Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein, used regularly as a named source by the Associated Press including a flurry of eight reports about four burning mosques and 24 burning Sunnis (including six immolated) between November 24-26, has been noticeably missing from AP reporting for 31 days, and hasn't provided fresh information to the AP in 33 days.

To give you an idea of how odd this is, Jamil Hussein was used as a named source for the Associated Press (and only the Associated Press) on average every 5.2 days between April 24 and November 26 of this year. His longest previous period of silence was a 34-day gap between mid-September and Mid-October.

All of us are deeply concerned about the fate of Captain Hussein, and I think it would be a nice gesture if the AP, which has visited him so many times at his office at the police station, would give him a call, just to see if he's okay.

As it stands right now, he seems to have disappeared as if he never existed.

CPT, phone home...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:10 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Another Straw

In the detailed follow-up account to the initial "burning six" story AP insisted:

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.

This is a damn fine trick. According to Iraqi Brigadier General Abdul-Kareem, (via an email exchange with MNC-I PAO) their is no morgue at Kazamiyah Hospital. Any dead at Kazamiyah Hospital are transported by the police to the Medical Jurisprudence Center at Bab Almadham.

To sum up the "Burning Six" story so far:

Sources

• The primary source for the story doesn't apparently exist.
• The secondary source retracted his claim
• The tertiary source (Assn of Muslim Scholars) is suspected of being in league with the insurgency
• All other sources are anonymous, and in at least this instance, cite a factual impossibility.

• 6 men were pulled out of a rocketed mosque, doused in kerosene, and burned alive. No bodies have been recovered, and the mosque has curiously never been named.
• Those killed were seen by workers of Kazamiyah Hospital in the morgue. Kazamiyah Hospital does not have a morgue.
• 18 people were burned to death in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque. Not a single casualty of any type has been found, and their is no evidence tha the mosque was set on fire.
• A total of four mosques-Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa were attacked "with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and automatic rifles," before being burned. There is zero evidence that any of the mosques were assaulted in such a manner, and only the Nidaa Allah suffered minor fire damage from a molotov cocktail. The fire was put out by local firefighters.

In short, four weeks after breaking this story, the Associated Press has no credible witnesses, nor any physical or photographic evidence, of a series of four terrorist attacks that they claimed killed as many as 24 people, six of them burned alive. To date, they refuse to issue a retraction.

Faith-based reporting is apparently the new Associated Press standard.

12/26 Update: I was offline over the past few days and so didn't check my email, but Michelle Malkin lets me know via email that according to her sources, Kazamiyah Hospital does not have a morgue, but it does have a large freezer that can be used to store bodies.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:50 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Since near the beginning of Jamilgate, the Associated Press has maintained that:

...Hussein is well known to AP. We first met him, in uniform, in a police station, some two years ago. We have talked with him a number of times since then and he has been a reliable source of accurate information on a variety of events in Baghdad.

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.

The problem with the AP response, issued by none other than AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll herself, is that is it essentially states "You must trust us, because... you must trust us."

Now, exactly four weeks later, the AP has not provided a singe shred of evidence to show why we should trust them about the claimed existence of Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein.

As Michelle Malkin noted last night, teams of investigators working with her, CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Teams), the Iraqi Ministry of Interior (MOI), Marc Danzinger, and Eason Jordan, have all been unable to find any evidence of a Captain Jamil Hussein having ever worked at the Yarmouk or Al Khadra police stations as AP claims.

There is however, another Iraqi Police Captain in Yarmouk, and he has now been through a second round of questioning at Ministry of Interior Headquarters. This same police captain worked at both Yarmouk and Al Khadra, and his first name is Jamil. His last name, however, is not Hussein, and he denies ever having spoken with the Associated Press.

And so we are left with the official statement of the Iraqi government that Police Captain Jamil Hussein has never existed, and no one, AP or otherwsie, has shown evidence to the contrary. He is a ghost, an apparition, a Never Was.

As the AP stands silent (probably on the command of their legal department), we are forced to consider at ths point the following most-logical possibilities:

1. Someone posing as "Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein" duped the Associated Press, from stringer to executive editor, for two years using a made-up identity, or;
2. The Associated Press made the decision prior to April of 2006 to create the pseudonym "Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein," as a cover identity for one or more sources, and had that cover compromised.

If the Associated Press has been duped by an false identity for two years, it should hardly come as a surprise that they would chose not to publicly admit to this embarrassing failure of basic journalistic fact-checking, a compromise that affects the integrity of all 61 stories in which Hussein was a source that are not corroborated by non-AP accounts.

