NICS Operations Center, verifies that the purchaser is indeed himself legally allowed to own a gun.

The problem is that Mayor Bloomberg's investigators likely know every nuance of the law, just as they know the tricks of the trade dealers use to expose potential strawman purchasers from legitimate purchasers. To initiate lawsuits against small gun store owners, it seems quite likely that Mayor Bloomberg and his investigators may have initiated a felonious conspiracy, committing fraud in order to set up my laymanÂ’s understanding of entrapment.

If any lawyers would like to comment on this, I'd be very interested to see if these gun shop owners targeted by Bloomberg have any criminal or civil recourse against the Mayor, his investigators, and the City of New York.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:39 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Nothing yet from Danzinger over at Winds of Change to further his claim of possibly finding the AP's missing Iraqi Police Officer Jamil Hussein, but Patrick Frey spoke with him last night, and seems to think there might be something there:

I just got off the phone with Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger. If everything comes together the way he hopes it will, he is going to blow the lid off of this Jam(a)il Hussein controversy. If heÂ’s able to put together what he told me about on the phone, it's huge.

I wish I could say more.

Note that Patterico, lawyer that he is, doesn't say who is going to get burned.

Patterico also catches some fact-free lefty bloggers who were jumping to conclusions that are factually incorrect, to defend a story without any physical supporting evidence, based upon a typically uncritical post from a "news" industry site run by an admitted liar and revisionist with his own admitted history of using false sources.

As I have been pushing hard for a while now, Jamil Hussein is just one aspect of this story. The Associated Press has yet to account for unsubstantiated propaganda it repeated from this story for the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group with strong ties to the insurgency that claimed 18 people were killed in "an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque." There is zero supporting evidence for this claim made by a terrorist-associated group, and yet the AP reported it as fact.

How is this not dishonest journalism?

How is this not supporting terrorist propaganda?

The Associated Press has been curiously silent about its still unsubstantiated claims that four mosques--Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa--were rocketed with RPGs, fired upon with heavy machine gus and assault rifles, and set on fire, with only the intervention of U.S forces stopping the carnage.

But we know that the al-Muhaimin mosque stands undamaged, and there is zero evidence that 18 people were killed inside. We know that tow other mosques are completely undamaged as well. Only Nidaa Allah suffered minor fire damage, quickly extinguished by Iraqi firefighters, who curiously did not find 18 people burned in an inferno there or anywhere else, nor an additional six burning bodies lying in the street. Nor were U.S forces ever in Hurriyah, an area exclusively patrolled by Iraqi forces.

By all means, I hope that Danziger can provide solid evidence that he located someone named Jamil Hussein. Perhaps Hussein, once identified, can point us to which AP reporters are most responsible for the Associated Press' apparent on-going journalistic malpractice, cover-up, and fraud in this, and potentially other instances.

The 60s radicals may have been partially right:

Don't trust anyone over -30-

Update: Though he made a noble effort, Marc Danziger concludes that despite his earlier comments, Captain Jamil Hussein does not exist. What he does turn up, however is that their is a suspect sergeant by that name with ties to the dead Uday Hussein (Saddam's sadist son) and Baathist dead-enders. While Danziger won't say it, I'd posit from those details that this Sgt. Hussein is obviously a Sunni, is perhaps tied to the insurgency, and certainly not who the AP claims he is.

Nice guy that I am, I'm currently working on helping Kathleen Carroll write the apology and retraction she should have released weeks ago. Here it is.

Update: SeeDubya maps the impossibilities.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:39 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Marc Danziger posts over at Winds of Change that he thinks there might be a Jamail Hussein at the Yarmouk Police Station in Baghdad. He doesn't provide any evidence, but then, he doesn't claim this is a certainty, either.

I posted the following in the comments:

I guess the question to this part of the equation is whether or not "Jamail Hussein" is "Jamil Hussein."

I find it unlikely.

AP pointed us to this specific police station and provided Jamil Gholaiem Hussein as the full name of their source. It defies all logic to think that both the American and Iraqi forces involved here would not have combed every possible variant of his name, and have not run through through the personnel records of every single officer at the Yarmouk police station... not to mention the probability that they interviewed every cop at Yarmouk to see if they knew of Hussein. I think it more likely that your Jamail Hussein is indeed a real Iraqi policeman, but somehow I doubt he is a Captain, and I think you'll find he will deny being AP's source.

