At Pajamas Media, Jules Crittenden delivers the State of the Union Address that President Bush should make tonight.

A taste:

I will engage evil directly where I find it, in Iraq and in Iran. With an aggressive and ruthless new strategy and a plan to build our army as we should have a long time ago, I will show the American people that we can fight and we can win. I expect that the American people, though misled by their press and many of their elected representatives, will see results and will get it. Because the American people are a people who in the end don't give up, don't stop fighting, refuse to lose, and will choose to win. I have faith in them.

Oh, there's another one of those words you don't like.

Granted, Bush won't make this speech, but he should have, and long ago...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:58 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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From Robert Redford's upcoming film, The Horse Whisperer: Saddled by Love*

TOM: You see how he keeps pointing his hindquarters in at me? Well, I'd guess the reason he seems reluctant to move out is because when he does, he gets in trouble for it.

THE WOMAN: He's not good at transitions, you know? When I want him to move from a trot to a lope, say...

TOM: (smiles) Well, I'm sure that's what you think but that's not what I'm seeing. You may think you're asking for a lope, but your body may be saying something else altogether. You might be putting too many conditions on him. For instance, you might be saying "GO, but, hey, don't go too fast." He can tell that from the way you feel. Your body can't lie.You ever give him a kick to make him move out?

THE WOMAN: He won't go unless I do.

TOM: And then he goes and you feel like he's going too fast, so you yank him back? (she nods) And next thing you know, he's bucking. (she nods again) Well, if someone told you to go, stop, go, stop -- you'd buck too.

The people laugh. The Woman smiles self-consciously.

TOM: It's a dance, see... Somebody has to lead and somebody has to follow.

TOM: Oh, Baby...somebody's gotta lead. Now bring me that bag of fermented oats, and leave us alone for a while.

* From the script of The Horse Whisperer (199 , with the addition of the line Oh, Baby... implied from this.

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This is depraved:

"Zoo" is a documentary about what director Robinson Devor accurately characterizes as "the last taboo, on the boundary of something comprehensible." But remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film has resulted.

"Zoo," premiering before a rapt audience Saturday night at Sundance, manages to be a poetic film about a forbidden subject, a perfect marriage between a cool and contemplative director (the little-seen "Police Beat") and potentially incendiary subject matter: sex between men and animals.

We're real proud of ya there, Sundance. Now take off the saddle.

Up next for Devor: Big Fish, Twelve Monkeys, The Silence of the Lambs, Raging Bull, and of course, Groundhog Day.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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And Captain Ed has the details:

The curse of single sourcing has bitten more than just the AP lately. Insight Magazine, a publication of the Washington Times, ran a single-sourced story last Friday about Barack Obama regarding the choice of school his stepfather made while they lived in Indonesia, and Fox News spent all day talking about it. In this case, Fox used the news item to hit at both Obama and Hillary Clinton without ever confirming anything about the sourcing. Howard Kurtz, in his indispensable media-watch column, explains:

Insight, a magazine owned by the Washington Times, cited unnamed sources in saying that young Barack attended a madrassah, or Muslim religious school, in Indonesia. In his 1995 autobiography, Obama said his Indonesian stepfather had sent him to a "predominantly Muslim school" in Jakarta, after two years in a Catholic school -- but Insight goes further in saying it was a madrassah and that Obama was raised as a Muslim.
Fox News picked up the Insight charge on two of its programs, playing up an angle involving Hillary Clinton. The magazine, citing only unnamed sources, said that researchers "connected" to the New York senator were allegedly spreading the information about her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. ...

On the morning show "Fox & Friends" on Friday, co-host Steve Doocy said that madrassahs are financed by Saudis and teach a radical version of Islam known as Wahhabism, though he said there was a question whether that was the curriculum in the late 1960s, when Obama attended the school. Another co-host, Gretchen Carlson, said that those on the show weren't referring to all Muslims, only "the kind that want to blow us up." ...

On Friday afternoon, John Gibson, host of Fox's "The Big Story," began a segment this way: "Hillary Clinton reported to be already digging up the dirt on Barack Obama. The New York senator has reportedly outed Obama's madrassah past. That's right, the Clinton team reported to have pulled out all the stops to reveal something Obama would rather you didn't know -- that he was educated in a Muslim madrassah."

Kurtz reminds readers that reputable news agencies used to refuse to run stories from anonymous sources unless they could get independent confirmation. Those days are apparently over. Instead, we have the dynamic of one news agency running a story, and then other news agencies report on the reporting of that story, until everyone forgets that the basis of the entire issue came from one source, and one who refused to go on the record at that.

I'm admittedly very late to the table on this one, but both Insight and Fox were well out of bounds in heaping such uncorroborated scorn upon Barack Obama. Politics is a hard-nosed business, but no child can control what school he goes to, and to imply that Obama is some sort of Islamist Manchurian candidate—the angle Fox seemed to be trying to promote across several shows—goes beyond the pale.

