I've only come across this story several days late, but has anyone noticed that Eric Boehlert of Media Matters is obsessed with Michelle Malkin?

It would appear to be an unhealthy obsession at best, but perhaps what irritates me about his posts the most is not his opinion of Malkin, to which he is certainly entitled, but the fact that Boehlert can't keep his facts straight, which seems to be a long-running problem.

He concludes his most recent attack by listing bullet points of what he considers "Malkin’s recent lowlights,” including the following:

• In April 2005, Malkin was leading the charge (i.e. "raising troubling questions") in accusing a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer with the Associated Press of working in concert with Iraqi insurgents to stage the public assassination of a Baghdad election worker. (The photog was tipped off by terrorists, Malkin claimed.) The allegations were proven to completely fictitious.

Entirely ficticious, Mr. Boehlert?

You wouldn't find it in Boehlert's article—he does not have the integrity to link directly to the Malkin post in question—nor does he link to the April, 2006 article on Malkin's site that shows that the charges were far from "completely fictitious." As a matter of fact, it appears that the charges may have been quite accurate. What is Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Bilal Hussein doing now?

Cooling his heels in an Iraqi jail after being captured with al Qaeda leader Hamid Hamad Motib and another terrorist. Somehow, I doubt Boehlert will apologize for being wrong.

But this wasn't Boehlert's only questionable lowlight, as he concludes with this gem, near and dear to my own heart:

• In January, Malkin experienced a particularly humiliating setback. For months, Malkin had been pushing a far-fetched media "scandal" by accusing the Associated Press of manufacturing a "phony" and "bogus" Iraqi police source who was reporting false stories about the daily carnage inside Baghdad. She claimed the phony AP source proved that all of the AP's Iraq reporting was suspect. (Malkin and company cling to the notion that the situation in Iraq is not as bad as biased journalists make it out to be.) In January, the Iraqi government confirmed the police source's existence, thereby ruining Malkin's press-hating conspiracy theory. (The Post remained silent when Malkin's Jamil Hussein allegation imploded.)

This may be a news flash to Boehlert, but as regular readers of Confederate Yankee know, there is no Jamil Hussein, there never has been, and despite what Boehlert and the Associated Press maintain, Iraqi General Abdul-Karim Khalaf says he never confirmed the existence of Jamil Hussein, and he has gone on the record to set the story straight.

Instead of the General confirming the existence of Jamil Hussein, Associated Press reporters confirmed to General Abdul-Karim that Jamil Hussein was a pseudonym; the name of the source the AP misrepresented as Jamil Hussein was actually Jamil Gulaim Innad XX-XXXXXXX [Name redacted for security reasons — Ed.], which AP reporters confirmed both during a conversation with General Abdul-Karim prior to Steven R. Hurst's deceptive January 4 article, and with a phone call to General Abdul-Karim after XX-XXXXXXX was interviewed by the Ministry of the Interior.

Eric Boehlert's obsession with Michelle Malkin is a bit creepy, but the fact he seems quite willing to lie—or is just an incompetent researcher—goes far beyond his obsessionwith Michelle Malkin, to whether or not we can trust him to be the least bit honest or accountable for the things that he writes.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:20 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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One of the (often deserved) knocks against journalists is that many reporters are generalists, covering a wide range of breaking news stories, but lacking the specific knowledge one needs to write cogently or with any depth on a specific issue. That is especially true in smaller news organizations, where a general news reporter may have to cover a crash, a zoning board meeting, or an anti-hobo-kicking rally, depending on the news of the day.

At larger news organizations, however, reporters often fall into "silos," covering a certain beat, where they are expected to specialize on a specific kind of news story. This is why we have financial reporters, foreign affairs reporters and that guy who talks about "hog futures" (I tend to think that hog futures are almost all the same, usually involving their role as an entrée, unless they have an exceptionally literate spider nearby, but I digress).

A clear example of this kind of stellar, specialized reporting was published in the NY Times yesterday morning, U.S. Displays Bomb Parts Said to Be Made in Iran. After reading the article, I was left wondering if James Glantz and Richard A. Oppel, Jr., had transcended being mere reporters, as their insightful commentary was clearly approaching the level where they could soon be rubbing elbows with a frigid of Maureen Dowds or a pod of Oliver Willi.

Take a moment to bask in the glory of their perfectly honed lede:

— In a dusty field near the Baghdad airport on Monday, the American military laid out a display of hundreds of components for assembling deadly roadside bombs, its latest effort to embarrass the country it contends is supplying the material to armed Shiite groups here: Iran.

All along, I've been under the delusion that we were fighting Sunni insurgents, al Qaeda terrorists, and Shia militias in an attempt to bring some sort of stability to the 26 million people of Iraq. What was I thinking? As the razor-sharp team of Glantz and Oppel astutely noted, our military goal—of which this is just the "latest effort"—is the embarrassment of Iran. How did I miss that? Well, that is why they are the professionals, and I'm just a blogger.

It takes a sharp dedicated mind to cover the war for the NY Times. Listen to how these crack experts can turn even the most technical matter into speech even us common folk can understand:

The cache included what Maj. Marty Weber, a master explosives ordnance technician, said was C-4 explosive, a white substance, in clear plastic bags with red labels that he said contained serial numbers and other information that clearly marked it as Iranian.

See? C4 is a "white substance" with "red labels" in a "clear plastic bag." That I can grasp. It has, as we say, meat on it.

Why, if someone had tried to tell us that C4 was a durable, moldable RDX-based high explosive, it would have been far too complex to comprehend. I guess we're just lucky our soldiers didn't find any triacetone triperoxide.