But as I've said on my site, Hussein is only one aspect of the story reported on November 24.

The AP reported 4 mosques were rocketed with RPGs, machine-gunned with both heavy machine guns and assault rifles, burned, and blown up... and yet the AP has provided no evidence that these buildings were damaged, and officials from the Iraqi Army, Iraqi Police, and Iraqi Health Ministry (presumably in charge of the fire department) report only one mosque suffering minor fire damage, with the other three untouched.

The AP claimed six men were pulled alive from a rocketed mosque, doused in kerosene, and then burned alive. The AP also uncritically reported a claim by the Association of Muslim Scholars (long thought to be affiliated with the insurgency) that as many as a dozen people burned to death inside one of the burning mosques... one of the mosques that was found to be undamaged, much less destroyed.

Not a single body has been found, nor does anyone seem o be able to locate family members of those killed, or friends, or anyone who can so much as name the victims.

There seems to be zero physical evidence that the AP could produce in three trips to the area, and with three trips they've been unable to get anyone, official or unoffical, or go on the record supporting their claims with the exception of a Sunni elder that has since refuted his claim, and our friend, Captain Jamil Hussein.

The AP insists Hussein exists. At this point, they must. He is the only thing they can hang this story on, and if that falls apart, this story is utterly discredited. Of course, if this story falls apart, the AP's credibility takes a huge hit, not just for thist story, but becuase Captain Jamil Hussein was a named source on 60 other AP stories, throwing all those stories in doubt.

Bylines to those 61 stories were provided by 17 AP reporters... not exactly helping their credibility, either.

To further up the ante, Jamil Hussein is just one of more than a dozen "Iraqi policemen" cited by the AP in past (and current) reports for which the Iraqi Interior Ministry cannot confirm their employment or authenticity.

I don't think I'm overstating the case by saying that AP's entire portfolio of Iraq reporting credibility rests on the existence and authenticity of Jamil Hussein being an authentic Iraqi police captain.

For this very reason which the Associated Press undboutably understands, the AP would have produced an authentic police captain by now if they had one.

More than likely, Jamail Hussein is not Jamil Hussein, just as these blown up mosques still stand.

I think it is worth repeating that Jamilgate is a multi-faceted scandal. There are two basic questions driving this continuing event:

• Were four mosques and 18 people murdered (not including the six men by immolation) in Hurriyah as alleged by the Associated Press?
• Does the long-time AP source "Jamil Gholaiem Hussein." a Captain in the Iraqi Police, actually exist?

The first part deals with the specific allegations of a series of terrorist acts, and the evidence supporting those allegations. The second part deals with the credibility of a heavily-used and deeply trusted Associated Press source.

The common thread uniting the two parts? The unquestioning belief of the Associated Press in both the Hurriyah attacks they reported, and the man who was the primary source of this and 60 other stories, Jamil Hussein.

So far, the Associated Press hasn't been able to provide the first shred of physical or photographic evidence to support the existence of 18 killed in "an inferno at the al-Muhaimi mosque," nor six men pulled from a mosque and immolated, nor four mosques being rocketed, machine gunned, and burned, nor of a solitary Iraqi police captain who is the primary source of all those claims.

I somewhat doubt that he will when so many others have failed, but if Marc Danziger can prove the existence of Jamil Hussein, the world will be able to thank a blogger for doing what the largest news agency in the world could not.

With the Hussein question settled, we can then focus all of our efforts on trying to unravel why Hussein apparently lied about the attacks in Hurriyah, and begin to determine how many of the other five dozen stories he fed to the Associated Press were falsified, to what extent, and why.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:45 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Several days ago, Allahpundit caught a potentially important L.A. Times article which purports to outline "the way forward" in Iraq (my bold):

As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

Allah keyed in on the same phrase I did in the lede, and notes:

They want as many as 40,000 more troops and, to make sure no one’s going to call off the dogs once they’re unleashed, a shuffle within the Iraqi government, which is almost certainly what Bush’s meeting with Iraq’s Sunni vice president was about yesterday. Some experts are knocking the plan on grounds that you can’t kill your way to victory here. You can’t not kill your way to victory either, though — we tried that by turning al-Sadr onto politics and look where it got us. Gen. Chiarelli wants to split the difference by introducing an aggressive jobs program alongside the military maneuvers to give would-be jihadists an alternative to fighting.