Fox and Insight should either produce named sources to back their allegations—I find that doubtful—or they should retract their commentary during these same time slots by these same hosts and publicly apologize to both Barack Obama for making the slur, and to Hillary Clinton for stating her campaign was behind it.

I disagree with the politics of both individuals, but there are certainly valid issues upon which someone can criticize either of these candidates without having to stoop to such scurrilous single-sourced accounts.

Update: Insight strikes back. Ouch. Getting catty...

Update: Allah has CNN's debunking.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Directly ignoring the pleas of police and other authorities, looters wade through debris-filled water to take away anything they could carry, despite warnings that toxic chemicals in the mix could pose a dangerous hazard.

New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina? Try England, today.

Hell of a job.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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He's hungry.

When I first started taking money in the Bloviating Arts, I was working on a typewriter. Answering machines were exotic. You had to find someone with access to a printing press who would agree to pay you if you wanted to do this. That was a long time ago. A lot has changed. More or less everything. I think I stumbled on the Internet about the time Al Gore did, but he gets the credit. That was a while ago, and it was only last November that I started blogging. I donÂ’t know what took me so long. This is like a candy store. ItÂ’s a playground. I love it. Now, I just need to figure out how to make money doing it. Please click on my ads.

If this works for him, I might even try it...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As you well know by now, thanks to a n investigation launched by Curt of Flopping Aces and followed up on by Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston's visit to the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad as reported in the NY Post, Michelle's personal blog, and now via video at Hot Air, the Associated Press' reporting of massacres on November 24 were grossly exaggerated, and parts were apparently fabricated by a longtime Associated Press source they still call Jamil Hussein, even though we know otherwise.

The Associated Press released several very graphic versions of what they claimed occurred in Hurriyah on November 24, 2006. I'll now reproduce the relevant portions of two of those Associated Press accounts, so that you will know exactly what they claimed.

On November 24, the day of the attack, the Associated Press ran this version of the story, as captured in the Jerusalem Post:

Revenge-seeking Shi'ite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near an Iraqi army post. The soldiers did not intervene, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

The savage revenge attack for Thursday's slaughter of 215 people in the Shi'ite Sadr City slum occurred as 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.

[snip]

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.

The Shi'ite-dominated police and Iraqi military in the area stood by, both residents and Hussein said.

Later Friday, militiamen raided al-Samarraie Sunni mosque in the el-Amel district and killed two guards, police 1st. Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq said. Two other Sunni mosques in west Baghdad also were attacked, police said.

A day later, on November 25, the Associated Press ran this version of the story, as captured for posterity on Gainesville.com:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking the Iraqi capital a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad's main Shiite district.

Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in Friday's assault by suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same neighborhood, the volatile Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

[snip]

But burning victims alive introduced a new method of brutality that was likely to be reciprocated by the other sect as the Shiites and Sunnis continue killing one another in unprecedented numbers. The gruesome attack, which came despite a curfew in Baghdad, capped a day in which at least 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence across Iraq.

In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said.

[snip]

President Jalal Talabani emerged from lengthy meetings with other Iraqi leaders late Friday and said the defense minister, Abdul-Qader al-Obaidi, indicated that the Hurriyah neighborhood had been quiet throughout the day.

But Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, confirmed Hussein's account of the immolations. He told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were drenched in kerosene and then set afire, burning to death before his eyes.

Two workers at Kazamiyah Hospital also confirmed that bodies from the clashes and immolation had been taken to the morgue at their facility.

They refused to be identified by name, saying they feared retribution.

And the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque.

For those of you following this story closely, you know that Imad al-Hasimi quickly retracted his claim when asked for details by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and that the Associated Press was perhaps deceptive in not noting that the Association of Muslim Scholars is "the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq" largely because of their deep suspected ties with both the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda itself:

The Association of Muslim Scholars ... ...also sometimes called Association of Muslim Clerics or Muslim Scholars Association), are a group of Sunni Muslim religious leaders in Iraq. The Association is believed to have strong links with Al-Qaeda terrorists...

They did not recognize the U.S. appointed government as legitimate and have at times questioned any democratically elected government and democracy itself. They have previously asked for withdrawal of American troops, who they accuse of causing the deaths of over 30 000 Iraqis since the war began. They publicly support Al-Qaeda and support the car bombs and the sectarian violence. The group has negotiated (along side with the Iraqi Islamic Party) the cease-fire for the city of Fallujah and the release of several hostages for money. They have poor relations with nearly all Iraqi groups, most notably Shia groups, including followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The Association claims dozens of its members have been killed by US troops, Sunni militants and Shi'ite militias.

[snip]

It was formed on the 14th of April 2003, only four days after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003 by a group of former regime loyalists who oppose any democratic changes and consider democracy as and ant-Islamic concept. They finance their activities through the ransoms they get from the kidnapping activities in Iraq.

Of course, we can't forget "Jamil Hussein," the long-time (two year) source for the Associated Press, who it is turns out, isn't Jamil Hussein at all.

