In February 2007, the New York Times published an embedded staff team’s photograph and videotape of a Texas soldier dying in Iraq. The solider was Army Staff Sgt. Hector Leija and his personal motto was “Bound by Honor”–a foreign concept at the NYTimes. As I noted at the time, embeds are required to read and agree to a clear set of ground rules forbidding release of names and video of wounded service members without their prior consent . I know, because I had to sign the forms when I embedded in Baghad in January 2007:

But ambitious, agenda-driven members of the MSM don’t let rules or wishes get in the way of a good story.

And so, it has happened again. Via Politico, AP defies common decency for the Greater Good (hat tip – Blackfive):

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.”

The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.

The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”

The photo shows Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, who was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, according to The AP.

Gates wrote to Thomas Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “Out of respect for his family’s wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision. I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed – as was the case with Walter Reed.”

“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”

Contact the Associated Press:

Email: info@ap.org
Headquarters

450 W. 33rd St.
New York, NY 10001

Main Number
+1-212-621-1500

Analysis: Obama achieves defining TV shot in Iraq

It’s a drool-drenched piece on Obama’s masterful “achievement” — manipulating a politically expedient photo op with the troops in Baghdad. The AP “analysis” — or rather, adjunct public relations release — praises Obama for creating an image that will help him politically:

President Barack Obama went for the defining television shot in Iraq and got it — pictures of hundreds of U.S. troops cheering wildly as he told them it was time for the Iraqis to take charge of their own future.

The war zone photo opportunity produced a stunning show of appreciation for Obama from military men and women who have made great sacrifices, many serving repeated tours in a highly unpopular war.
And the televised outpouring of affection likely will prove critical to the credibility of a new and liberal commander in chief as he tries to sell U.S. warriors and the American public on the grim prospects now facing them in Afghanistan.

So: Using American troops to “achieve a defining TV shot” is a stroke of genius if you are Barack Obama.

But heaven forbid a Republican president ever dare to be pictured with our troops — and heaven forbid a Republican president take precautions to ensure that suspected Iraqi insurgents aren’t posing as journalists for hostile Western media outlets.

Flashback: AP chief: Bush turned military into global propaganda machine.

Tools.

The Associated Press is reporting:

An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him freed after nearly two years in U.S. military custody.

The decision by a four-judge panel says Hussein’s case falls under a new amnesty law and orders Iraqi courts to “cease legal proceedings.” The ruling says that Hussein should be “immediately” released if no other charges are pending.

The ruling is dated Monday but AP’s lawyers were not able to thoroughly review it until Wednesday.

There is more to this story, believe me. Amnesty does not equal absolution.

Stay tuned–and do not just rely on the conflict-of-interest-addled Associated Press for the news.

“AP Threatens Blogger for Unauthorized Reproduction of Photos . . . Then Reproduces Photos Without Authorization.”

But of course, this self-exempting journalism is par for the course for the AP.

I meant to note this intriguing New York Times story on Associated Press stringer/suspected jihadi collaborator Bilal Hussein earlier today, but got tied up with column-writing duties. As the Jawa Report points out, there are some important details revealed in the piece that once again downplays the dangers of collaborating with foreign stringers. Look:

A spokesman for the military said that Mr. Hussein had been detained as “an imperative security threat” and that he has persistently been “treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with all applicable law.”

In a lengthy e-mail message, the spokesman said that Mr. Hussein had been named by “sources” as having “possessed foreknowledge of an improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) attack” on American and Iraqi forces, “that he was standing next to the I.E.D. triggerman at the time of the attempted attack, and that he conspired with the I.E.D. triggerman to synchronize his photograph with the explosion.”

That’s not all:

The military spokesman said further: “The Associated Press was informed that the sources had reported Mr. Hussein’s knowing and willing offer to provide a false Iraqi national identification card to an alleged sniper, whom Mr. Hussein knew was wanted” by the military, “in order to assist the sniper in eluding capture.”

You’ll note that the reporter had space to fit this in…

The role of Iraqis as front-line reporters, and the dangers they face working for Western news organizations, is well known. In a few recent examples, in October a journalist for The Washington Post, Salih Saif Aldin, was shot dead in a Baghdad neighborhood rife with sectarian violence. That death occurred three months after a local journalist working for The New York Times was killed in the same area. Of the 124 journalists killed in Iraq since the war began, 102 have been Iraqi, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

And while Western journalists do depend on Iraqi freelancers, several news organizations, including The New York Times, continue to have resident correspondents who leave their compounds to report in Baghdad and beyond.

…but no space to mention the multiple cases of suspected staged, faked, or questionable war photos–including incidents involving Hussein.

You’ll also find no mention of the tough questions posed by LTC Robert Bateman, the military journalist with expertise in dealing with AP cover-ups and the AP P.R. machine.

As I said on Dec. 9, “What you will not read in the AP’s coverage of itself (or in the coverage by its supporters) is any honest, in-depth acknowledgment of the enormous perils of Western media outlets relying on dubious foreign stringers.”

This NYT propaganda piece is no exception.

***
Bryan Preston has further dissection.

Pajamas Media has seen an email from a military source involved with the operation, confirming that Bilal Hussein and several others in the Fallujah area during 2004 had come to the attention of US forces tasked with information operations.

They noted ongoing reports coming out of Fallujah that did not match the reality they were aware of. Stories of children and civilians being killed would come out, but in areas where the Marines had not conducted operations. Many of these stories featured pictures and reporting from Hussein and quotes from the same two doctors at Fallujah Hospital. During this period of time Fallujah was controlled almost completely by al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents. Anyone doing anything was subject to their approval.

Bilal Hussein had free reign to be anywhere and was often taking pictures in the company of insurgents and terrorists. He and the other stringers who made up AP’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo team managed to capture assassinations as they happened. They were on site at bombings within seconds to capture the carnage almost as it happened.

This access and the number of false reports of civilian deaths led the information operations staff to take note. They began monitoring Hussein more closely for two reasons: one they were tasked with countering or debunking false claims of civilian casualties and atrocities, second because Hussein’s very tight relations with the insurgents could be used against the Marines themselves.