If the Associated Press decided to use a pseudonym prior to the first "Jamil Hussein sourcing", attempting to defraud the public by using a made-up identity to mask the people behind one or more other sources, they are also guilty of compromising all 61 stories in which Hussein was a source that are not corroborated by non-AP accounts, and in addition, have compromised the reputations of all 17 reporters that have bylines to stories citing Hussein as a source, two of which have been promoted to new positions, curiously enough, since Hussein's identity came into question.

Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein was a named source for the Associated Press on 61 stories published between April 24 and November 26 of this year. AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll claims he was a well know AP source for two years. She and AP international editor John Daniszewski, newly-minted Baghdad News Editor Kim Gamel, and brand new Assistant Chief of Middle East News Patrick Quinn have had 29 days to prove Police Captain Jamil Hussein exists, and they have failed, utterly.

I propose that the AP and others in the news business—and make no mistake, it is a business—incorporate a version of the 30-day return policy so common to other businesses.

If a news organization cannot provide physical proof of a disputed story of stories, or the basic existence of sources within 30 days, they should then produce a full retraction of their story of stories using that source, and finance a third-party independent investigation into why their reporting methodology failed to come up with the evidence that should have been needed to take a story to press in the first place. Doing this would ensure that methodological failures can be addressed and lessons learned to keep these kind of failures from repeating in the future.

You've had 29 days to prove your case, AP, and you've failed, utterly.

You've got 24 hours, then I think we're entitled to at least one retraction, and perhaps as many as 61.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:16 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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And he's soooo AP.

h/t Insty.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:06 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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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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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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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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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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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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When is news not news?

How about when the subject matter is a decades old story that just happens to be the subject of a new Hollywood blockbuster produced by a sister media company?

The article on CNN is called Blood diamonds: Miners risk lives for chance at riches.

Deep into the body of the article, we see this:

Sierra Leone is the setting for the new movie "Blood Diamond." Leonardo DiCaprio plays a crooked Zimbabwean ex-mercenary who searches for a rare pink diamond. (The film was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, which like CNN.com is owned by Time Warner.)

It's a movie that should stir controversy about just how careful the precious gem industry has been in making sure diamonds are bought and sold legally.

SFGate.com, CBS News (check the sidebars), and many other newsie stories just happen to be coming out in conjunction with Le Dicaprio's new movie.

Using the news to promote fiction.

Shocking, I know.

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In a column published last night, Eric Boehlert does an excellent job of showing why David Brock's Media Matters should be regarded as the alimentary canal of punditry; on one end it's good at regurgitation, and on the other, the finalized product is consistently something better flushed.

In Michelle Malkin fiddles while Baghdad burns, Boehlert dishonestly addresses the continuing Associated Press scandal surrounding the "Burning Six" story that emerged from the Sunni enclave of Hurriyah in Baghdad on November 24.

By the next day, even more details had emerged in the AP's story along with a description of why the alleged attacks finally ended.

Synthesize the various versions of the story, and you will have a horrific story of how Shia gunmen attacked while the Iraqi police and military stood by, without interfering, as four mosques were destroyed and as many as 18 people were killed, including six Sunni men pulled from a mosque and burned alive after being doused with kerosene. Only the arrival of American military units brought an end to the carnage.

But here's the problem... there is little to no evidence that any of these events took place.

Contrary to the AP's reporting, the Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa mosques were never blown up. There is no evidence uncovered that a single soul, much less 18, were burned in an "inferno" at the al-Muhaimin mosque. In fact, soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division found al-Muhaimin completely undamaged.

There is no evidence whatsoever that six men were pulled from a mosque under attack, doused in kerosene, set on fire, and then only shot once they quit moving.

Only the Nidaa Allah suffered minor fire damage from a Molotov cocktail, and no injuries were reported. The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defense were apparently unable to discover any other physical evidence of any attacks in Hurriyah as the Associated Press, and only the Associated Press, claimed. Further, U.S. soldiers never intervened in Hurriyah on November 24.

The entirety of the Associated PressÂ’ reporting on these alleged events relies on the testimony of two named sources and a handful of anonymous sources. Of those two sources, Sunni Imad al-Hashimi recanted his story after being interviewed by the Defense Ministry, leaving just one named source upon which the Associated Press was hanging its credibility, Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein.

As we now know, the Iraqi Interior Ministry has now gone on the record, declaring that they have no record of anyone by the name of Jamil Hussein employed as an Iraqi policeman, at any rank. They also disputed the records of more than a dozen other AP sources that claimed to be part of the Iraqi police for which they had no records.