Greg Tini hits similar point at the new TomDelay.com blog, and Charles Krauthammer concludes in a column at Townhall.com:

Â…the president has one last chance to come forward with a new strategy.

He must do two things. First, as I've been agitating, establish a new governing coalition in Baghdad that excludes Moqtada al-Sadr, a cancer that undermines the Maliki government's ability to work with us. It is encouraging that the president has already begun such a maneuver by meeting with rival Shiite and Sunni parliamentary leaders. If we help produce a cross-sectarian government that would be an ally rather than a paralyzed semi-adversary of coalition forces, we should then undertake part two: "double down" our military effort. This means a surge in American troops with a specific mission: to secure Baghdad and (together with the support of the Baghdad government -- a sine qua non) suppress Sadr's Mahdi Army.

It is our last chance for success. Bush can thank the ISG and its instant irrelevance for making it possible.

For the very few of you needing a refresher, Muqtada al-Sadr is the 33-year-old fourth son of a famous Iraqi Shiite Grand Ayatollah, and the grandson of another (Wiki yourself silly if you want his life story). He lacks the education to claim any sort of formal religious authority, and has built a following based on his family's name. In that regard, he's like a sober Ted Kennedy, and roughly as loyal.

While al-Sadr's family has traditionally drawn support in Najaf and Basra, Muqtada draws must of his support from the Baghdad slum of Sadr City (formally Saddam City), and this is likely where al-Sadr's forces, the Mahdi Army, will make their stand.

This is Sadr City.

click to enlarge

Sadr City is a dense slum of some 2 million mostly Shiite souls crammed into 8 square miles of dilapidated public housing, where electricity is sporadic, sewage runs in the streets, and death squads routinely dump the bodies of their victims.

A description of Sadr City from GlobalSecurity.Org:

Sadr City is subdivided into six sections. The district is one of the poorest in Baghdad. Unemployment is rampant. Homes are in disrepair. The population consists mostly of Shiite Moslems. It is also a haven for criminals released from Iraqi prisons by Saddam shortly before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sadr City, built by Saddam Hussein, was the scene of numerous confrontations between coalition forces and residents in 2003. Infrastructure problems still plague portions of the district. Electrical services are intermittent. Parts of some streets in some neighborhoods are flooded with sewage from long-neglected pipes. Trash pickup stopped during the war, and residents started dumping their trash on the medians in the potholed streets.

To get an idea of the "lay of the land" in Sadr City, look at the series of 17 photos provided by the Christian Peacemaker Teams from 2005.

This is a map view of Sadr City.

A larger view (source) of the map from which this was drawn shows Baghdad's Green Zone in the bottom left corner of the picture, on the east bank of the Tigris River. Sadr City is bordered to the northeast by a substantial canal, the Ishbiliyah neighborhood and the Army Canal to the southwest, and mostly undeveloped areas in the northwest and southeast.

* * *

Any attempt by U.S. and Iraqi Army forces to enter Sadr City and hunt down the Madhi Army militia is going to draw immediate comparisons to the 2004 Battle of Fallujah. Having just read an excellent detailed account of a Marine perspective of that battle in We Were One, I think I can honestly say, without any sense of humor or irony, that any battle in Sadr City will be exactly like Fallujah's Operation Phantam Fury, but completely different. That statement is not as Berra-ish as it may sound.

Sadr City is far more compact than Fallujah. Thanks to geography, it is theoretically easier to cordon off (and the last time they did, sectarian violence dropped sharply), and once segregated into quadrants, set up for combat or search operations.

Whether Sadr City becomes another urban moonscape, or is instead something far less intense, is very much up to al Sadr and the loose affiliates of the Madhi Army.