But sometimes, even such experts as Glantz and Oppel can find the more technical aspects of their job, well, confusing:

But while the find gave experts much more information on the makings of the E.F.P.Â’s, which the American military has repeatedly argued must originate in Iran, the cache also included items that appeared to cloud the issue.

Among the confusing elements were cardboard boxes of the gray plastic PVC tubes used to make the canisters. The boxes appeared to contain shipments of tubes directly from factories in the Middle East, none of them in Iran. One box said in English that the tubes inside had been made in the United Arab Emirates and another said, in Arabic, “plastic made in Haditha,” a restive Sunni town on the Euphrates River in Iraq.

The box marked U.A.E. provided a phone number for the manufacturer there. A call to that number late Monday encountered only an answering machine that said, “Leave your number and we will call you back.”

Quite confusing, indeed.

These tubes made of the very rare element PVC. The fact that none of these tubes was made in Iran "cloud[s] the issue," for Glantz and Oppel in much the same way that Toyota's manufactured in Tennessee are still "Japanese cars."

The thing is, these commonly-found components didn't really seem to cloud the issue at all. At least, it didn't cloud the issue for the guys who created a series of PowerPoint presentations for a security services company in Iraq that just happened to fall into my lap.

The tubes, be they plastic or metal, made in Tehran, Haditha, or Boise, don't really matter. Any tube of the right size can be used to make an EFP, as even I can figure out. What matters are the explosive charge and the copper liners that form into slugs when the EFP detonates.

Why, one might even think that Glantz and Oppel were the ones purposefully trying to cloud the issue, but I guess that even professionals can get confused, so I'll see what little I can do to help.

This is a captured EFP.

It doesn't have a "made in Iran" stamp on it, so I can see how two of the Times best could get confused.

It isn't shiny, and it isn't pretty, but then, it doesn't have to be. What matters is that the copper disk liner on the front is manufactured to precise tolerances to form a slug when the explosive blast wave hits it. These aren't very easy to make without the right manufacturing equipment, and the kind of manufacturing equipment used to make them can often be determined from tool marks left on the copper disks. These marks are like fingerprints if not quite as precise, and can often determine where an EFP came from, especially if the EFP is captured intact before firing.

That is essentially what Maj. Jeremy Siegrist attempted to tell Glantz and Oppel, but they still seemed confused and captivated by the tubes. They even apparently misplace Siegrist's quote to make it appear he is talking about the PVC tubes in this cache, as opposed to the machined copper disks to which he seems to be rather obviously referring. Journalism? It's hard.

Items in the cache included the concave copper dishes called liners that cap the canisters and roll into deadly armor-piercing slugs when the explosive detonates. There were also various kinds of electronics, presumably for arming and triggering the devices, the PVC tubes, and two types of rockets and mortar shells that Major Weber said had markings and construction that identified them as being Iranian in origin.

The PVC tubes, of several different sizes, appeared to be fittings of the kind of used to splice two stretches of PVC tube together in routine applications.

“It’s worth pursuing that it’s machine-made and you can track the country of origin,” said Maj. Jeremy Siegrist of the First Cavalry Division. “And it’s manufactured for a specific purpose.”

The terrorists that use them have found that when EFPs are shiny and pretty, soldiers tend not to drive in front of them, and so they started camouflaging them by burying them in dirt mounds, or other roadside debris, or in fake rocks, like this one.

This particular fake rock EFP is quite nasty, as many of the newer EFPs are. This is a bank of 5 EFPs hidden in one fake rock, aimed at slightly different angles to create a wider spread of fire across a larger area.

As stated earlier, and mentioned above by Maj. Siegrist, these copper disks have a very specific purpose behind their design; the blast wave created when the explosive charge goes off will turn a properly shaped copper disk into a explosively-formed penetrator like the one below, moving at up to 2,000 meters/second.

These penetrators do very nasty things, as you might imagine, but you'll have to go elsewhere to see the results. Unlike CNN, I'm not interested in promoting the results of a terrorist attack. I will however, show you what an EFP looks like even after it has hit its target.

As you can see, a properly manufactured EFP still holds together rather well even after hitting an armored vehicle and injuring or killing those inside.

Improperly manufactured EFPs, presumably, don't work as well. If not shaped properly, they will, instead of forming a dart-like penetrator, will be thrust forward as some sort of misshapen blog blob with far less penetrative power that could go wildly off target, or simply shatter on detonation in far less lethal shrapnel.

I hope this little bit of information eases the confused clouds surrounding and created by Glantz and Oppel, and yet somehow, I doubt it. They're covering the war to embarrass Iran, not the one we are actually fighting.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:46 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The Jamil still-not-Hussein story is getting interesting again, with the AP's Director of Media Relations & Public Affairs, Linda Wagner, sending me an email early Saturday morning strongly implying that Iraqi Interior Ministry Spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf lied when he stated that he never confirmed the identity of the AP's two-year source as Jamil Hussein in an exclusive to Pajamas Media last week.

Wagner stated:

Mr. Owens,

AP knows that police officer Jamil Gholaim Hussein was its source. We did wish to obtain from Brigadier General Khalaf confirmation that Hussein is on the Iraqi police force, after Khalaf had earlier denied that fact. Khalaf provided that information on January 4.

An AP reporter attended the Iraqi Interior Ministry briefing on January 4. After the briefing, the AP reporter spoke to Khalaf who confirmed for the record what he had told that same reporter on the phone unofficially the night before:

* that Jamil Hussein's name could not be found in their initial search of their Iraqi police employee records.
* that subsequent searches of those records turned up Jamil Gholaim Hussein, which is the name AP reported in late November 2006.