This team was comprised of US Public Affairs and Intelligence personnel as well as a Special Ops unit to exploit any actionable intelligence gathered. It was an extraordinary measure and only the fact that Hussein and several others were acting as de facto terror press agents prompted it.

***

It’s Sunday morning in Iraq. Today is the day our military officials plan to submit evidence against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein to the Iraqi judiciary system. You’ll recall that the military stated last month that it “possesses convincing and irrefutable evidence that Bilal Hussein is a threat to security and stability as a link to insurgent activity.”

Look for the Associated Press to launch again into full-court Advocacy Press mode–exercising its global reach to disseminate public relations spin packaged as objective news coverage. What you will not read in the AP’s coverage of itself (or in the coverage by its supporters) is any honest, in-depth acknowledgment of the enormous perils of Western media outlets relying on dubious foreign stringers. The AP maintains that the “real reason for Mr. Hussein’s detention and incarceration for 19 months without charges is that he produced images of conflict in Anbar Province which the military did not want the citizens of Iraq and the United States to see.”

In the AP’s eyes, no stringer can do wrong. Only the American military participates in conspiracies to kill and cover up. And anyone who allows for the possibility that a journalist might possibly be in cahoots with our enemies is an “obsessive” enemy of the free press.

But contrary to the AP’s paranoid attacks on its critics, the stringer problem is not merely a concern of military officials and right-wing bloggers. Neil Munro’s April 2006 National Journal investigation exposed case after case of suspected staged, faked, or questionable war photos. One of the photographers Munro zeroed in on was Bilal Hussein–and note, this was published before news of his detention broke. It’s worth revisiting Munro’s reporting last year as the proceedings open today:

Journalists and photo editors face still another challenge when accounts of a single incident differ dramatically, making it hard to place photographs in their proper context. This problem is especially acute in Iraq. The U.S. military will give one version of events; local Iraqis will give another, very different story. Sometimes, residents — even doctors and hospital officials — sympathize with, or fear, the insurgents, and they simply lie or exaggerate to make Iraqi forces or U.S. troops look bad. Other times, local eyewitnesses give an account of an incident that is more accurate than the official government or military story.

The problem sharpens when no Western reporter is on the scene, but a photographer, usually an Iraqi stringer, is. Photo editors, or even local Western bureau chiefs, have trouble judging the veracity of the images that come from such an event. Last October, for example, The Washington Post printed a striking image of four caskets, purportedly containing dead women and children, and a line of mourning men on a flat desert plain outside the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The photo, provided by the Associated Press, accompanied an article that began this way:

“A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq, killing 25 people, including 18 children, hospital officials and family members said Monday. The military said the Sunday raid targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.

“In all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at least 13 armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a Sunni Arab region with a heavy insurgent presence.

“The U.S. military said it killed a total of 70 insurgents in Sunday’s airstrikes and, in a statement, said it knew of no civilian deaths.”

The story, datelined Baghdad, pointed to the sharply divergent accounts of the incident, and it quoted both Ramadi residents and hospital officials as saying that many civilians had been killed. The photograph, shot by an Iraqi stringer for AP, presumably was a scene of a funeral for some of the dead civilians.

In December, The Post did a follow-up story about the differences in accounts of civilian casualties in Anbar province during the U.S. Marine offensive there. Ellen Knickmeyer, The Post’s Baghdad bureau chief, who wrote both the October and December stories, went back to the Marine Corps, whose officials insisted that the October air raid had not killed civilians but had in fact destroyed a cell of insurgents responsible for setting off roadside bombs.

The December story included this passage: “Analysis of video footage shot by the plane showed only what appeared to be grown men where the bomb struck, [Marine Col. Michael] Denning said. After the airstrike, he said, roadside bombs in the area ‘shut down to almost nothing. That was a good strike, and we got some people who were killing a lot of people,’ Denning said.”

Knickmeyer declined to respond to an e-mail seeking comments.

Munro had a hard time getting lots of folks to comment.

These articles clearly present the two, largely incompatible, versions of the air-raid story. If AP’s picture is true and accurately shows a funeral for women and children killed in the October air raid, then U.S. officials are pushing a false story. But if the U.S. military’s story is true, then AP and The Post may have published a staged, or at least misleading, photo. Maybe it wasn’t a real funeral. Or maybe insurgents had killed the victims.

“Were we sold a bill of goods?” asked Elbert, The Post’s managing editor for photography. “We may have been. I don’t know.”

Defense Department officials, contacted by National Journal, declined to declassify the video taken by the raiding airplane. “We looked at the video and we felt it was in the best interests to be classified,” Navy Cmdr. Terry L. Shannon, who reviews classified videos for possible release, said on March 22. But declassification wouldn’t make much difference, said another Defense official, because the video is of such poor quality that “it does not show what the Marines say they found.”

The funeral photograph was taken by Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi stringer working for the Associated Press. AP officials declined to make Hussein available for an interview, and National Journal was unable to contact him directly in Iraq…

…A series of Hussein’s photographs illustrate another dilemma for photo editors — whether to publish images that may have been created for the photographer. Last September 17, in Ramadi, Hussein took pictures after a battle at a dusty intersection. At least one U.S. armored vehicle had been damaged and towed away, leaving behind its 40-foot dull-gray metal track tread. Hussein’s photographs showed the locals piling debris and auto tires onto the tread, and then celebrating as they lit a fire. Without the fire, smoke, and added debris, the photo would have presented a pretty uninteresting image of people looking at a leftover tank tread. With the smoke, fire, and debris, the image seemed to convey that a major battle had just taken place.

Weeks later, USA Today published a similar Hussein photograph from a different incident in Ramadi, which featured celebrating Sunnis, burning car tires, and a tank tread pulled over on its side.

Lyon said that AP bars photographers from asking people to change a scene, but that a crowd’s spontaneous decision to change a scene in front of a cameraman presents a different situation. “You have this [dilemma] every day all around the world,” he said. “There’s nothing new there.”