If they opt for a showdown, we could see extremely intense urban fighting. It would not be out of the realm of possibility to see significant U.S. casualties in this kind of close-quarters fighting, but the toll on the Madhi Army would likely be catastrophic. The Army and Marines have had two years to study the lessons learned from the assault on Fallujah, and adapt tactics, techniques, and rules of engagement. Estimates vary wildly on the number of terrorist casualties in Phantom Fury, but 1,200-1,600 killed and roughly half that number captured are the numbers from a force in the mid-thousands is most often cited.

The Madhi Army is estimated to be between 10,000-40,000 strong. Extrapolating out similar casualty rates for a similar urban combat, and the Madhi Army could suffer between 2,500-10,000 killed, with thousands wounded and captured.

If the bulk of the Madhi Army instead decides that martyrdom is best left for another time and decides to melt away, casualties could be considerably lower, and the operation could morph into a deadly Easter egg hunt. Coalition forces dodging booby-traps, IEDs, and the occasional sniper or small unit ambush could capture and destroy some or most of the Madhi armyÂ’s military capability.

In any even, this is likely the next large-scale battleground in Iraq, and a battle that increasing appears must be fought if Iraq hopes to suceed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:25 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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As I scored the top two results in this Google search, shouldn't I be getting more traffic?

And tips?

Update: Would probably be about like this.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Via Fox News:

The exotic dancer who accused three former Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a house party has given birth to a baby, FOX News has confirmed.

None of the 45 Duke lacrosse players had their DNA liked to genetic material recovered from the dancer, though DNA of five other men was recovered at that time.

It is not yet know if embattled Durham district attorney Mike Nifong will order all the men in North Carolina tested from a match.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:17 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Don't worry. This isn't Yale allowing the corporeally-challenged Captain to join the student body like Taliban of semesters gone by, but a solid op-ed in the Daily Princtonian, titled You Can't Handle the Truth.

An excerpt:

That the story is wrong is beyond debate; even the AP now refers to one burned mosque, not four, so the question is not "if" but "how badly" the AP screwed up. Yet instead of an apology, the AP's response to criticism has been to shoot the messenger. The story first broke on the conservative blog www.floppingaces.net and grew quickly within a circle of other conservative blogs and opinion columns. The AP alleged that this was simply a "mad blog rabble" attacking an entirely reputable source. This ignores the fact that Hussein only became a story after the U.S. military and Iraqi government demanded but did not receive a retraction of the original faulty report.

So why have traditional media sources not reported this controversy? Because it is not in their interests to undermine the AP. This summer's "fauxtography" scandal at Reuters, in which photographers were found to have photoshopped evidence of Israeli atrocities during the Hezbollah war, did not hit at the underlying narrative. The storyline stayed the same with different details. If the AP has to issue a correction for all 61 stories in which Hussein was quoted, it will call into question fundamental perceptions about what is happening in Iraq. If Hussein isn't real, it suggests that there are other as yet undiscovered fakes.

If our media is reporting as fact attacks that never occurred substantiated by witnesses who don't exist, then we have a problem. Public opinion about distant events is necessarily based on what is reported in the press. Therefore, we need to be confident that what we read is real.

Requiring that our news be real? What kind of subversive things are they teaching these days?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:57 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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From Jim and Tammy Faye's kid (my bold):

While the current state of Christianity might seem normal and business-as-usual to some, most see through the judgment and hypocrisy that has permeated the church for so long. People witness this and say to themselves, "Why would I want to be a part of that?" They are turned off by Christians and eventually, to Christianity altogether. We can't even count the number of times someone has given us a weird stare or completely brushed us off when they discover we work for a church.

Weird stares? I can't imagine why.

I'm sure they mean well, but I don't think they "get it" any more than those on the Jerry Falwell end of the Christian spectrum they rail against.

Their response to those Christians they feel are too judgmental is to condemn them. Missing their own message, much? They then responds to what they considers too-judgmental Christianity with a very cavalier "it's all good" approach that I somehow doubt is any more correct or Christ-like. They simply fail in the opposite extreme.

While Jesus Christ never touched on the subject directly as it wasn't a direct theological social concern of the day, I'm pretty sure that Jesus, as a (mortally) unplanned pregnancy himself, would not appreciate Bakker and Brown's flippant dismissal of abortion as something we can "agree to disagree" on.