Further research indicated that Jamil Hussein was often on hand to report Shia on Sunni violence, and that Hussein had been used as a source for the Associated Press and no other news outlet, 61 times since April 24.

Boehlert, of course, is unsurprisingly disinterested as to why the Associated Press runs a story claiming the destruction of four mosques, the deaths of 18 people (six of them by immolation), or the allegations that Shiite military and police units allowed the attacks to take place. He quite purposefully leaves out the fact that all of the AP's sources were anonymous, other than the one that recanted, and the other that was exposed as long-running fraud.

Like the AP, Eric Boehlert seems far more interested in protecting a narrative and attacking the messengers, than seeking to discover how the AP's reporting could have been so horribly compromised.

He attacks "warbloggers," explicitly (and falsely) stating that those citizen journalists interested in getting to the bottom of this and other questionable instance of reporting blame the press "squarely" for the state of the war, a preposterous claim he does not even attempt to prove.

Few, if any, highly-regarded bloggers hold that opinion. Bad pre-war planning and post-invasion implementation of the same are widely acknowledged for much of the problems on the ground in Iraq, as are undisputed facts that al Qaeda, Syria, and Iran have contributed to the violence.

What Boehlert would like to gloss over (as it suits his narrative and that of the organization he writes for) are the very real structural problems with the stringer-based systems of reporting in Iraq.

In Iraq, the overwhelming majority of foreign journalists never leave the relative safety of Baghdad's Green Zone. Most newsgathering done in Iraq is compiled by Iraqi journalists, which in and of itself is to be expected. Iraqis know their country, their communities their language and their politics far more intimately than any Western reporter is ever likely to achieve. From that perspective, it would make little sense to rely primarily on Borat-like foreign reporters to cover what is going on inside the country.

But even though Iraqi reporters are the logical best choice to cover Iraqi events, the Associated Press and other wire services must be cognizant of the fact that just like the fellow Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds in their fractious society, reporters and their sources will also have regional, sectarian and tribal biases.

Because of this, all news organizations, especially the largest news organizations such as the Associated Press and Reuters, have an obligation to their readers to provide a robust set of editorial checks and balances to verify that the reporters they use and the sources they quote are supported by factual evidence.

As we now know, at least the final stories of the almost certainly fictitious Captain Jamil Hussein have no supporting physical evidence. Even repeated trips to the Hurriyah neighborhood have been unable to extricate the Associated Press from this mess of their own making. There are no destroyed mosques. There are no bodies.

Nothing.

Characteristically dishonest in his claims, Boehlert claims that bloggers are engaging in "wide-ranging conspiracy theories and silencing skeptical voices."

The truth of the matter is precisely the opposite; we're asking for more skeptical voices, more layers of fact-checking and editorial professionalism that seemingly have disappeared once wire service reporters join what Michael Fumento and other combat journalists from all sides of the political spectrum have derided as the "Baghdad Brigade."

If the Associated Press had a working system of checks and balances to do background checks on their reporters, they might not be in the embarrassing position of having one of their Iraqi stringers in prison after he was captured in a weapons cache with a terrorist commander, coated in explosives.

If the Associated Press had a working system of checks and balances to verify their sources, they might not have been listening to a false Iraqi policeman for two years, and more than a dozen other "policemen" that the Iraqi Interior Ministry says does not work for them (NOTE: The AP still uses these same named suspect policemen as sources to this very day).

If the Associated Press had a working system of editorial fact-checking, the lack of physical evidence alone should have precluded the burning mosques/burning men claims from ever having run. Hunkered down for in the Green Zone, the isolated fortress mindset infecting the media has led to reporting where allegations, not facts, are enough reason to run a story written by men and women who have never seen the subject matter on which they report.

Pure and simple, it is "faith-based" reporting.

It is because of this kind of absentee journalism that wave after wave of combat veterans return home from Iraq and Afghanistan claiming that the media is consistently misrepresenting what is going on in Iraq. Not necessarily better or worse, but just plain wrong. It's hardly surprising. You wouldn't expect a reporter in Boise to effectively cover a bank robbery in Raleigh, so why would you expect a reporter in a Baghdad hotel to accurately reporter events in Ramadi?

The problems of reporting in Iraq are based on flawed news-gathering processes and methodologies, questionable vetting of reporters and sources, and continued poor editorial oversight. The Associated Press responds to these problems exposed by Jamilgate by promoting those involved.