LTC Robert Bateman, a military author/journalist who has a long history and knowledge of AP’s past journalistic malpractice and continuing paranoia, recently challenged AP head Tom Curley’s unhinged claims and raised questions about the news organization’s legal counsel/spin doctor:

Standing at the head of the AP today is Tom Curley. In 2006, several months after Hussein’s arrest, Curley’s frustration spilled over in an editorial in which he wrote of Hussein, “He is no longer free to circulate in his native Fallujah or in Ramadi, taking photographs that coalition commanders would prefer not to see published…” and, “Both official and unofficial parties on every side of a conflict try to discredit or silence news they don’t like. That is certainly the case in Iraq, where journalists are routinely harassed, defamed, beaten and kidnapped. At last count, 80 had been killed.”

Now, since the rest of that Washington Post column was all about how Hussein had been arrested by the U.S. military in Iraq, the only connection a reader can logically make (although it is not explicitly stated) is that it is the U.S. military that has “routinely” been beating and kidnapping, journalists and by implication as well, deliberately killed 80 reporters or others involved in journalism. That, folks, is not true.

The U.S. military has not defamed, beaten, kidnapped or killed any journalists. At least, it has not intentionally killed any because they were journalists. (Several Western journalists have, in fact, died as a result of U.S. weapons fire, but not because they were journalists. The same applies for non-Western journalists. All tolled, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, some 124 journalists have died in Iraq, 16 of whom were killed by U.S.-fired weapons or in cross-fire between coalition forces and insurgents. See it all here.)

I thought I should mention that point since nobody in the U.S. government responded to Curley’s comments at that time, at least so far as I could determine.

Curley ended his essay this way: “If Bilal has done something wrong, the Iraqi courts stand ready to try him. Iraqi authorities have asked more than once that he and other Iraqi citizens in prolonged U.S. military custody be turned over to them for due process. We ask the same.”

In mid-November of this year, the U.S. government announced that it planned to do just that. Hussein is to be turned over to the Iraqi legal system. Curley, meanwhile, appears to have changed his mind. The Iraqi justice system, in his eyes, is no longer sufficient. But instead of working with the Iraqi government and judicial system, the AP has hired a former prosecutor named Paul Gardephe to represent Hussein. Now here is the curious part. Gardephe apparently does not speak Arabic. He does not read or write Arabic. He has never represented a client before an Iraqi court, or before any Arabic court. He has no legal training in the Iraqi judicial process, and it will doubtless require a waiver for him to practice law in Iraq before Iraqi judges. But what he does have is this (from Mr. Gardephe’s bio on his New York City law firm’s Web site):

“Paul Gardephe chairs the firm’s Litigation Department, White Collar Defense and Investigations group and is co-Chair of the firm’s Subprime Mortgage Practice Team. His practice includes the defense of white collar criminal prosecutions and grand jury investigations, internal corporate investigations, and related regulatory proceedings. He also co-chairs the firm’s Appellate Practice group and has extensive appellate practice credentials. He often represents the media, particularly in libel and related matters.”

Say what? Are they serious? Bilal Hussein is facing an Iraqi investigative judge, and the AP hires an American lawyer? (The Iraqi system uses a two-tier judge system. The first tier consists of “investigative judges,” which the Iraqi system uses in much the same way that we use grand juries … which is just the tip of the iceberg as far as differences between the two systems go and also partially explains why the specific charges have not been enunciated. Anybody with 30 minutes experience with the Iraqi legal system knows this.)

The AP’s man faces charges with real, serious, consequences, and the AP hires an attorney whose primary qualification seems to be public relations spin for white-collar crimes? On what planet does that make sense? What was Curley thinking when he hired a NYC firm, and a lawyer with no Arabic language skills, no experience in military issues (let alone war zones) or the laws of land warfare, and no legal training in the country in which their employee faces trial? The only thing that occurs to me is that Curley somehow believes that American public opinion is what really counts in the Iraqi justice system. In short, Curley’s behavior (and that of the AP) suggests that his assumption is that it is domestic U.S. public relations that really matter in Iraqi courtrooms.

Two more items to bear in mind as the trial of Bilal Hussein kicks off:

1) Refresh your memories of the case of Pham Xuan An.

2) Re-read my response to one of the AP’s first public relations salvos last year. An excerpt that remains relevant today:

More telling than what the AP chooses to respond to is what it remained stunningly silent on in its statement about my column and blog posts supposedly filled with “numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”

What does the AP have to say about its five-month blackout on the news of Hussein’s detention, first reported on this blog and covered extensively in what it derisively calls the “so-called blogosphere?”

Nothing.

What does the AP have to say about the questions raised by National Journal’s Neil Munro over a dubious Hussein photo taken in October 2005 of a purported funeral image outside Ramadi disputed by the US military?

Nothing.

What does the AP have to say about questions raised by milblogger Bill Roggio concerning another suspicious AP/Hussein-photographed scene in Ramadi of a favorite staging ground for terrorists?

Nothing.

What does the AP have to say about blogger Cori Dauber’s scathing critique of old AP television footage used to spread bogus reports of a fake “uprising” in Ramadi in December 2005?

Nothing.

What does the AP have to say about blogger Clarice Feldman’s post at the American Thinker on an Iraqi intelligence document that bragged about “one of our sources (the degree of trust in him is good) who works in the American Associated Press Agency?”

Nothing.

Instead, most of AP’s 444-word response reads like an Amnesty International press release arguing for the “charge or release” law enforcement approach to Hussein and 14,000 other security detainees deemed high-risk threats to our coalition forces in Iraq:

“Malkin would deny Bilal due process and the rule of law by trying him in her column and assuming his guilt by mere association…There you can learn why AP has been asking the U.S. military to either charge or release Bilal…AP is insisting that the U.S. military follow accepted due process under the law and the Geneva Conventions – that is, give Bilal Hussein the chance to see any evidence and answer formal charges; if the evidence is not there, release him.”