Is it now time to serve AP and their defenders a nice, heaping serving of you know what? Perhaps, but what, precisely, would that accomplish?

I'm not absolving the Associated Press of their faulty response by any means—I still think the manner in which AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll in particular handled this incident requires her organization to ask for her resignation, and perhaps some AP reporters and local editors deserve dismissal—but I am far more interesting in fixing what I first postulated was a terminally-flawed methodology for gathering the news way back on November 30, 2006, when this story was in its infancy:

In short, we aren't questioning all of AP's stories based upon a single story, we are questioning a broken methodology that lead to such a story. There exists in the mediaÂ’s reporting in Iraq no effective editorial checks at the very root level of reporting, to verify that the most basic elements of the story are indeed factual, much less biased.

This is not just about one questionable story, or even one questionable source.

[snip]

The flawed methodology that weakens the essential credibility of the news-gathering process effects the overwhelming majority of stories printed and broadcast about Iraq each week. This weakness, this inherent and unchecked instability and inability to verify the core facts and actors in the most basic of stories, points out a methodological flaw in the news gathering efforts common to every major news organization reporting in Iraq.

Am I attempting to say that all AP reporting, or all news media reporting in general coming from Iraq, is fraudulent? Of course not. There is a great deal of violence occurring in the city, a fact buttressed by verified and corroborated news accounts every day.

But what is strongly suggested by Jamilgate is that the media in general, and the Associated Press in this instance, are simply unable to account for how sectarian, tribal and political biases may shape the information passed from source to reporter, from reporter to editor, and editor to publication.

It seems at readily apparent that due to the dangers of reporting in a warzone, and the language barriers that are in place, that it is very difficult for the Associated Press and other news organizations to verify the facts of stories before they are published using their current fact-checking methodologies.

They are, in many instances, apparently reduced to "faith-based reporting, " where sources who have been reliable in the past are taken at their word once they have established a certain degree of credibility. This leads us to a situation where those with biases can entrench themselves as credible sources, and then use their trusted relationship with the media to disseminate agenda-based information after that credibility has been established.

Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll herself based her defense of Jamil Hussein thusly (my bold):

No one – not a single person – raised questions about Hussein’s accuracy or his very existence in all that time. Those questions were raised only after he was quoted by name describing a terrible attack in a neighborhood that U.S. and Iraqi forces have struggled to make safe.

Jamil Gulaim "XX" sold himself to the AP, and Carroll's apparent defense is that no one questioned his reporting before. Of course, not. He was establishing his credibility in the period before AP started using him as a named source, and afterward... well, that is where we stand now.

The current situation, where we know that the overwhelming majority of reporting coming out of Iraq is more than likely accurate, but because of such egregious failures as evidenced by AP's Hurriyah reporting (and perhaps other "Jamil Hussein" stories that I am still following up on) and pattern of denials and ignoring valid criticism to the point of attacking those that dare question their methods and accuracy from top AP officers, we find it difficult to trust even this mostly accurate reporting for fear another Hurriyah is lurking just outside the headline.

It is past time for an independent investigation to determine how AP not only fell for a story with elements both grossly exaggerated and in parts falsified, but to come up with a new and more rigorous methodology to verify the factual accuracy of its reporting.

I begrudge no one their view of what the think of the success or failures of the Iraq War thus far may be, but they have the right to base those opinions upon factual, transparent reporting, something that the Associated Press under Kathleen Carroll's "stonewall and deny" leadership cannot apparently provide.

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And finally, we get to the truth of the matter:

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll indignantly attacked those who had questioned the global news organization's reporting: "I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story," she told Editor and Publisher. "AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq."

Well, Bryan Preston and I visited the area during our Iraq trip last week. Several mosques did, in fact, come under attack by Mahdi Army forces. But the "destroyed" mosques all still stand. Iraqi and U.S. Army officials say that two of them received no fire damage whatsoever. Another, which we filmed, was abandoned and empty when it was attacked.

WE obtained summary reports and photos filed at the time by Iraqi and U.S. Army troops on the scene. They contain no corroborating evidence of Hussein's claim that "Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene."

There is more, much more, in Michelle's NY Post article, and I suggest that you take the time to read it all, but the heart of the matter is that AP's reporters seem to have greatly exaggerated what took place in Hurriyah on November 24.

Not a single mosque was "burned and blew up" as AP reported, though they did come under some small arms fire and two were attacked with primitive Molotov cocktails. Not a single soul died in an "inferno" at the al-Muhaimin (var. al Muhaymin) mosque, much less the 18 including women and children, as reported by an al-Qaeda-aligned group (the Association of Muslim Scholars) that the AP wouldn't even identify as extremists as other news organizations have done.