I'm no theologian, but I'm pretty sure Jesus would be in favor of loving children, not scraping them out of the womb as an inconvenience.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:35 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I just got an email from Michael Yon. He'll be flying out from Singapore and be in Baghdad via Kuwait on the 19th 25th-26th. I asked him to see if he could make it to Hurriyah while he's in town. He does happen to be pretty good with a camera.

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

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

I'd advise Michelle to bring along plenty of Lysol wipes if she's going to be near Jordan, however. As Jules Crittendon attests, Jordan is as slimey as they come.

12/16 Update: As I just got email about this, I want to clarify a point:

Michael Yon's return to Baghdad is not related to the Malkin/Jordan snipe hunt for Jamil Hussein; Yon was already planning his way back "in-country" before Jamilgate emerged, and his only involvement is offering Malkin advice and gear. The timing is entirely coincidental.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:30 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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I'd like to introduce both a marvelous bit of technology to Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, AP international editor John Daniszewski, and the newly, and curiously promoted, AP Baghdad News Editor, Kim Gamel.

The marvelous bit of technology you see pictured below is what those of us on the cutting edge call a "disposable camera." In specific, the example pictured is a variant of the Kodak Fun Saver.

They have come up with a few more variants to suit your needs, and the prices are such that even a cash-starved global news agency can afford to send them out with even the most inexperienced of stringers. Your reporters don't have to return from Baghdad slums without any physical evidence ever again!

What will they think up next?

Now... how about a practical application of this new-fangled technology?

As we all know horrible acts of sectarian violence were claimed by AP reporters on November 24 in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad. According to a claim from long-time AP source Police Captain Jamil Hussein, a man that has since tripped and fallen off the planet, six Sunni men were pulled from a mosque, doused in kerosene, and burned alive.

In addition, AP claimed:

...members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques and several homes while killing 12 other Sunni residents in the once-mixed Hurriyah neighborhood, Hussein said.

Gunmen loyal to radical anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr began taking over the neighborhood this summer and a majority of its Sunni residents already had fled.

The militiamen attacked and burned the Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa mosques in the rampage that did not end until American forces arrived, Hussein said.

The gunmen attack with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and automatic rifles. Residents said militiamen prevented them from entering burned structures to take away the bodies of victims.

All that carnage, and your stringers without a Fun Saver.

Just think... how much credibility could have been saved if the Associated Press stringers had access to such technology on any of their first three trips into the neighborhood to cover this story?

Instead, we have a "he said, she said," stalemate where the AP claims these four mosques were rocketed, machine gunned, burned, and blown up, and coalition forces instead insist that only one mosque suffered though any attack at all, and that was a minor fire put out by the local fire department.

If these mosques are indeed intact, the first person to snap four pictures of the Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa mosques intact will have wrecked the reputation of the world's largest news organization for $3.75.

An empowering thing, technology.

Off-Topic Update: Since I have your eyeballs thanks to Glenn and Michelle and others, I'd like to remind visitors that the 2006 Weblog Awards will be accepting votes until tomorrow, December 15. Click the logo below to vote for your favorites in 45 categories.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:22 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Via Fox News:

South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson was admitted Wednesday to George Washington University hospital in Washington, D.C., for symptoms aides say indicate a stroke.

"As this stage, he is undergoing a comprehensive evaluation by the stroke team. Further details will be forthcoming when more is known," said a statement released from his office.

Johnson was admitted after wrapping up a conference call with reporters, in which he became disoriented and stuttered a response to a question. He appeared to recover, asking for any additional questions and then signed off.

I've seen a lot of political coverage of this already, and ironically enough, it is a politician that seems to be the only person keeping this in the proper perspective.

"This is a pretty mean town and lets just keep him in our prayers," said former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "This town is so eat up with power that everybody, you know, that's all they think about. You go to ask somebody for a cup of coffee, they question why you asked, there must be an ulterior motive to you asking.

"Senator Johnson is a really nice man from strong South Dakota stock so I am sure he'll be all right," DeLay added.

As "the Hammer" says, keep the Senator and his family in your prayers.

There will be plenty of time for our base sport of partisan sniping later.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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