Khalaf has since told the same thing to another AP reporter.

Linda Wagner
Director of Media Relations & Public Affairs
The Associated Press

I'd be very interested to see how BG Khalaf "provided that information" on January 4, if he in fact did so. He maintains, of course, that the story is quite the opposite, that the AP reporters he spoke with confirmed their source as someone with a different name (Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX [Name redacted for security reasons — Ed.]), on two occasions.

If the Associated Press has documentation proving their allegation, then things could get very interesting for the Interior Ministry spokesman, but at this point, Wagner has refused to answer whether or not they have anything to support their contention, or if they are simply going on the word of their reporters, which are apparently the same reporters that have been completely unable to substantiate the claim that 24 people died in the Hurriyah mosque attacks with any physical evidence over the past three months.

The burden of proof rests fully on the Associated Press to prove that "Hussein" exists, and so far, they have fallen woefully short.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'd provide more details, but the News & Observer still can't seem to find any.

Update: It's even more ironic when you consider the N&O headline: "Warrant reveals details in rape case."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:14 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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Last Thursday, I provided Associated Press Media Relations Director Linda Wagner with confirmation that a January 4 Steven R. Hurst article appears to be 180-degrees from the truth. To date, neither Wagner nor any other AP contact has deemed to provide any sort of response. Frankly, I didn't expect one. The Hurst article was a CYA piece written to provide cover for shoddy Associated Press reporting, and it is not in their personal interests to admit that they've been caught apparently fabricating that story from the ground up.

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

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

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

Julie Inskeep
Publisher
The Journal Gazette
Fort Wayne, Indiana
jinskeep@jg.net

David Lord
President
Pioneer Newspapers, Inc.
Seattle, Washington
dlord@pioneernewspapers.com

R. John Mitchell
Publisher
Rutland Herald
Rutland, Vermont
john.mitchell@rutlandherald.com

Jon Rust
Publisher
Southeast Missourian
Co-president, Rust Communications
Cape Girardeau, Missouri
jrust@semissourian.com

William Dean Singleton
Vice Chairman and CEO
MediaNews Group Inc.
Denver, Colorado
deansingleton@medianewsgroup.com

Jay R. Smith
President
Cox Newspapers, Inc.
Atlanta, Georgia
Jay.Smith@coxinc.com

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

I write to you today as members of the Board of Directors for the Associated Press. I have uncovered conclusive evidence that The January 4, 2007 article by Associated Press reporter Steven R. Hurst titled "Iraq threatens arrest of police captain who spoke to media" is highly deceptive to the point I think that most reasonable people would consider it an outright lie.

The post is currently online here:

http://www.ap.org/FOI/foi_010407a.html

In that post, Hurst states:

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

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

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

"The U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry raised the doubts about Hussein in questioning the veracity of the AP's initial reporting on the incident, and the Iraqi ministry suggested that many news organization were giving a distorted, exaggerated picture of the conflict in Iraq. Some Internet bloggers spread and amplified these doubts, accusing the AP of having made up Hussein's identity in order to disseminate false news about the war.

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

People who read the report are led to believe that Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf confirmed that AP's source is named Jamil Gholaiem Hussein. BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf did no such thing.

In fact, on January 11, LT. Michael Dean, LT, US Navy assigned to Multi-National Corps-Iraq Public Affairs forwarded to me and several other bloggers the following an email from Bill Costlow, a civilian liaison with the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) working with the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad. The email said, in part (my bold):

"Seems like every time I talk to somebody about this guy, his name changes. His personnel record says his name is: Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX [name redacted for blog publication -ed.].

Spokesman BG Abdul-Kareem has spoken with members of the AP in Baghdad
and has confirmation that he is their source."

Note the last line in that paragraph. BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf did not confirm that the AP source was named Jamil Hussein. Quite to the contrary, AP reporters confirmed that the AP source was not Jamil Hussein, but was instead a man named Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX. To put it quite bluntly, Hurst's article is a categorical and blatant lie.

I followed up on this email, and got the following direct quote from BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf, forwarded to me by Bill Costlow, the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) liaison to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, on February 15:

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

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

Multiple levels of Associated Press employees, from stringers in the field in Iraq all the way up to Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, International Editor Daniszewski, and Media Relations Director Linda Wagner, may have been knowingly perpetuating this pseudonym, and in essence, participating in a long-running fabrication.

They have apparently been deceiving Associated Press readers worldwide for over a month, and perhaps for as long as two years, if they knew his actual identity from the beginning.

AP Media Relations Director Linda Wagner was provided Brigadier General Abdul-Karim KhalafÂ’s direct quote for comment on the morning of February 15, but has declined to respond this far.

I have in my possession Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf's phone number for a direct confirmation of these charges, and I will gladly provide you with that number.

The Associated Press lied about the identity of Jamil Hussein, and still persists in maintaining this fabrication.

As readers and consumers of news provided by the Associated Press, we deserve a full retraction of the deceptive January 4 Steven R. Hurst article, an investigation of how long this willful deception has been on-going, and a formal apology. It is past time for the Associated Press to live up to these words in "The Associated Press Statement of News Values and Principles:"

"In the 21st century, that news is transmitted in more ways than ever before – in print, on the air and on the Web, with words, images, graphics, sounds and video. But always and in all media, we insist on the highest standards of integrity and ethical behavior when we gather and deliver the news.