Boehlert shows he is far more interested in choking down typical Media Matters talking points and excreting arrogance mixed with contempt than engaging in any honest attempt to identify and fix obvious flaws in a broken system of reporting that lead to false reporting such as that evidence in Jamilgate. Apparently, "truthiness" is close enough for his purposes.

His mentor must be proud.

Update: Michelle piles on. Apparently Boelhert got even more wrong than I realized:

He is such an idiot that he doesn't even read the link that he includes to bolster his ridiculous charge.

I am the one who called a fellow conservative blogger to task for irresponsibly reporting that anonymous Republican sources had accused a Democrat staffer in Harry Reid's office of being the source. If he had bothered to follow his own links, this clown would know that. Or maybe he did and it doesn't matter. He's got a narrative to protect.

Boehlert charges that "[W]arbloggers aren't interested in an honest, factual debate about a single instance of journalistic accountability."

Like he would know anything about honest, factual debates and journalistic accountability?

Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:56 PM | Comments (40) | Add Comment
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According to AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein is a well-known source that they have had a relationship with for two years.

According to Curt at Flopping Aces, Hussein was cited in Associated Press reports by name 61 times between April 24th and November 26th of this year. No other news organization other than the Associated Press seems to have evern been in contact with Jamil Hussein. It is not known if Hussein may have been cited as an anonymous source, if at all, in addition to the 61 times he was cited as an official source by AP.

During the first months (April and May) he was used as a source, Hussein was cited 24 times in stories by no fewer than 7 different AP reporters (Thomas Wagner, Lee Keath, Robert H. Reid, Sinan Salaheddin, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Tarek El-Tablawy, and Patrick Quinn).

In June and July, Hussein was cited as a source 19 times by at least 9 AP reporters (Sinan Salaheddin, Ryan Lenz, Steven R. Hurst, Bassem Mroue, Qais al-Bashir, Sameer N. Yacoub, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Bushra Juhi, and Kim Gamel), eight of which had not written using Hussein in the months before (only Sinan Salaheddin carried over from the previous months).

In August and September Hussein was uncharacteristically quiet, being used as a source just nine times in total, and five of those stories coming on a single day (September 20). Sinan Salaheddin, Robert H. Reid, Bushra Juhi, and Qais al-Bashir used Hussein again, Rawya Rageh used him for the first time, and David Rising used him as a source for four stories on the first and only day he cited Hussein.

In October Hussein was only cited twice, in a Sinan Salaheddin story and in another by Sameer N. Yacoub.

Police Captain Jamil Hussein was then silent for 28 days until November 24, when he was cited five times describing the now familiar series of claims that Shia militamen immolated six Sunni men. Those claims have been disputed by the Iraqi Police, Interior Ministry, Iraqi Army, and even the responding unit of the Baghdad Fire Department which put out the one minor mosque fire that actually existed of the four that the Associated Press claimed were attacked.

According to the document compiled by Flopping Aces and cited above, AP provided no bylines for four of these reports, but the fifth was sourced to Qais al-Bashir. Hussein was cited twice more, on November 25 (including once in a story by Steven R. Hurst).

Hussein was cited for a final time on November 26 by the man who first used his name on April 24, Thomas Wagner.

In just eight months, Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein was cited as a source in stories by 17 named AP reporters, and also appeared in several stories where no byline was given. To the best we can determine, he has never been cited by another news organization, at any time.

Since his authenticity was thrown in doubt, the fabled Iraqi Police Captain has completely disappeared from AP reporting, except for the AP's denials that he is the fraud that the Iraqi interior ministry says he is. The captain, if he is real, would have likely come forward by now to clear his name. He has not.

At the current level of controversy, it might be prudent for these 17 Associated Press reporters, AP international editor John Daniszewski, and AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll to each go on the record and establish the details, dates and locations of their relationship with alleged Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein that they have so vigorously defended.

Daniszewski and Carroll should also explain why, when there is so much suspicion that the Associated Press has been duped by a series of false witnesses tied to a flawed stringer-based news gathering methodology, that the AP promoted two of the reporters involved in this controversy.

Kim Gamel, who issued stories using Hussein as a source on June 1, June 5 and twice on June 6, has now been promoted to the newly-created position of Baghdad News Editor.

Patrick Quinn, who wrote a story using Hussein as a source on May 30, has been promoted to the newly-created position of Assistant Chief of Middle East News.