With its non-response response to my column, the AP has made its priorities crystal clear. AP stands for Advocacy Press. Its reporting on military detentions and interrogations of enemy combatants and security detainees–and its coverage of the accompanying legislative and legal debates–cannot be trusted as fair and impartial as it lobbies aggressively for the military to subjugate its security concerns and intelligence-gathering mission in favor of what AP exec Tom Curley calls “justice.”

You can count on AP, the “essential global network,” to support your “right to know” and cover the news–except when the news organization deems it more important to cover it up. Right, AP?

***
Update 11:50pm Eastern: Via the AFP, the US military reveals some details…

The US military has filed a formal complaint with an Iraqi criminal court accusing a detained, award-winning Associated Press photographer of being a “terrorist media operative,” the Pentagon said Monday.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said the military made the complaint about Bilal Hussein, who has been held for more than 19 months without charges in US military custody, to Iraq’s Central Criminal Court.

“We believe Bilal Hussein was a terrorist media operative who infiltrated the AP,” he said. “MNF-I possesses convincing and irrefutable evidence that Bilal Hussein is a threat to security and stability as a link to insurgent activity.”

Morrell said an investigative hearing into the case by the court is scheduled to begin on or after November 28.

Hussein was detained April 12, 2006 after marines entered his house in Ramadi to establish a temporary observation post and found bomb-making materials, insurgent propaganda and a surveillance photograph of a US military installation.

Morrell said Hussein, who was part of an AP photo team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, had previously aroused suspicion because he was often at the scene insurgent attacks as they occurred.

He said other evidence, which he would not describe, came to light after his detention “that makes it clear that Mr. Hussein is a terrorist media operative who infiltrated the AP.”

***

In April 2006, I broke news about our military’s detention of Associated Press stringer Bilal Hussein–whom sources in Iraq told me was captured by American forces in a building in Ramadi, Iraq, with a cache of weapons–and continued to follow the case here, here, here, here, here, here, and here since he was taken into custody. The AP has waged all-out war on the military, demanding that the troops charge or release Hussein. Well, now, the military is about to bring criminal charges against Hussein…and the AP is still, of course, crying foul:

The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.

An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a “sham of due process.” The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months.

A public affairs officer notified the AP on Sunday that the military intends to submit a written complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29. Under Iraqi codes, an investigative magistrate will decide whether there are grounds to try Hussein, 36, who was seized in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on April 12, 2006.

Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP, said the defense for Hussein is being forced to work “totally in the dark.”

The military has not yet defined the specific charges against Hussein. Previously, the military has pointed to a range of suspicions that attempt to link him to insurgent activity.

The AP rejects all the allegations and contends it has been blocked by the military from mounting a wide-ranging defense for Hussein, who was part of the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005.

Soon after Hussein was taken into custody, the AP appealed to the U.S. military to either release him or bring the case to trial — saying there was no evidence to support his detention. However, Tomlin said that the military is now attempting to build a case based on “stale” evidence and testimony that has been discredited. He also noted that the U.S. military investigators who initially handled the case have left the country.

Faced with the prospect that the full breadth of Hussein’s suspicious activities might actually come to public light, the AP’s Tom Curley changes his tune:

“While we are hopeful that there could be some resolution to Bilal Hussein’s long detention, we have grave concerns that his rights under the law continue to be ignored and even abused,” said AP President and CEO Tom Curley.

“The steps the U.S. military is now taking continue to deny Bilal his right to due process and, in turn, may deny him a chance at a fair trial. The treatment of Bilal represents a miscarriage of the very justice and rule of law that the United States is claiming to help Iraq achieve. At this point, we believe the correct recourse is the immediate release of Bilal.”

In other words, only the crusading AP should be trusted as the judge and jury in this case–national security be damned.

Here’s a refresher on the photos and stories Bilal Hussein was involved in taking/producing before his detention:

A typical example of photography from the “insurgents’” perspective by Bilal Hussein/AP

And another up-close-and-personal snapshot of a day in the life of the “insurgents:”

AP/Bilal Hussein

Many more graphic photos of Hussein’s work here, including this chilling photo in the middle of the Ramadi desert taken by Hussein as triumphant terrorists posed with the body of just-executed hostage Italian national Salvatore Santoro on Dec. 15, 2004:

Insurgent propaganda photo by AP/Bilal Hussein

It’s clear the photographer wasn’t fearful at all for his own life. The Yahoo! archive of Hussein’s photos for AP is here. And plenty more here.

In November 2004, AP published a glowing profile of Bilal Hussein that was–surprise–critical of the American forces’ assault on Fallujah.

Rusty at The Jawa Report (hat tip – OTB) updated the “continuing saga of insurgent propaganda” earlier this week and pointed to an excellent investigation of phony MSM war photography published by the National Journal’s Neil Munro, who featured Bilal Hussein’s questionable work prominently:

Thanks to digital technology, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most photographed in history. Photographers with digital cameras have provided, almost instantaneously, an enormous flood of accurate, dramatic, and even shocking images to people around the world. But the daily downloads of news photos include some that are staged, fake, or so lacking in context as to be meaningless, despite the Western media’s best efforts to separate the factual from the fictional….

The photo editors for Time and The New York Times’ Web site declined to comment. Other publications printed images of damage from the missile strike that seem entirely accurate. For example, Newsweek and The Washington Times published wide-angle photos of locals standing beside houses that had obviously been severely damaged. The New York Times print edition published the same wide-angle photo on January 18…..

The problem sharpens when no Western reporter is on the scene, but a photographer, usually an Iraqi stringer, is. Photo editors, or even local Western bureau chiefs, have trouble judging the veracity of the images that come from such an event. Last October, for example, The Washington Post printed a striking image of four caskets, purportedly containing dead women and children, and a line of mourning men on a flat desert plain outside the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The photo, provided by the Associated Press, accompanied an article that began this way:

“A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq, killing 25 people, including 18 children, hospital officials and family members said Monday. The military said the Sunday raid targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.