"That means we abhor inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions. It means we will not knowingly introduce false information into material intended for publication or broadcast; nor will we alter photo or image content. Quotations must be accurate, and precise.

"It means we always strive to identify all the sources of our information, shielding them with anonymity only when they insist upon it and when they provide vital information – not opinion or speculation; when there is no other way to obtain that information; and when we know the source is knowledgeable and reliable.

"It means we don't plagiarize.

"It means we avoid behavior or activities that create a conflict of interest and compromise our ability to report the news fairly and accurately, uninfluenced by any person or action.

"It means we don't misidentify or misrepresent ourselves to get a story. When we seek an interview, we identify ourselves as AP journalists.

"It means we donÂ’t pay newsmakers for interviews, to take their photographs or to film or record them.

"It means we must be fair. Whenever we portray someone in a negative light, we must make a real effort to obtain a response from that person. When mistakes are made, they must be corrected – fully, quickly and ungrudgingly.

"And ultimately, it means it is the responsibility of every one of us to ensure that these standards are upheld. Any time a question is raised about any aspect of our work, it should be taken seriously."

A serious question has been raised regarding the apparent fabrication of a self-serving Associated Press claim, one that the management of the Associated Press seems to have no inclination to correct.

As members of the Board of Directors for the Associated Press, you have the responsibility to fully investigate this matter. If you decline to do so, your stated values and principles will be revealed for merely empty, self-serving words.

Respectfully,

Bob Owens
Confederate Yankee Blog
http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/

Regular readers many note that I've approached these members of the Associated Press Board of Directors in the past to address problems with the AP's Hurriyah reporting, where the AP still maintains that 24 people died in mosque attacks on November 24, 2006, even though no bodies have ever been recovered, and despite the fact that photographic evidence shows conclusively that an "inferno" at one mosque where AP wrote that 18 people died, frankly, never burned at all.

I therefore have very little confidence that even the clear lies printed about what Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf actually said will be addressed by the AP Board of Directors, though I welcome you to use the email addresses provided above to let your dissatisfaction with the quality of the AP's reporting on this matter be known.

The Associated Press published an apparent bald-faced lied on January 4, and has made no noticeable effort to atone for that most egregious of journalistic sins.

BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf never said AP's source was Jamil Hussein. Instead, AP reporters confirmed to him that their sources name was Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX. The story Hurst published was in direct opposition to what BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf says occurred.

The Associated Press apparently fabricated a cover-up. The only question is just how high up that cover-up goes.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:02 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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You would think that after the downfall of Adnan Hajj that the professional media would have developed a sharper eye for noticing crudely PhotoShopped photographs, but even though Charles Johnson and others debunked a crude Iranian PhotoShop purporting to show U.S. munitions being used to subvert the government of Iran over the weekend, it didn't keep the ever-gullible L.A. Times from running the photo today.

Bloggers did a good job showing the PhotoShopping faults that Times photo editors should have quickly and rather easily caught, but simply doing a Google image search should have quickly proven the rifle ammunition claim questionable.

The ammunition box in the Iranian PhotoShop shows the front of a box of ammunition with the words "CAL. 7.62x39mm 123 GR. BALL" and the distinctive Winchester USA brand logo on the right side of the box. Here is the photo with the ammunition box isolated as it appeared on LGF:

Here's the thing: The Winchester USA brand ammunition I'm familiar with (I sell it in multiple calibers) doesn't look anything like the box on the photo. Typically, when ammunition is stacked, the top of the box is obscured, and so most ammunition manufacturers, including Winchester, put the caliber of the bullets on the end of the box, as seen here in a picture of showing the common packaging of a box of Winchester USA brand 7.62x39mm ammunition.

Is it reasonable for the photo editors of national news organizations to do some rudimentary checking to make sure pictures they publish aren't crudely PhotoShopped propaganda? You would think so, as that would seem to cut to the heart of their job responsibilities these days where image manipulation is now available to the masses.

It seems reasonable that if a news organization is going to run a picture of a certain building that they might want to take steps to make sure that is the building pictured, and so it seems reasonable that if they are going to run pictures from a foreign regime purporting to contain U.S. bullets and munitions, that they would do some basic fact checking to see if the bullets are in the correct packaging, and perhaps they should check to see if the grenades in the photo aren't Russian.

It isn't rocket science to check pictures for fauxtography, but it apparently eludes the best minds that the L.A. Times has to offer.

Update: Apparently, I'm not alone in keying in on the ammunition packaging. Outside the Wire has links to pictures showing the differences between military and civilian ammunition packaging.

As you might suspect, they aren't that subtle.

Update: YNET is now running with the story, and a reader states in the comments that the ammunition boxes shown in the Iranian story appears to be Winchester USA commericial (civilian) ammunition boxes from approximately 20 years ago.

Some smoking gun.

Update: Reader Don Jordan send along a couple of pictures of some 7.62x39mm Winchester USA ammunition he owns dating to 1994.

He thinks he saw box design used in the Iranian photo being sold around San Diego about 11-12 years ago. He also has a friend with an extensive collection of older 7.62x39mm Winchester USA ammunition who might be able to get a better handle on the date this particular civilian ammunition box design was in use.

Update: It looks like we can pin down the date of manufacture to circa 1993.

That spring, says reader Robert Miller, is when he got this Winchester USA 9mm ammunition that shows packaging indistinguishable from that used in the Iranian photo (nice background, Robert). The Iranians are claiming we're supplying their insurgency with economy civilian practice ammunition made about 14 years ago.

I'm less than impressed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:03 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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The Jawa Report notes the canonization of "Saint Harry" today (h/t Hot Air) and provides examples of other, less flattering photo compositions of conservatives that made it on the front pages of media sites over the past few years.