AP's most graphic element, missing from all other news organizations' coverage of Shia attacks in Hurriyah and elsewhere, was a single-sourced report by longtime AP source Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein (an apparent pseudonym) that six men had been pulled from the al-Mustafa mosque, doused in kerosene, and burned alive. While al-Mustafa was subject to small arms fire and an attack with a crude incendiary device, no one was pulled into the street and immolated.

The Associated Press reporting of the incident in Hurriyah doesn't stand up.

And did I mention that this wasn't the only account sourced to Jamil Hussein that cannot be corroborated?

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.

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.

Hoping to run it down through other channels, I asked CPATT and MNC-I to also try to verify this account, and turned it over to a journalist with solid ties to the Arab Press (the journalist wishes to remain anonymous) to see if any local Iraqi or Middle Eastern Press agencies might have corroborating accounts. Previously, they (CPATT, MNC-I, Arab media contacts) were able to confirm the assassination of Iraqi Defense Ministry employee Mohammed Musaab Talal al-Amari. To date, the al-Amari murder remains the only Jamil Hussein account of 40 I investigated that was conclusively corroborated.

Two sources, CPATT and MNC-I PAO, often work together on MOI related issues, and this is what MNC-I PAO Lt. Michael Dean was able to relay to me via email about police deaths reported to MNF-I in Baghdad on June 20:

Mr. Owens:

On June 20, 2006, MNCI has reports of only 2 incidents that
involved the deaths of Iraqi Police.

1) At 11:28 a.m., the Iraqi Police reported murder of 1 civilian (unknown employment) and 2 National Police officers. Mehmond Hamade's corpse was reported to be located at the Kadhimiya Hospital (northern Baghdad on east side of Tigris). Also, the heads of two 1-1 National Police officers, NOC Monsa Uttawi and SGM Mehmond Muter Lefta, were discovered in the Tigris.

2) A 4.5-hour small arms fire incident in Al Rasafah in eastern Baghdad (Yarmok is on the western side of Tigris) during the afternoon of June 20 beginning at approximately 1:30 p.m. resulted in one Iraqi Police officer killed, one Iraqi Police officer wounded, 2 Iraqi soldiers wounded, 5 civilians killed and 5 civilians wounded. The incident consisted of small arms fire being received from nearby building. No mention of the name of the Iraqi Police officer killed.

Vr,
LT Dean

He adds:

Please keep in mind that MNCI is not the collector of all information regarding incidents involving Iraqi Security Forces, including police.

Neither event even remotely describes the bus station assassination described by Jamil Hussein, though Lt. Dean mentions that they do not collect all information regarding police casualties and deaths.

A report from my journalistic source indicates that his Arab media contacts could not easily turn up Arab-language accounts of Captain Kamil's assassination as they had been able to in the al-Amari murder, and that they would attempt to dig deeper. He also cautioned that there might be no "definitive answer."

No definitive answers, and no corroborating accounts.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Update: Michelle has photos of the not-quite blown up mosques at MichelleMalkin.com.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:59 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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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.

On November 24 and 25, 2006, AP reported four mosques--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 and blew up." These allegations were directly attributed to Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein. Successive AP coverage has dropped all mention of three of the mosques. Does the Associated Press still maintain that four mosques were attacked in Hurriyah on November 24, 2006 with RPGs, heavy machine guns and assault rifles, and that these four mosques were burned and blown up?

The AP also cited the Association of Muslim Scholars as a source for a claim that at one of these mosques (al-Muhaimin) "18 people had died in an inferno" as a result of these attacks. Do you think it was responsible of the Associated Press to run these allegations considering that the Association of Muslim Scholars is alleged to have strong ties with both the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda? Should AP have mentioned these ties to terrorist groups when it cited the AMS as a source? These 18 claimed dead have also disappeared for subsequent AP reports. Does the Associated Press still stand behind this claim they reported?

In both instances, if the Associated Press no longer feels these accounts are credible, don't you have a responsibility as an ethical news organization to print a correction or a retraction of these charges?

Further, I have seen written claims shortly after the first AP claims of an attack that AP Television has video footage of damage to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque, where AP source Jamil Hussein claims six men were pulled from the mosque and immolated. Does the Associated Press indeed have such footage? If so, why has it not been mentioned since November 30, and can I obtain a copy of that footage?

If the Associated Press does not have the video footage of damage to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque from the attack that left six men immolated, the why has the Associated Press not acknowledged this, and printed a retraction or a correction for this claim?

As you can see, my primary line of questioning is wondering why the AP has back of claims made in the first several days of reporting, without printing a correction or a retraction of these claims.

I'd also like to know if the Associated Press still stands behind the accounts sourced to Jamil Hussein by the Associated Press between April and November of 2006.

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

When following up on past reports that feature new information, news agencies do not repeat all of the details that were in their original breaking news reports. This does not mean that they are retracting what they had published previously unless a new report, correction or clarification states that explicitly.

A search of news reports in Nexis and Reuters shows that reporters for numerous news agencies, including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters reported attacks on four or five Sunni mosques in Hurriyah (also spelled Hurriya) and additional sites elsewhere in Baghdad on Friday, November 24, 2006. As may happen in breaking news reports from active combat zones, the precise toll of death and injury can be difficult to establish.