“In all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at least 13 armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a Sunni Arab region with a heavy insurgent presence.

“The U.S. military said it killed a total of 70 insurgents in Sunday’s airstrikes and, in a statement, said it knew of no civilian deaths.” ….

The funeral photograph was taken by Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi stringer working for the Associated Press. AP officials declined to make Hussein available for an interview, and National Journal was unable to contact him directly in Iraq….

A series of Hussein’s photographs illustrate another dilemma for photo editors — whether to publish images that may have been created for the photographer. Last September 17, in Ramadi, Hussein took pictures after a battle at a dusty intersection. At least one U.S. armored vehicle had been damaged and towed away, leaving behind its 40-foot dull-gray metal track tread. Hussein’s photographs showed the locals piling debris and auto tires onto the tread, and then celebrating as they lit a fire. Without the fire, smoke, and added debris, the photo would have presented a pretty uninteresting image of people looking at a leftover tank tread. With the smoke, fire, and debris, the image seemed to convey that a major battle had just taken place.

Weeks later, USA Today published a similar Hussein photograph from a different incident in Ramadi, which featured celebrating Sunnis, burning car tires, and a tank tread pulled over on its side.

Lyon said that AP bars photographers from asking people to change a scene, but that a crowd’s spontaneous decision to change a scene in front of a cameraman presents a different situation. “You have this [dilemma] every day all around the world,” he said. “There’s nothing new there.”

Bilal Hussein’s day in court should be illuminating, to say the least. No wonder the AP now objects.

***

Rusty’s not surprised by the AP’s reaction.

Bryan Preston has a suggestion: “Out of maintaining the thinnest veneer of objectivity, the AP ought to recuse itself from reporting on the Hussein case at all.”

Karl at Protein Wisdom revisits “The Big Picture(s).”

This post is by Big Lizards (mostly Sachi), not by our dearest Michelle; the host is on holiday somewhere — I couldn’t quite make out where she was, but she shouted something that sounded remarkably like “earache.” Faugh; earache, my eye.

You put your left foot in…

If the mainstream media has no agenda, and their misreporting can solely be blamed upon the fog of war, we should see the mistakes benefiting both sides equally; half the time, they should wrongly report a great American victory that turns out not to be so great after all. I now pause for readers to wrack their memories to recall the last time AP, Reuters, CNN, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Herald, the Wall Street Journal, or Media Matters did so.

Go ahead; I’ll wait.

Curiously enough, every time a major media source blows a story, they do so by publishing something that advances the message of the “emerging defeat” in Iraq, and that only thing we can do is to manage that inevitable defeat. (Similarly, mistakes on restaurant bills always seem to be in the restaurant’s favor.)

We have never read a headline such as “American troops kills 100 terrorists,” only to find out later that we bombed a simple wedding party. It is always the other way around; the wedding-party meme always comes first, followed by a quiet correction in a little box at the bottom of an inside page.

But let us not call it an MSM conspiracy or say that Boehlert is a part of it; for they are all honorable men, and honorable men would not sling such libelous accusations without rock-solid proof.

Let us instead examine some of the stringers upon whose reports the media (especially AP) rely:

Snuff films on Haifa Street: In December 2004, masked gunmen pulled two Iraqi election workers out of their car in broad daylight and assassinated them. An AP photographer-stringer just happened to be standing a few yards away, snapping pictures of the multiple homicide. The terrorists just happened to let him live. They even let him keep his camera and film. This was fortuitous, since the report earned an AP reporter a Pulitzer Prize.

After initial denials, AP first admitted that the photographer had been tipped off; then at last, they revealed the rest of the dirt on the endless supply of stringers ready and willing to accomodate “[i]nsurgents [who] want their stories told as much as other people.” As Power Line’s John Hinderaker concluded:

That makes the admission pretty well complete, I think. The AP is using photographers who have relationships with the terrorists; this is for the purpose of helping to tell the terrorists’ “stories.” The photographers don’t have to swear allegiance to the terrorists–gosh, that’s reassuring–but they have “family and tribal relations” with them. And they aren’t embedded–I’m not sure I believe that–but they don’t need to be either, since the terrorists tip them off when they are about to commit an act that they want filmed.

Stringing AP along: In April 2006, Bilal Hussein was taken into US custody as a member of a terrorist group. Hussein had been working as an AP photographer-stringer; he had sent AP a series of pictures taken inside the terrorists’ training camp.

He also snapped a picture of terrorists boldly posing by the body of a murdered Italian journalist. But perhaps Hussein was only tipped-off by, not embedded with, the killers.

PhotoShop phantasies: In August 2006, Reuters had to fire their Lebanese photographer-stringer Adnan Hajj, after his photo-shopped pictures were exposed by some sharp-eyed bloggers.

These are not isolated cases; the major news media have published hundreds of such photographs by Iraqi photographer-stringers, and thousands of stories by Iraqi writer-stringers. The standard media narrative of tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, as well as the entire case for “the emerging defeat” in Iraq (as Eric Boehlert gleefully puts it), is based upon the concatenation of these questionable stories… many of which have all the earmarks of enemy propaganda disseminated via the reliably compliant (and incurious) American and international media.

How can we ever know how much of what we read and see about Iraq is real, how much exaggerated, and how much simply defeatist fabrication? Is Eric Boehlert even curious to know the answer himself? Or does he, like Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles’ magnum opus, believe the people will think what the media tells us to think?

If that is what he believes, and if he is right, then thank heavens they are all honorable men: just imagine what mischief they could concoct were they not!

Believing is seeing

Meet Salam Daher, AKA Abu Shadi Jradi, AKA Abdel Qader, AKA Green Helmet Guy (how many names do Moslem extremists get to use?)

In July 2006, in Qana Lebanon, in the aftermath of an Israeli attack on a rocket-launching site, the photograph of a Lebanese “civil defense worker,” his face anguished as he held a dead child in his arms, was plastered across the front pages of newspapers around the globe. Yet there was something odd about the guy, a discordant note. Many bloggers pointed out that he had been photographed throughout the day for hours, ghoulishly holding up the same dead child in various poses.