With that as a guide, I must wonder: does this count as another example of biased photo composition?

The blurred object in the background bears a resemblence to the Maltese Cross carried into battle by Christian warriors since the first Crusade.

Now, the media would never use a creative photo angle or strategic photo composition imply that Vice President Cheney is carrying on a crusade against Islam, would it?

Heavens, no.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:09 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I'll be on KSFO 560 With Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan this morning, talking about the recent development in the AP's Jamil Hussein scandal, where Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf revealed that the Associated Press lied when they said he confirmed the identity of Jamil Hussein.

It turns out that AP reporters instead confirmed to General Abdul-Karim Khalaf that "Jamil Hussein" was just a pseudonym, and that the Associated Press has been lying to it's audience for weeks now, if not months.

Should make for some interesting radio.

You can listen via online streaming at 6:35 PST/9:25 EST at KSFO 560 via the "listen now" link.

Update: 6:35 PST/9:35 EST has come and gone, so it appears I've probably been bumped. That's talk radio for you. If I end up going on the air at another time, I'll let you know.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Note: This is a background article to the exclusive posted today at Pajamas Media.

From the very beginning of the controversy surrounding the Associated Press' coverage of a series of Shia militia attacks on Sunni homes and mosques in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad on November 24, 2006, Iraqi government officials, Multi-National Corps-Iraq, and bloggers have questioned the identity of one of the primary Associated Press sources for the accounts, an Iraqi Police Captain called Jamil Hussein.

The controversy erupted after the Public Affairs Office of Multi-National Corps-Iraq disputed claims made in the Associated Press articles, which claimed that four Sunni mosques in Hurriyah were "burned and blew up," and that 24 people had been killed in the attacks.

According an AP article released on November 24:

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.

A follow-up Associated Press article printed on November 25 stated:

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.

In the same article, a second source, a Sunni elder named Imad al-Hasimi:

...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.

When approached by investigators from the Iraqi Defense Ministry, al-Hasimi recanted his claim that six worshippers were pulled from the Mustafa mosque in Hurriyah, which an AP report by Steven R. Hurst confirmed in a November 28 article. Hurst seemed to imply that as Hasimi was pressured into recanting his testimony in a January 4th article where he stated that he recanted only after Defense Ministry investigators "paid him a visit," a loaded phrase often used in Hollywood accounts of mafia goons strong-arming the witnesses of crimes into silence.

AP later claimed that several anonymous sources in Hurriyah confirmed the claimed immolation attack to AP reporters, but these accounts could not be verified by any other news organization's reporters, including Baghdad correspondent Edward Wong of the New York Times:

When we first heard of the event on Nov. 24, through the A.P. story and a man named Imad al-Hashemi talking about it on television, we had our Iraqi reporters make calls to people in the Hurriya neighborhood. Because of the curfew that day, everything had to be done by phone. We reached several people who told us about the mosque attacks, but said they had heard nothing of Sunni worshippers being burned alive. Any big news event travels quickly by word of mouth through Baghdad, aided by the enormous proliferation of cell phones here. Such an incident would have been so abominable that a great many of the residents in Hurriya, as well as in other Sunni Arab districts, would have been in an uproar over it. Hard-line Sunni Arab organizations such as the Muslim Scholars Association or the Iraqi Islamic Party would almost certainly have appeared on television that day or the next to denounce this specific incident. Iraqi clerics and politicians are not shy about doing this. Yet, as far as I know, there was no widespread talk of the incident.

The Washington Post also spoke with two local imams, who denied the immolations took place.

On November 30, The Public Affairs Office, via email, dropped the bombshell that the Iraqi Interior Ministry had no record of a police officer by the name of Jamil Hussein.

Iraqi Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf later confirmed that statement in a press conference, which brought the following response from Associated Press International Editor John Daniszewski later that same day:

The Associated Press denounces unfounded attacks on its story about six Sunni worshipers burned to death outside their mosque on Friday, November 24. The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question.

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 workers.

We have conducted a thorough review of the sourcing and reporting involved and plan to move a more detailed report about the entire incident soon, with greater detail provided by multiple eye witnesses. Several of those witnesses spoke to AP on the condition that their names would not be used because they fear reprisals.

The police captain cited in our story has long been known to the AP reporters and has been interviewed in his office and by telephone on several occasions during the past two years.

He is an officer at the police station in Yarmouk, with a record of reliability and truthfulness. His full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein.

The AP stands by its story.

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll then piled on, oddly:

We are satisfied with our reporting on this incident. If Iraqi and U.S. military spokesmen choose to disregard AP's on-the-ground reporting, that is certainly their choice to make, but it is a puzzling one given the facts.

AP journalists have repeatedly been to the Hurriyah neighborhood, a small Sunni enclave within a larger Shiia area of Baghdad. Residents there have told us in detail about the attack on the mosque and that six people were burned alive during it. Images taken later that day and again this week show a burned mosque and graffiti that says "blood wanted," similar to that found on the homes of Iraqis driven out of neighborhoods where they are a minority. We have also spoken repeatedly to a police captain who is known to AP and has been a reliable source of accurate information in the past and he has confirmed the attack.

By contrast, the U.S. military and Iraqi government spokesmen attack our reporting because that captain's name is not on their list of authorized spokespeople. Their implication that we may have given money to the captain is false. The AP does not pay for information. Period.