Below are relevant passages from several news accounts of the incidents in Baghdad on that date. I have sent your questions to our International news desk. If any new information about this topic becomes available, I'll let you know.

Wagner also provided a list of other news sources that wrote about mosque attacks in Hurriyah on November 24.

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:

1. Does the Associated Press still maintain that four mosques were attacked in Hurriyah on November 24, 2006 with RPGs, heavy machine guns and assault rifles, and
2. that these four mosques were burned and blown up?
3. Do you think it was responsible of the Associated Press to run these allegations considering that the Association of Muslim Scholars is alleged to have strong ties with both the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda?
4. Should AP have mentioned these ties to terrorist groups when it cited the AMS as a source?
5. These 18 claimed dead have also disappeared for subsequent AP reports. Does the Associated Press still stand behind this claim they reported?
6. In both instances, if the Associated Press no longer feels these accounts are credible, don't you have a responsibility as an ethical news organization to print a correction or a retraction of these charges?
7. Further, I have seen written claims shortly after the first AP claims of an attack that AP Television has video footage of damage to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque, where AP source Jamil Hussein claims six men were pulled from the mosque and immolated. Does the Associated Press indeed have such footage?
8. If so, why has it not been mentioned since November 30, and can I obtain a copy of that footage?
9. If the Associated Press does not have the video footage of damage to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque from the attack that left six men immolated, the why has the Associated Press not acknowledged this, and printed a retraction or a correction for this claim?
10. I'd also like to know if the Associated Press still stands behind the accounts sourced to Jamil Hussein by the Associated Press between April and November of 2006.

Wagner's response only provided three answers:

1. When following up on past reports that feature new information, news agencies do not repeat all of the details that were in their original breaking news reports. This does not mean that they are retracting what they had published previously unless a new report, correction or clarification states that explicitly.
2. A search of news reports in Nexis and Reuters shows that reporters for numerous news agencies, including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters reported attacks on four or five Sunni mosques in Hurriyah (also spelled Hurriya) and additional sites elsewhere in Baghdad on Friday, November 24, 2006.
3. As may happen in breaking news reports from active combat zones, the precise toll of death and injury can be difficult to establish.

So let's see what the Associated Press response does not answer:

1. Wagner does not say that the Associated Press still maintains that four mosques were attacked with RPGs, heavy machine guns and assault rifles.
2. Wagner does not say that the AP still maintains these four mosques were burned and blown up.
3. Wagner does not address whether or not it was responsible of the Associated Press to run allegations made by the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group alleged to have strong ties with both the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda, or
4. whether or not the Associated Press should have mentioned these terrorist ties to their readers
5. Wagner does not answer whether or not AP television captured video footage showing damage to the al-Mustafa mosque as the previously claimed
6. Wagner does not mention whether or not the Associated Press stands behind the accounts sourced to Jamil Hussein

For those of you counting, Wagner also didn't answer this question:

In both instances, if the Associated Press no longer feels these accounts are credible, don't you have a responsibility as an ethical news organization to print a correction or a retraction of these charges?

Wagner appears to avoid any direct statements saying that the Associated Press stands behind their Hurriyah reporting, does not acknowledge the existence of the AP television video AP once claimed to have, and most noticeably, refuses to state whether or not they stand behind the stories sourced to the man they call Jamil Hussein.

These are not what I would consider encouraging answers.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:11 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Bryan could have--and I'll argue he should have--named this post something else.

How about Why We Fight.

This is what I want you to think of when you hear Democrats in the House and Senate (along with the Republicans defectors) talking about defunding the troops and argue against the very surge of troops so many of them supported until Bush agreed with them.

Photo courtesy of Michael Yon.

Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer and so many others argue that they have the views on the Iraq War that they do "because of the children." Which children? These that they would abandon?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:46 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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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):

Having multiple Jamils is every bit as credible as expecting one police officer to able to provide accurate accounts from all across a city of 8 million people, don't you think? I think so, and the Associated Press editors should have wondered about that, but obviously, they didn't, and there is no public indication they've changed their ways.

It's too bad, really.

They could stand to learn a lot from Reuters, who has now tightened their standards as a result of the Adnan Hajj scandal (h/t Pajamas Media):

The agency had tightened editing procedures to ensure that only senior photo editors dealt with sensitive images, invested in more training and supervision and strengthened its code of conduct for photographers, Schlesinger said.

He named Stephen Crisp, a Briton who has worked for Reuters in a variety of senior positions since 1985, as the new chief photographer for the Middle East and said he had taken up his assignment in Dubai this month.

"His predecessor in the Middle East role was dismissed in the course of the investigation for his handling of the case," Schlesinger wrote.

A company spokeswoman, Eileen Wise, said Reuters would not provide further details, citing staff confidentiality.