In most any line of work, discovering that two actors were promoted after it was revealed they were in some way involved in a scandal, would create a scandal of its own. Many people might assume that their superiors might be trying to buy their silence. That suspicion would only grow if those people were promoted to positions that didn't previously exist.

At the very best, the Associated Press is guilty of creating the perception that their reporters' silence in the Jamil Hussein affair may have been bought. While there is no evidence that such a thing did occur, I shudder to think what it may mean to the future of the Associated Press if it is more than just a perception.

Update: fixed a glitch above, where I meant "stringer-based" reporting, not "string-based," which is reputedly how AP handles telecommunications. Sorry for the confusion.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:29 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Kathleen Carroll, the Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the Associated Press, just can't seem to do the required legwork necessary to resolve the questions surrounding six immolations and four mosque burnings alleged in news reports by anonymous reporters working for her organization. She does, however, try her best to deflect criticism in her latest response to the emerging scandal this afternoon.

She begins:

In recent days, a handful of people have stridently criticized The Associated Press' coverage of a terrible attack on Iraqi citizens last month in Baghdad. Some of those critics question whether the incident happened at all and declare that they don't believe our reporting.

Indeed, a small number of them have whipped themselves into an indignant lather over the AP's reporting.

What concerns Carroll is that her "handful" includes Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald, Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner, Tom Zeller of the New York Times, and Robert Batemen in the New York Post, and this handful is steadily getting larger by the day thanks to a diligent army of citizen-journalists.

Their assertions that the AP has been duped or worse are unfounded and just plain wrong.

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

Well, thanks for clearing that up. I can sleep comfortably now that you've confirmed what is in your self-interest to reinforce.

We have sent journalists to the neighborhood three different times to talk with people there about what happened. And those residents have repeatedly told us, in some detail, that Shiite militiamen dragged six Sunni worshippers from a mosque, drenched them with kerosene and burned them alive.

And yet in all of those trips to this intimate Sunni enclave, there are a few things the largest news organization in the world hasn't been able to discover... for instance, how the militiamen "burned and blew up" four mosques in the initial report, only to see that number dwindle to one mosque partially burned, without a retraction being issued. For that matter, which mosque were these six men dragged out of? Basic reporting, Editor Carroll. Eighth-grade school-paper who-what-when-where-why.

While we're on the subject of basic journalism, it would seem simple to find names for the six victims in such a tight-knit community. So why, after AP journalists went to this neighborhood three different times to investigate a story under a cloud of suspicion, has the Associated Press been unwilling or unable to provide that basic information?

No one else has said they have actually gone to the neighborhood. Particularly not the individuals who have criticized our journalism with such barbed certitude.

This isn't exactly the truth, Editor Carroll, and if you read your own reporting, you are well aware of that fact. An Iraqi fire company was called into the neighborhood to extinguish the one (not four) minor mosque fire. There does not seem to be any reports from the fire company concerning something as noticeable as six humans combusting in the street.

In addition, we know from your own reporting that legitimate Iraqi police and interior ministry officers dispatched to Hurriyah were unable to verify any of the claims made by AP reporters. They were able to interview the one named source, Imad al-Hasimi, at which time al-Hasimi told a different story than the one reported by the Associated Press. From what little you've given us, it seems he has retracted his story entirely.

I'm sorry that those of us thousands of miles away from the situation are having to criticize AP reporting with such "barbed certitude," but when your senior reporters five miles away don't seek answers to obvious and pressing questions, those of us further away must.

The AP has been transparent and fair since the first day of our reporting on this issue.
We have not ignored the questions about our work raised by the U.S. military and later, by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Indeed, we published those questions while also sending AP journalists back out to the scene to dig further into what happened and why others might be questioning the initial accounts.

The AP mission was to get at the facts, wherever those facts took us.

Transparent? The AP will not tell us who their reporters are (citing safety concerns, of course). We have no names for alleged witnesses for precisely the same reason. We don't know the name of the mosque from which these men were abducted. We don't seem to have the names of the dead, and contrary to initial AP reports, we don't seem to have any named employees of the Kazamiyah Hospital who will claim to have seen these bodies. Of the two named sources in the initial story, one now disavows the story originally attributed to him, and the other, primary witness seems all but certain of being a long-run, deeply embedded fraud.

And what about the things that Carroll would rather not address?

Such an example is the fact that the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which would rarely miss a chance to cite an example of Shia brutality, has been curiously silent about these alleged immolations. Al Jazeera, the preeminent Arab news outlet, also did not report on this atrocity, despite how easily they could sell this story to their primary media market. For that matter, neither Reuters, nor UPI, nor any other news organization has been able to confirm the Associated Press story. AP, it seems, has an exclusive that no one else can or will substantiate, even two weeks later. If AP has the facts, they are very stingy sharing them.