Further, the Iraqi spokesman said today that reporting on such atrocities "shows that the security situation is worse than it really is." He is speaking from a capital city where dozens of bodies are discovered every day showing signs of terrible torture. Where people are gunned down in their cars, dragged from their homes or blown apart in public places every single day.

At the end of the day, we have AP journalists with reporting and images from the actual neighborhood versus official spokesmen saying the story cannot be true because it is damaging and because one of the sources is not on a list of people approved to talk to the press. Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.

We stand behind our reporting.

Executive Editor Carroll's comments seem to say, "how dare they question us, the Associated Press."

Carroll followed up on December 8, 2006, strongly implying that forces in the Interior Ministry may be participating in a cover-up of the attacks because of sectarian influences, and implied that questioning the Associated Press accounts of the Hurriyah accounts, and Jamil Hussein's identity by bloggers, the Iraqi government, and Multi-National Corps- Iraq amounted to a witch hunt:

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. ItÂ’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.

That neighborhood, Hurriyah, is a particularly violent section of Baghdad. Once a Sunni enclave, it now is dominated by gunmen loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Many people there talked to us about the attack, but clammed up when they realized they might be quoted publicly. They felt understandably nervous about bringing their accusations up in an area patrolled by a Shiite-led police force that they suspect is allied with the very militia accused in these killings...

As careful followers of the Iraq story know well, various militias have been accused of operating within the Interior Ministry, which controls the police and has long worked to suppress news of death-squad activity in its ranks. (This is the same ministry that questioned Capt. Hussein’s existence and last week announced plans to take legal action against journalists who report news that creates the impression that security in Iraq is bad, “when the facts are totally different.”)

The Iraqi journalists who work for the AP are smart, dedicated and incredibly courageous to go into the streets every day, talking to their countrymen and trying to capture a portrait of their home in a historic and tumultuous period.

The work is dangerous: two people who work for AP have been killed since this war began in 2003. Many others have been hurt, some badly.

Several of AP's Iraqi journalists were victimized by Saddam HusseinÂ’s regime and bear scars of his torture or the loss of relatives killed by his goons. Those journalists have no interest in furthering the chaos that makes daily life in Iraq so perilous. They want what any of us want: To be able to live and work without fear and raise their children in peace and safety.

Questioning their integrity and work ethic is simply offensive.

It's awfully easy to take pot shots from the safety of a computer keyboard thousands of miles from the chaos of Baghdad.

The Iraq war is one of hundreds of conflicts that AP journalists have covered in the past 160 years. Our only goal is to provide fair, impartial coverage of important human events as they unfold. We check our facts and check again.

That is what we have done in the case of the Hurriyah attack. And that is why we stand by our story.

On January 4, 2007, AP reporter Steven R. Hurst announced the Iraqi Ministry Brigadier General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf had acknowledged that "Jamil Hussein" was indeed who the Associated Press said he was the entire time:

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

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

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

The U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry raised the doubts about Hussein in questioning the veracity of the AP's initial reporting on the incident, and the Iraqi ministry suggested that many news organization were giving a distorted, exaggerated picture of the conflict in Iraq. Some Internet bloggers spread and amplified these doubts, accusing the AP of having made up Hussein's identity in order to disseminate false news about the war.

On January 11, 2007, LT. Michael Dean, LT, US Navy assigned to Multi-National Corps-Iraq Public affairs forwarded to me and several other bloggers the following an email from Bill Costlow, a civilian liaison with the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) working with the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad. The email said, in part (my bold):

Seems like every time I talk to somebody about this guy, his name
changes. His personnel record says his name is: Jamil Gulaim Innad
XX-XXXXXXX [name redacted- ed].

Spokesman BG Abdul-Kareem has spoken with members of the AP in Baghdad
and has confirmation that he is their source.

"BG Abdul-Kareem" was later confirmed in direct follow-up emails to Bill Costlow of CPATT as being the exact same Interior Ministry spokesman, Iraqi Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf, cited by the January 4 Hurst article... but telling a quite different story about the identity of Jamil Hussein.

According to Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf, not only was "Jamil Hussein" actually
Jamil Gulaim Innad XX-XXXXXXX, the AP itself confirmed this identity, and then apparently decided to print an apparently fictitious account saying that Jamil Hussein was Jamil Hussein.

I personally contacted Associated Press reporter Steven R. Hurst via email on January 11 to confirm Hussein's true identity with him, and instead, within 90 minutes, received the following email reply from Linda M. Wagner, Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs for the Associated Press, which read 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.

I've since conducted follow-ups with CPATT liason to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Bill Costlow, and he provided me this morning with the direct quote of Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf as noted in the Pajamas Media Exclusive.

A direct copy of Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf's quote was forwarded to Linda Wagner of the Associated Press this morning, asking her if the Associated Press still stood behind Hurst's January 4th article, now that that article has been contradicted by their own source.

Thus far Wagner has declined to respond. If she so desires, she can contact me for Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf's phone number for confirmation of this quote.

I think he is expecting her call.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Ask not to whom the AP lies: it lies to thee.

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The sensitivity of Jack Cafferty on display in CNN's The Situation Room, moments ago.

Classy guy, that Cafferty.

Update: Allahpundit has the video.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:14 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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If you are going to write about the contractors killed by a mob in Fallujah, at least do them the honor of getting their names correct, you careless AP hacks:

The deaths of the four, all former members of the military, brought to U.S. television some of its most gruesome images of the Iraq war. A frenzied mob of insurgents ambushed a supply convoy the guards were escorting through Fallujah on March 31, 2004. The men were attacked, their bodies mutilated; two of the corpses were strung from a bridge.