As senior members of the Associated Press continue to claim they stand behind their Jamilgate reporting on one hand while rewriting it on the other, it appears that Reuters is not the only news agency needing to have staff members dismissed.

I even think I could even suggest where to start...

Update: Dang it, Jules Crittenden took this and did it much better. I guess that's why he's the professional.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:06 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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It certainly seems tough to tell exactly what transpired as the NSA terrorist communication intercept program is once again back in the headlines:

Bush Retreats on Use of Executive Power (Washington Post)

Court to Oversee U.S. Wiretapping in Terror Cases (NY Times)

Administration to let court monitor domestic spying (CNN)

Attorney General Gonzales to Brief Senate Panel on Oversight of Domestic Spying Program (Fox News)

So what really took place? As legal expert Orin Kerr notes at The Volokh Conspiracy:

What's going on? As with everything about this program, we can't be sure; we don't know the facts, so we're stuck with making barely-educated guesses. But it sounds to me like the FISA Court judges have agreed to issue anticipatory warrants. The traditional warrant process requires the government to write up the facts in an application and let the judge decide whether those facts amount to probable cause. If you were looking for a way to speed up that process — and both sides were in a mood to be "innovative" — one fairly straightforward alternative would be to use anticipatory warrants.

An anticipatory warrant lets the government conduct surveillance when a specific set of triggering facts occurs. The judge agrees ahead of time that if those facts occur, probable cause will exist and the monitoring can occur under the warrant. The idea is that there isn't enough time to get a warrant right at that second, so the warrant can be "pre-approved" by the Judge and used by the government when the triggering event happens.

While some pundits seem content to label this as a defeat of sorts for the Bush Administration (see the WaPo headline above) and some conservative legal experts are inclined to agree, I'm not sure. I'm not disagreeing necessarily, but this seems to be a case of We Don't Know What We Don't Know, and I'm not sure that is such a bad thing.

Perhaps Mark Levin is right, and Bush ceded the Constitutional authority of the Executive Branch when he should not have. If so, it would not be the first time President Bush made a mistake.

On the other hand, what little we can discern from all the posturing and spin is that the NSA program not only lives, but the FISA court appears to have possibility modified itself in such a way as to be more compatible with the goals of the program... or vice versa, or maybe a little bit of both.

The end result is that the program will continue, and that terrorists attempting to communicate with their allies within the United States will continue to be watched, tracked, and eventually, captured or killed.

Isn't that what really matters?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:04 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Update & Bump: My interview on Melanie Morgan's show regarding the Associated Press and Hurriyah is online:

Part 1 (MP3)
Part 2 (MP3)

If you happen to be in the San Francisco area this morning, I'll be discussing Jamilgate with Melanie Morgan on KSFO 560 AM at 7:35 AM PST.

You can listen live here, and we'll try to get up a version in MP3 format later today.

Update: Welcome KSFO listeners. To catch up on the Jamilgate scandal, please go to this link and read the collected accounts.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:04 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Just... read.

And keep in mind that this is the fate Dean, Pelosi, Durbin, Hagel, etc would abandon even more Iraqi families to face.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Hot Air crew of Bryan Preston and Michelle Malkin are safely back from Iraq and their embed at Forward Operating Base Justice, and are rolling out reports pretty fast and furious.

Michelle previews their reporting with video from Baghdad in her latest Vent, and also provides commentary on MichelleMalkin.com, in a post titled, Back From Baghdad.

Bryan Preston begins an analysis of his view of what they learned in Assessing Iraq on Hot Air.

Michelle notes that the soldiers at FOB Justice would welcome MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as embeds, and I'm fairly certain that MSNBC could probably pick up the tab of such a trip.

Do you think they'll take up our troops on the offer?

Me neither.

Michelle and Brian also note in their reports that they did make it into Hurriyah, where the Associated Press still apparently maintains that 24 Sunnis were killed and four mosques were "burned and blew up" by Shia militiamen. Do you think they Associated Press is worried? I do.

After last week's bombshell that AP's source is not named Jamil Gholaiem Hussein as AP insists, but instead Jamil Gulaim "XX" (his second middle name and last name redacted) according to his personnel records, Linda M. Wagner, Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs for the Associated Press, contacted me within 1.5 when I pressed AP reporter Steven R. Hurst for confirmation.

She stated in part:

Steve Hurst passed your e-mail inquiry along to me. AP stands by the story below, which provides the full name of the source whose existence was acknowledged to AP by Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf in an interview on Thursday, January 4. I have bolded the relevant passages for ease of finding them in the text.

In short, they were standing behind the name Jamil Gholaiem Hussein. But did AP intend to stand behind all their claims made during their reporting of the Hurriyah incident, where AP reported a total of 24 people killed, and four mosques attacked, "burned and blew up?"

And so I sent the following questions to Linda Wagner yesterday afternoon:

I have some questions for you regarding the Associated Press' reporting of the Hurriyah reporting.