Green Helmet Guy told reporters conflicting stories about the number of children found dead. And then, Germany’s NDR found footage of this guy directing scenes, using the dead body of a child as a prop, toted to the site from storage somewhere. Not only that… Green Helmet Guy had done the exact, same thing 10 years ago:

This is nothing new. In Gaza, Palestinians have been staging battles and coaching witnesses for years. We even have a name for it: Pallywood. Here is an 18 minute video from YouTube, taken during the second intifada from 2000 to 2002:

For the first ten minutes, you will see Palestinians staging various events:

• A man shoots into a building as if he were defending himself; but the building is actually deserted;
• Civilians direct soldiers and crowds of “innocent bystanders” (extras) how to act prior to filming a scene;
• Footage of a funeral march in Jenin, after the “Jenin massacre,” where the pallbearers accidentally drop the corpse from a stretcher — and the dead fellow obligingly hops back aboard.

But the most telling footage starts about the 11th minute: an interview conducted by a Palestinian “reporter” with a new mother and father and with the doctor who had just delivered their baby at the local hospital. (I wonder if the reporter is a stringer for AP?)

On the way to the hospital, the reporter discusses with his staff what kind of story he is looking for: the terrible conditions that Palestinians must endure because of the wicked Israelis. At the hospital, the reporter tells the doctor that the young couple must say that the road was so dangerous, they couldn’t get to hospital in time… and the young husband had to deliver the baby all by himself. In fact the doctor had delivered a healthy baby in the hospital few hours earlier.

Chillingly, all three subjects — father, mother, and doctor — agree; they give the interview, describing the terrible ordeal that never occurred.

How many times have we heard that eyewitnesses, bystanders, and doctors had all “verified” some calamitous event caused by the Israelis, the Americans, or our Coalition partners in Iraq? Oh, wait, here’s one:

For the record, along with Hussein, the AP based its Burned Alive reporting on an account from Imad al-Hashimi, a Sunni elder who told Al-Arabiya television about the killings. (He later recanted his story after being visited by a representative of the defense minister.) The AP also spoke to three independent eyewitnesses (two shopkeepers and a physician) and confirmed the story with hospital and morgue workers.

This is from the very piece by Eric Boehlert that is the subject of this discussion.

Please also notice that the “Sunni elder” recanted… but that this was “after being visited by a representative of the defense minister.” Not that Boehlert is implying any threats, intimidation, or torture… he would never do such a thing without a shred of evidence, for Boehlert is an honorable man.

So are they all. All honorable men.

Continued yet again next lizard post…

Comment on this post here.

Just received this from Linda Wagner of the Associated Press:

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Checking it out. Moving forward…

Reader Daniel:

And you’re just about to head over there?

What timing!

Full story here.

More:

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

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

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

Khalaf said Thursday that with the arrest of Hussein for breaking police regulations against talking to reporters, the AP would be called to identify him in a lineup as the source of its story.

Should the AP decline to assist in the identification, Khalaf said, the case against Hussein would be dropped. He also said there were no plans to pursue action against the AP should it decline.

He said police officers sign a pledge not to talk to reporters when they join the force. He did not explain why Jamil Hussein had become an issue now, given that he had been named by AP in dozens of news reports dating back to early 2006. Before that, he had been a reliable source of police information since 2004 but had not been quoted by name.

More:

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

I am awaiting reaction/response from my sources. Bob Owens received this from MNF-PAO:

Mr Owens,

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

Allah’s take is here.

Don Surber:

So 6 weeks after people asked AP to produce him, AP produced him.

Now to verify his claim that 6 Sunnis were burned alive.

Mickey Kaus:

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

Dan Riehl:

Fascinating. But let me be the first to say to the Left, before they lose themselves in glee, I don’t see that bloggers have anything to apologize for, nor do I see this story being at an end. The ultimate question is what happened in Hurriya the day six Sunnis were claimed to have been burned alive?

Did it happen? Is Shi’ite domination of one or more ministries trying to cover up violence by Shi’ite factions? Or is Hussein unreliable as a source?

If the story ends up being an expose’ on a troubling Shi’ite dominated Iraqi regime, as opposed to the AP being light on sourcing, so be it. Like most bloggers following this story, all I have ever wanted is the truth.

Commenter Dwilkers at Patterico’s:

So why has it taken all this time to produce him then?

And where are the bodies of the folks that were burned alive? And what about the mosques that weren’t destroyed?

I’m making the same point as Patterico of course – the underlying story was the original problem. The failure to produce this guy was just the marker that let you KNOW it was BS.

So they produced him. Now produce the people set on fire and destroyed buildings claimed in the story. Otherwise its nonsense.

I also question the timing, since Malkin was OTW over and the attention level was about to increase. I seriously doubt we’ve heard all there is to know about this.

Bill Faith:

Color this old dog very, very skeptical. So, the Iraqi Police may or may not arrest some dude and claim he’s Jamil, then they may or may not put him in a line-up where the AP people can claim “Yes we see him but we aren’t going to identify him; must protect our sources, y’know,” and we’re all supposed to just forget about all those sole-sourced stories that still don’t check out? And our source for all this new-found knowledge is … the AP?

Curt at Flopping Aces weighs in: “As many of us have said from the beginning, finding Jamil Hussein will not make this story go away…”

I repeat what I said yesterday about our upcoming trip to Iraq:

The “Jamil Hussein” story is one important item on our agenda, but not the only one. As Curt and other bloggers on this story have noted from the beginning, Jamilgate isn’t just about “Jamil Hussein.” Bryan and I plan to do as much on-the-ground reporting as we can to nail down unresolved questions–not only about Jamil Hussein and the Hurriya six burning Sunnis allegations, but also about the AP four burning mosque story discrepancies and the many other AP sources that our military has publicly challenged–including “Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq” and more than a dozen police officers listed by U.S. military spokesman Navy Lt. Michael Dean. There’s also the issue of detained AP photographer Bilal Hussein. And we are looking forward to reporting first-hand on the security situation in Iraq outside the so-called “Green Zone” (International Zone) and talking to as many American and Iraqi Army troops with insights on these and other broader matters.