At the hearing, Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, mother of Stephen Helvenston, read a statement on behalf of the families. She stopped several times to collect herself as she recounted the emotional day.

His name was Scott Helvenston.

He was a fitness instructor, a celebrity trainer, Navy SEAL, and most importantly, a father. I don't expect AP to go into those details of his life, but I do expect them to pay enough attention to at least get his name right.

Update: I stand corrected. Via email from Eddy Twyford, Scott Helvenston's best friend:

His full name is Stephen Scotten Helvenston but as you know he was always called Scott.

The reporter simply chose to use Helvenston's lesser known given name, instead of his preferred nickname. I apologize to the Associated Press for calling them "careless hacks."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:42 PM | Comments (30) | Add Comment
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Isn't it cathartic? (h/t Instapundit)

On Friday night's edition of Inside Washington airing locally on Washington PBS station WETA, the first topic was whether the media's been unfair to President Bush, given his abysmal approval ratings. NPR reporter Nina Totenberg said Bush received a "free ride" for years, so now the worm has turned and the coverage is fierce. Then the host turned to Newsweek's Evan Thomas, who was frank in his assessment of the media's role:

Gordon Peterson: "What do you think, Evan? Are the mainstream media bashing the president unfairly?"

Evan Thomas: "Well, our job is to bash the president, that's what we do almost --"

Peterson: "But unfairly?"

Thomas: "Mmmm -- I think when he rebuffed, I think when he just kissed off the Iraq Study Group, the Baker-Hamilton Commission, there was a sense then that he was decoupling himself from public opinion and Congress and the mainstream media, going his own way. At that moment he lost whatever support he had."

The message in that is very simple: the president must never "decouple" himself from the "mainstream media," because they are the key players in maintaining public opinion.

Honesty is such a lonely word.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:09 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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William Arkin has garnered quite a bit of heat for some of his comments in a blog entry posted earlier this week that labeled those who wear the uniform of the American military "mercenaries," and stated, "Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform..."

It was, in a word, disgusting.

Yesterday, Arkin offered up a response to the immense blowback his previous post generated, and Arkin, much to his dishonor, chose to single out the most angry responses to his initial post, while utterly refusing to engage the most thoughtful ones. In some ways, his response was more outrageous than his initial post, apparently labeling those serving in our nations military as fascists:

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

A very interesting point about his response was that it was not posted on his blog's main page; it was only available through a direct hyperlink. Was Arkin or WPNI (Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, the company running Washingtonpost.com) attempting to hide the post?

By early this morning, another oddity occurred: The second post was back on Early Warning, but as a sharp-eyed reader of Stephen Spruill's Media Blog noted:

Hmm, this is interesting. Now there's a third post sandwiched *between* the other two, offering a somewhat more sincere (but halfhearted, frankly) apology for the use of the term "mercenary".

That post simply wasn't there before, even when the "Arrogant and Intolerant" post was added to the table of contents.

By my account, the apology *followed* his second tirade. But now it's showing up before it. Is Mr. Arkin trying to reorder the timeline here, to make it look like his detractors are blowing right past it?

Sure enough, that is exactly what I found when I checked Arkin's blog around 9:00 AM, but minutes later, the posts had flip-flopped with his third screed now posted in a correct chronology.

I don't know if Arkin was playing as fast and loose with the posting order and the transparency of these articles as he played with the pejorative statements he aimed at our military in not one, but two separate posts, but it does bear asking.

On another front in this discussion, some bloggers are calling for a boycott of the Washington Post's advertisers over Arkin's inflammatory (and to my mind, unnecessarily vicious and indefensible) attacks, and still others are calling upon the Washington Post to flatly fire Arkin for expressing these opinions.

I don't agree with either approach.

Arkin is entitled to his apparent contempt for the military, and has the right to share his opinion, no matter how offensive we find it to be. If Arkin was misrepresenting facts, that would be another case entirely, but his posts were clearly opinion pieces.

That said, Arkin's rants—and I feel that his specific, intentional and acknowleged choice of wording justifies the term "rant"—along with the rather questionable re-ordering and obfuscation of his posts should be reviewed by both pundits and the Washington Post itself as two separate, but related issues.

The purpose of Arkin's blog Early Warning is stated to be this:

Starting Sept. 14, Early Warning will report daily on the comings and goings of the national security community -- military, special ops, intelligence, homeland security -- part blog, part investigative journalism (a jog!). Here I can post documents, go into great detail, stick with a story when others have moved on, and introduce one that has escaped the mainstream media.

There's no question that The Washington Post is mainstream media, but in this space of theirs, I'll have more freedom. Still, I won't fudge facts or feed an even more confused and conspiratorial picture of the secret agencies.

My basic philosophy is that government is more incompetent than diabolical, that the military gets way too much of a free ride (memo to self: Don't say anything bad about the troops), and that official secrecy is the greatest threat citizens actually face today.

Earlier this year, I wrote a book -- Code Names -- that not only lays out my views on secrecy, but also provides the goods (and thanks friends for keeping code names coming). As you'll find out, I'm an obsessive compulsive kind of collector - acronyms, code names, nomenclatures, events, dates, documents. For 30 years I've been putting together little pieces of information to try to produce the BIG PICTURE.

Early Warning is an opportunity to put my stockpiles to good use. As I dig into the hundreds of documents already in my possession, I'll be looking for your comment and dissent (and for those of you with your own stockpiles, for your contributions). I know I'm writing mostly for a hyper-informed world of national security geeks, but my larger objective is a more informed public and to demolish false authority, in government, in the special interests, and in the media. My target list, frankly, is too vast to even summarize. I also hope to have some fun in writing without the straitjacket of traditional journalistic conventions.