On November 24 and 25, 2006, AP reported four mosques--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 and blew up." These allegations were directly attributed to Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein. Successive AP coverage has dropped all mention of three of the mosques. Does the Associated Press still maintain that four mosques were attacked in Hurriyah on November 24, 2006 with RPGs, heavy machine guns and assault rifles, and that these four mosques were burned and blown up?

The AP also cited the Association of Muslim Scholars as a source for a claim that at one of these mosques (al-Muhaimin) "18 people had died in an inferno" as a result of these attacks. Do you think it was responsible of the Associated Press to run these allegations considering that the Association of Muslim Scholars is alleged to have strong ties with both the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda? Should AP have mentioned these ties to terrorist groups when it cited the AMS as a source? These 18 claimed dead have also disappeared for subsequent AP reports. Does the Associated Press still stand behind this claim they reported?

In both instances, if the Associated Press no longer feels these accounts are credible, don't you have a responsibility as an ethical news organization to print a correction or a retraction of these charges?

Further, I have seen written claims shortly after the first AP claims of an attack that AP Television has video footage of damage to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque, where AP source Jamil Hussein claims six men were pulled from the mosque and immolated. Does the Associated Press indeed have such footage? If so, why has it not been mentioned since November 30, and can I obtain a copy of that footage?

If the Associated Press does not have the video footage of damage to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque from the attack that left six men immolated, the why has the Associated Press not acknowledged this, and printed a retraction or a correction for this claim?

As you can see, my primary line of questioning is wondering why the AP has back of claims made in the first several days of reporting, without printing a correction or a retraction of these claims.

I'd also like to know if the Associated Press still stands behind the accounts sourced to Jamil Hussein by the Associated Press between April and November of 2006.

Thank you very much for your time.

So far, the AP's Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs that contacted me within 1.5 hours of my contacting another AP employee last week has been silent on this longer list of questions.

Perhaps teh Assocaited Press hasan inkling of what Michelle and Bryan's Excellent Adventure may mean to their Hurriyah reporting. I have a feeling we will all know very soon.

Update: Audio of Michelle's interview on The Laura Ingraham Show.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:30 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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A bit off-topic from the regular fare here at CY I know, but a couple of local guys (how local? They sat two rows in front of me in church this past Sunday) have a shot at getting a commercial they shot for a grand total of $12.79 run during the Super Bowl, providing they win a contest run by Doritos.

Watch the commerical, and if you think this home-grown advertising agency deserves their shot at the majors, please consider voting for them.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:40 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Glenn Reynolds has an interesting op-ed in the NY Times today noting that communities with higher levels of legal gun ownership face less criminal activity.

Me?

I'm all for it, providing that those who own those firearms use them responsibly, and don't use them to chase down those who may have committed minor property crimes. Do that, and you might just find yourself in front of a grand jury, potentially facing a multitude of charges.

An increase in gun ownership can lead to a safer society, but only if gun owners use those firearms responsibly, as the overwhelming majority of citizens do.

Update:

Via email, a counterargument. It might be worth noting that Darwinism takes care of this counterargument.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:27 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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What's in a name?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:12 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Far too often, we tend to oversimplify things, especially when demonizing out ideological opposites. I am as guilty as anyone (my own tagline of "Liberalism is a persistent vegetative state" is a prime example), and yet, that in no way excuses the practice.

I mention that introducing two blog posts that have come to my attention over the course of the past week, one from someone who solicited comment, and one I stumbled across on Memeorandum.com yesterday evening.

Jay Rosen runs NYU's PressThink blog, and sent along a link to his January 9 post Grave and Deteriorating for the Children of Agnew, asking for comment and discussion. I hadn't the time to read it in any detail until yesterday evening, and once I'd completed it, I must admit I was disappointed. Go read it for yourself. I'll wait.

Back? Good.

As a media commenter, educator and critic, I was hoping that Rosen had decided to tackle, at least peripherally, the subject of the Associated Press' questionable (to put it mildly) coverage an apparent cover-up of the Hurriyah incident, that he would approach the problem critically, perhaps looking at the many inconsistencies in AP's ever-evolving storyline, such as the fact that they cited a group with strong ties to the insurgency and al Qaeda (the Association of Muslim Scholars) as a source without disclosing what their ties were or finding a single account corroborating their claim of 18 men, women and children burned alive at the al-Muhaimin mosque, that four mosques were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), heavy machine guns and assault rifles before being "burned and blew up,", and that AP Television shot video of one of the attacked mosques. All of these claims have quietly disappeared from the AP's subsequent coverage without correction or retraction... and yet Rosen seems interested in none of it. Nor does he seem to have any interest in the fact that the overwhelming majority of stories sources to Jamil Hussein had no independent verification from other news agencies.

No, Rosen was only interested in the Hurriyah story in that it served as an excuse to vilify those conservative bloggers he calls "the children of Agnew," referring to a man who last cast a long shadow on politics most of a decade before many of us commenting on this story were even born.