Dave Price:

Predictably, the AP is already declaring themselves vindicated, but the reality is they have already admitted they botched this story by changing their initial report from four mosques to one, and it still seems extremely unlikely anyone was actually set on fire, as the only “evidence” is second-hand rumors. Given their high-handed attitude thus far, I’m sure the AP will now claim victory and totally ignore the remaining problems with the actual story itself; this is called “arguing the strongest point of a weak case” and is a fine debating tactic but lousy journalism. I very much doubt the actual facts of the case will ever get cleared up.

Stay tuned.

Ed Morrissey:

Whether Jamil Hussein actually exists is really a secondary issue. The fact that the AP used a single source for dozens of inflammatory stories about atrocities in Iraq that still have yet to find any confirmation is almost as disturbing as making the source up.

Jules Crittenden:

My big question: If we were supposed to believe the AP when the AP said the MOI’s Khalaf didn’t know what he was talking about, why are we supposed to believe Khalaf now that the AP says he does know what he’s talking about? Especially when the AP, which has stalwartly stood by Jamil Hussein’s existence as a source, has backed off what Hussein told them about four mosques burning?

Just asking. Has this thing morphed from false but true to true but false?

The existence of cops with several variations of the name Jamil Hussein of varying ranks in several police stations around Baghdad was reported by bloggers several weeks ago. None quite matched. I’d suggest the jury is still out on this guy. The reliability of the AP’s Baghdad bureau and its stable of local stringers remain in question.

A relevant observation from Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a dispatch for Slate.com from Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 27:

I flew to Baghdad from the northern city of Erbil, by the ordinary means of buying a local Iraqi Airlines ticket, boarding a plane that made a stop in Sulaymaniyah, and landing at the former Saddam Hussein International Airport. The whole exercise was almost weirdly normal. The plane was full of ordinary citizens carrying plastic hold-alls, with cheerful, unveiled hostesses handing out snacks and drinks. The terminal was quiet, and the airport road (which used to be known as “Route Irish” and was the scene of incessant mayhem) is these days considered fairly safe and has been stabilized by the Iraqi army. I stopped to be photographed with a unit of this force, a group of cheerful and professional young men. But as I waved goodbye to them, my Kurdish driver said, “Army pretty good. Police no good at all.” And, indeed, the sight of a police uniform is one of the least reassuring in the whole of Iraq. It is often no more than the disguise for religious fascism or organized crime or (as was revealed yet again in Basra last week) for both.

Paging Kathleen Carroll

My blogging has been lighter than usual the past few weeks due to family time, Fox News duties, holiday chaos, holiday illness–and, yes, planning for a trip to Iraq. As you know, ex-CNN newsman Eason Jordan extended an invitation to me three weeks ago to go to Iraq to investigate the Associated Press/”Jamil Hussein” story. He offered to pay for a trip. As you’ll recall, I asked if he would offer to cover travel and security costs for Curt from Flopping Aces–who broke open the story of AP’s dubious sources on Thanksgiving weekend and continues to lead the blogospheric search for the truth. Jordan agreed.

I spoke with Jordan by phone before Christmas to learn more details of his offer, which I’m not going to get into for privacy and security reasons. (He asked that his discussion be off the record.) I let him know that I had received invitations to embed with the military and planned to follow up on some of these offers concurrently with the investigation of the AP’s reporting. Since our conversation, things have moved at a fast pace on the embed side. Over the holidays, my Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston and I received word that our embed applications had been approved. We have been busy preparing our families and ourselves for the journey. Our overarching goals are two-fold:

1) to report on how the troops perceive mainstream media coverage of the war (with a particular focus on the wire services relying on local stringers); and

2) to report on progress and interaction between U.S. troops and Iraqi Army trainees.

The “Jamil Hussein” story is one important item on our agenda, but not the only one. As Curt and other bloggers on this story have noted from the beginning, Jamilgate isn’t just about “Jamil Hussein.” Bryan and I plan to do as much on-the-ground reporting as we can to nail down unresolved questions–not only about Jamil Hussein and the Hurriya six burning Sunnis allegations, but also about the AP four burning mosque story discrepancies and the many other AP sources that our military has publicly challenged–including “Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq” and more than a dozen police officers listed by U.S. military spokesman Navy Lt. Michael Dean. There’s also the issue of detained AP photographer Bilal Hussein. And we are looking forward to reporting first-hand on the security situation in Iraq outside the so-called “Green Zone” (International Zone) and talking to as many American and Iraqi Army troops with insights on these and other broader matters.

I am very heartened by Eason Jordan’s post yesterday challenging the Associated Press’s credibility, but am puzzled that his own crew in Baghdad still has nothing new to report more than a month after bloggers first started raising questions. I hope Jordan follows up on the most recent investigative developments in the blogosphere. As of Dec. 21, the AP refuses to answer these simple questions:

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

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

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

The reply from Linda Wagner, AP media relations officer, you’ll recall, was this:

Michelle-

I have no additional information for you at this time.

Linda

The reply from AP exec editor Kathleen Carroll…well, there was none.

Jordan has called on the AP to “to appoint an independent panel to determine the facts about the disputed report, to determine whether Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein exists, and to share the panel’s full findings and recommendations with the public.”

I support that call. But I have decided not to wait on the AP or depend on Eason Jordan for answers and accountability. Bryan and I will be heading out to Iraq very shortly as embeds to advance the story and get first-hand the side of the story the AP refuses to hear–the side of the troops on the ground. (It is an expensive trip. If you’d like to pitch in, we’d greatly appreciate any help. Donation info. below.) You’ll start hearing from us soon. Stay tuned here and at HotAir.com. I’ll also be filing dispatches for the New York Post, which provided us with media accreditation.

I have notified Jordan of our plans and encouraged him to move forward with his trip and his offer to bring Curt of Flopping Aces.