Calling those in our military "mercenaries," stating that we have "indulged" them through "every rape and murder," only to later imply they are fascists in a follow-up post, shows that Arkin has clearly failed in his memo to himself: "Don't say anything bad about the troops."

This is a failure on Arkin's part, but we all fail or contradict ourselves at some point if we write long enough; human beings are, unfortunately, often hypocritical beasts. If any blogger feels that they have not been hypocritical or contradictory at some point they are simply deluding themselves. This alone is not a firing offense. All he is sharing is an opinion, though an unpopular one.

What perhaps the Washington Post should perhaps consider in the future is whether or not Arkin is the best person to continue writing this particular blog. It seems quite possible that this series of rants has created an adversarial relationship with the very national security community he was apparently hired to cover. It might be that because of his opinions, he has poisoned the proverbial well, and that the editors of the Washington Post may find that his stated opinions have made him unsuited to continue this particular assignment. That decision, I hasten to add, is completely and wholly a decision to be made by the editors of the Washington Post. He either retains his ability to do his job effectively, or he doesn't, and that can only be determined by his future performance. If the editors determine in the future that his ability to continue in this position has been diminished, perhaps they will opt to find another person of equal or greater ability to continue writing on this subject, but in no way should Arkin's employment by the Washington Post be determined purely for the opinions stated in these two posts.

The separate but related issue of the rather questionable re-ordering and obfuscation of his posts is another matter entirely.

If it can be reasonably determined that this was merely a technical issue or an honest mistake by either Arkin or someone at WPNI, then this is quite understandably something that can be forgiven. If however, it is determined that Arkin or someone else purposefully kept his second post from appearing on the front page of Early Warning, or if someone purposefully re-ordered the post order to intersperse his second response in order to make his critics appear harsh, or unforgiving, then we are discussing an ethical matter which may require a more immediate and permanent response.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:04 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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It seems that WaPo blogger William Arkin has created quite the firestorm with the most recent entry to his Early Warning blog, where he labeled those brave members of our military mercenaries, and suggested "it wasn't for them to disapprove of the American people" and their opposition to winning the war in Iraq. Arkin also said that our soldiers should be grateful that the American people still support and respect them, and send them "obscene amenities."

I can only assume Arkin means such "obscene amenities" as body armor, bullets and MREs. I can hear the new Marine recruiting slogan now:

"The Few. The Proud. The Pampered."

I guess that is why Parris Island is considered quite the four-star resort. Allow me to introduce you to your leisure-time directors.

Why, it's just like a Disney vacation.

And so while my friends in the blogosphere have a slight difference of opinion with Mr. Arkin, let me suggest that getting angry with him is not the way to get him to change his opinion. In fact, he's libel to get quite defensive, and become even more firmly ensconced in his beliefs, which I've heard rumor that he first acquired while a Greenpeace activist, when other GPers once sent him to spend the evening on a cold, isolated beach to protect nearby sea-going mammals from the particularly evil U.S. Navy sport of "whale-tipping," before leaving him to go to a party in town. That Arkin's disgust for the military has only hardened since that night, where he was traumatically assaulted by a male sea lion, is perfectly understandable.

I think that perhaps what Mr. Arkin needs now, more than anything, is a supportive environment, where he can face his phobias and apparent disgust for our military. He would probably be much more willing to change his opinion were he to spend more time with those he derides, to better understand them.

But where could he find such an environment?

If recent dispatches from elsewhere in the blogosphere may be a worthy guide, I'd suggest that he partake of the opportunity shared by bloggers such as Bill Ardalino, Bill Roggio, Michelle Malkin, Bryan Preston, and of course, Michael Yon. Perhaps what would go the furthest in changing his opinion of our soldier is a simple, short embed with our military in Iraq.

Towards that end, and wanting to help out, I sent to the following emails to people that I am quite sure would be very hospitable towards the idea of helping Mr. Arkin find common ground with our soldiers in the field.

To embedded blogger Michael Yon, with whom I correspond regularly, I sent the following:

William Arkin of the "Early Warning" WaPo blog just called our soldiers mercenaries, among other pleasantries.

Michelle, Allah, Blackfive, etc are trying to reem the guy for his opinion, but I'd suggest another route.

Michael, how would you feel about offering Mr. Arkin a guided tour of the Iraq battlespace, so that he would actually get to know our troops, and then perhaps change his opinion? Can I ask him if he'd like to embed with you? Would that be okay?

As Michael is probably cavorting at a local-themed spa, he hasn't yet responded. I'm sure he will as soon as he has completed his mud bath.

I also contacted my friends at MultiNational Corps-Iraq PAO and asked them if they've be willing to help:

I'm probably sure by now you've heard of the controversial remarks made by Washington Post blogger William Arkin about the "obscene amenities" that our soldiers have in the field in the Middle East, and I was wondering if you could tear yourselves away from the hot tub and polo grounds long enough to post an invitation to Mr. Arkin to come experience these extravagances for himself as an embed. Posting an embed offer might just provide the feeling of warmth and acceptance he needs to come over and experience the posh resort lifestyle that all of you joined the military to enjoy.

Please consider extending Mr. Arkin such and invitation after your next tanning session.

Once Mr. Arkin has the opportunity to experience these posh amenities firsthand, I hope that this opinion he has harbored will be open to change.

Update: Arkin responds to his critics, in The Arrogant and Intolerant Speak Out:

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

Update: The single most impressive response thus far to Arkin, by an injured active duty Army officer: more...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:26 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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