To pt it mildly, Rosen's post was a whitewash on one hand, and a smear on the other. Quite intent on shooting messengers, he was far more interested in making caricatures of conservative bloggers than objectively looking at the reason for our complaints. To say I was disappointed puts it mildly.

Likewise, I was a bit disgusted by Why the right doesnÂ’t get Martin Luther King on The Carpetbagger Report, a blog run by Steve Benen. The blog post attacks conservatives, as you might guess by the title, for "not getting" Dr. Martin Luther King, and apparently attempting establish that only liberals have the ability to claim credit to any part of Dr. King's legacy.

I don't claim to understand everything Dr. King means to most people, and I'd lay for the argument that no-one can claim to understand that legacy and what it really means unless you happen to be an African American born prior to 1958, or thereabouts.

I say that, in the simple understanding that only African-Americans who were at least ten years old (and I think I'm being very charitable with the maturity of 10-year-olds) at the time of Dr. King's assassination can have any claim to understanding what Dr. King really represented in the context of the civil rights struggle that occurred in this country at that period in history.

To hear a white male 33-year old from Miami representing a group that is 83% white and young claim to be some sort of ideological heir to Dr. King's legacy with a Clintonesque "I feel your pain" screed would be merely laughable if it wasn't so disgusting.

It is sad we so often we try to reduce our ideological opposites to caricatures and cartoons. Now that I see how pathetic the practice is (one I've clearly participated in myself, I readily admit), perhaps I'll do a better job of shying away from such buffoonery in the future.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:55 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 "The idea that the liberal press has to be overcome for conservatives truly to take power started with the Goldwater campaign in 1964, and todayÂ’s bias warriors are the inheritors, through Agnew, of that idea." This opening salvo says all I need to know about Jay Rosen and his credentials as an objective "critic" of the "liberal press" and those who stand against their arrogant and toxic malfeasance and bastardization of a quasi-public trust. Goldwater and Agnew? Perhaps instead I am the inheritor of Samuel Johnson or Jefferson. I appreciate a free press, I just don't withhold my contempt for a corrupt one. To write news in its perfection requires such a combination of qualities, that a man completely fitted for the task is not always to be found. In Sir Henry Wotton's jocular definition, 'An Ambassador is said to be a man of virtue sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country; a news-writer is a man without virtue, who lies at home for his own profit.' To these compositions is required neither genius nor knowledge, neither industry nor sprightliness; but contempt of shame and indifference to truth are absolutely necessary. He who by a long familiarity with infamy has obtained these qualities, may confidently tell today what he intends to contradict tomorrow; he may affirm fearlessly what he knows that he shall be obliged to recant, and may write letters from Amsterdam or Dresden to himself." Samuel Johnson: (November 11, 175 And for Jefferson, who wrote that he only read the advertisements, because that was the only place he might find the sole remnants of truth out of the entirety of the newspaper. I, like those men before me...stand firm in my resolve that a free press is a cornerstone of exacting freedom from tyranny...but firmly believe that a corrupted press is the cornerstone for exacting tyranny from freedom. Each day I pray for the former, yet feel that it is even more clear that we are in the eye of the hurricane of the latter.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 16, 2007 11:59 AM (5RM9g)

2 The Right doesn't "get" Dr. King? Who was it that led an 83-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Which side forced President Clinton into signing Welfare Reform into law by making it THE hot item in his re-election year? For a more current example: What would Dr. King say about the Duke Lacrosse case? Somehow I doubt he would be on the side of Democratic DA Mike Nifong. Despite all of this (and much more), it's the Right that doesn't "get" Dr. King? Yeah. Right.

Posted by: Bard at January 16, 2007 05:37 PM (tJnnl)

3 no-one can claim to understand that legacy and what it really means unless you happen to be an African American born prior to 1958, or thereabouts. I think this is proof enough. I'd say a decent reading of the Declaration of Independence is the chief prerequisite for understanding King's legacy. The problem with Americans who don't get King is that they see him as a black hero, and not as an American hero. Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." King: "In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 16, 2007 10:08 PM (uAxaL)

4 Yeah... Republicans just don't get what Martin Luther King was about. These are the same dumb Republicans that didn't get slavery, so they pushed for the abolishion of it in 1866 and pushed for the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. I do know that the Democrats did get the idea of wiretapping and spying on Martin Luther King in 1966 (*cough* Attorney General Bobby Kennedy *cough*).

Posted by: Yiddish Steel at January 17, 2007 12:58 PM (TjL02)

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This time it struck not the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad, but my hometown of Greenville, NC. Coincidence?

Probably.

While two churches were burned and another was broken into, there have no Associated Press reports of Baptists being pulled out of Sunday school, doused in moonshine, and burned alive by a mob of Methodists in four-by-fours.

Yet.

In all seriousness, I'm thankful that no one was hurt. As Memorial Baptist's associate minster Rick Bailey noted, "That's bricks and concrete, and that stuff can be replaced."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:10 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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