What we found were more witnesses who described the attack in particular detail as well as describing the fear that runs through the neighborhood. We ran a lengthy story on those additional findings, as well as the questions, on Nov. 28.

Some of AP's critics question the existence of police Capt. Jamil Hussein, who was one (but not the only) source to tell us about the burning.

These critics cite a U.S. military officer and an Iraqi official who first said Hussein is not an authorized spokesman and later said he is not on their list of Interior Ministry employees. It's worth noting that such lists are relatively recent creations of the fledgling Iraqi government.

By contrast, Hussein is well known to AP. We first met him, in uniform, in a police station, some two years ago. We have talked with him a number of times since then and he has been a reliable source of accurate information on a variety of events in Baghdad.

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.

And now, we get to what concerns Editor Carroll most of all.

Jamil Hussein isn't just a one-off source, but an on-going, continual source for the Associated Press over the past two years, being used as a named source no fewer than 61 times in the past year. If Captain Hussein is a legitimate Iraqi police officer as Carroll insists, then inviting him to meet with his own superiors and representatives of U.S Central Command in front of Associated Press cameras would not only be uneventful for Captain Hussein, who could clear charges that he is an insurgent operative, but it would vindicate the Associated Press completely. The Associated Press can end this controversy by merely producing Captain Jamil Hussein.

And yet, we know that if the Associated Press could produce Captain Hussein to vindicate it's reporters, it would have done so by now. The fact that the Executive Editor of the Associated Press has been reduced to spending the bulk of her response attacking the messengers tells you just how dire the situation of the Associated Press in Iraq truly is.

Jamil Hussein is one false source that immediately calls into question all 61 AP stories in which he was a source. Jamil Hussein is just one of at least 14 sources that the Associated Press has claimed as Iraqi policemen, that have provided "proof" in perhaps dozens to hundreds of stories, that the Iraqi police simply have no record of.

The Associated Press is standing behind their story, perhaps because at this point, acknowledging how deeply they've been compromised is far too difficult to contemplate.

We don't need anymore bluster, accusations, or denials, Kathleen Carroll.

Simple facts will suffice.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:25 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment
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Looking back from the future, we may one day determine that a macabre but seemingly straightforward story of Iraqi sectarian violence was the beginning of the end of credibility for the world's largest news organization.

Six burned alive in Iraq
The Associated Press

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.

Most of the thousands of dead bodies that have been found dumped across Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq in recent months have been of victims who were tortured and then shot to death, according to police. The suspected militia killers often have used electric drills on their captives' bodies before killing them. The bodies are frequently decapitated.

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.

Residents of the troubled district claim the Mahdi Army has begun kidnapping and holding Sunni hostages to use in ritual slaughter at the funerals of Shiite victims of Baghdad's raging sectarian war.

Such claims cannot be verified but speak to the deep fear that grips Baghdad, where retaliation has become a part of daily life.

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.

This story first began emerging late on November 24, with the version of the story printed above being published on November 25.

Thanks to some investigative started by Curt of Flopping Aces into the many apparent discrepancies in the story, we now know for a fact that significant portions of this story are categorically false, and that other details are highly suspect.

We know that four mosques were not burned nor blown up as the AP story alleges. We know that only one mosque was burned, and the extent of that damage was relatively minor. We know that Imad al-Hasimi, the Sunni leader cited in the original story, has recanted his earlier statements. We also know there is no record of burned bodies being taken the Kazamiyah Hospital, or anywhere else, for that matter. They've simply never been produced.
more...

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On the first segment of O'Reilly. As always, Allah's got the video.

A taste:

"...I believe that the majority of American newpapers, which are full of Associated Press content, on the central issue of our time, they're either dupes, at best, or semi-treasonous and colluding with the enemy and demoralizing America on the home front, including having agents of the enemy on their payroll. This is a disgraceful organization."

He goes on to mention Bilal Hussein (by deed, not name) the Pulitzer-winning AP photographer arrested with an al Qaeda commander, in a weapons cache, coated in explosive residue.

The Associated Press, of course, is quite angry that Hussein is being detained. They seem far less concerned that he may be tied to terrorism and the murder of Iraqi civilians, or that he could be feeding the AP propaganda instead of legitimate news.

Dupes, or semi-treasonous? You make the call.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:47 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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