More importantly, I have asked Jordan to extend the travel funds and security coverage he would have spent on me to the AP’s Kathleen Carroll.

Ms. Carroll, you may remember, was the AP executive who derided bloggers for sitting at home instead of traveling abroad to do their own reporting during the fauxtography debacle last summer:

“It’s hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy,” said Kathleen Carroll, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor.

Yet, from her own comfortable office, Ms. Carroll has decided that bloggers, Jordan, the U.S. military, and Iraqi government officials are all wrong to question her news organization’s questionable news sources:

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

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

It is unfortunate that this neighborhood has been reportedly rife with sectarian violence, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is no police captain named “Jamil Hussein” working now or ever in either Yarmouk or al Khadra, according to on-the-ground sources in Baghdad (see here and here).

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

***

Donations to defray the costs of our trip to Iraq are gratefully accepted. Checks can be sent to Hot Air Network LLC, 554 N. Frederick Ave., #115, Gaithersburg, MD 20877. Credit card and PayPal payments can be made by clicking the donation button below:

***

Fresh commentary and reporting elsewhere in the ‘sphere:

Flopping Aces: “Eason Jordan Urging AP To Investigate”
Confederate Yankee: Gone in 60 Stories: The Grunt Work
Confederate Yankee: Gone in 60 Stories
Richard Miniter: Jamil Hussein and Confedeate Yankee
Ace of Spades: Cool Facts About Police Captain Jamil Hussein
Ace of Spades: “Katty Carroll To Critics: Drop Dead”
Patterico: Does the AP have a “scandal” on its hands?
Video at Hot Air: Brit Hume covers Jamilgate
Allah on Eason
Bruce Kesler: AP & Eason Jordan & MSM Self-Responsibility
Armed Liberal: It’s just a scratch

Related: Embedded blogger Bill Ardolino’s very interesting interview with a “Sunni Iraqi journalist” named “Quais Abdul Raazzaq.” Part two here. Ardolino files from Fallujah here, where he reports “morale seems high.”

Update:See Curt at Flopping Aces on Quais Abdul Raazaq, Qais al Bashir, and Maithem Abdul Raazaq.

Rusty Shackleford:

My first response to Curt’s post was kneejerk: breakout the tinfoil. But I suppose that most testable hypotheses start with speculation. And with AP stringers even the most far-fetched theories, that I would have never believed just a couple of years ago, have turned out to be true. And the names are a bit uncanny. Keep an eye on this one.

Satire: “Jamil Hussein’s” blog

Dan Riehl on Kathleen Carroll

Previous:

The AP (non-)responds and another search comes up empty
Tracing “Jamil Hussein’s” footsteps and ignoring anti-blog hatred
What’s so funny about going to Iraq? Plus: More questions for AP
Looking for Jamil Hussein: Accepting Eason Jordan’s invitation
Eason Jordan is back
AP: Still not off the hook; Plus: The Question
Free Jamil Hussein
Questioning a NYTimes reporter; challenging CBS News & ASNE
The alleged war atrocity that the NYTimes can’t substantiate
Rumors and reporting in Iraq
Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?

Eason Jordan reports on his new website, Iraqslogger, that his team is in Baghdad looking for Jamil Hussein. They have not found him yet–which is newsworthy in itself–and get this: He has offered to pay for me to join the search in Iraq and accompany me:

Who is Jamil Hussein? Michelle Malkin is leading the charge for an answer, and she put that question to me in her blog. The AP is in the midst of a public firestorm regarding whether supposed Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussein actually exists and, if so, whether he was a legitimate news source for a disputed November 24 AP-reported story saying Shia thugs in Baghdad “grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene.” The U.S. military, the Iraqi government, and many others insisted the AP story was false and that Jamil Hussein either was fictitious or was not an Iraqi police officer, as asserted in the AP’s report. The AP has issued two strong statements defending its initial report and produced fresh statements from witnesses of the alleged crime, but the AP has not produced Jamil Hussein himself.

So the search for Jamil Hussein is on, and rightly so. IraqSlogger’s team in Baghdad is working to track him down. If we find him, we’ll get back to you with details. If we can’t find him, we’ll report that, too. If Michelle Malkin wants to join the search in Baghdad, IraqSlogger will pay for her trip, and I’d even be willing to accompany her. Stay tuned.

I e-mailed my acceptance of Jordan’s invitation this morning. No way should we just take the word of the guy who admitted covering up for Saddam Hussein and who resigned from CNN after baselessly slandering the U.S. military (maybe we’ll find the Davos tape while we’re on the search). Plus, it’ll be an incredible opportunity to see Iraq and our troops firsthand. I have many friends, heroes, and contacts there I’d like to meet in person.

I also e-mailed to ask Mr. Jordan whether he would pay for Curt from Flopping Aces, the blogger who first broke open the story and is leading the charge for an answer (see, Jordan got his facts wrong already), to come on the search as well if he is able to do so.

So, indeed, stay tuned.

The search for Jamil Hussein continues…

***

1036am Eastern update: Jordan says he will pay for Curt’s trip.

Jamilgate isn’t just about Jamil Hussein, I hope Mr. Jordan understands. Hussein is just one piece of the six burning Sunnis puzzle. Allah raises questions about the hospital morgue the AP identified as the one where the bodies were taken and the unidentified workers who appeared and disappeared from AP’s accounts. Maybe we’ll learn more about this, too.

Meanwhile, Bob Owens notes a couple of interesting AP promotions and introduces AP to a useful piece of technology. Stephen Spruiell weighs in. The definitive rejoinder to AP’s chickenhawk arguments is here, in case you missed it.

More reactions to Jordan’s entry into Internet journalism:

Jules Crittenden – Truth Good.
LGF - “You have got to be kidding me.”
Good Lt

Ed Morrissey corrects Editor and Publisher’s faulty account of Easongate and observes:

You have to read the Editor & Publisher column by Greg Mitchell to believe it. He makes one mention of Jordan’s departure from CNN in February 2005: “He exited CNN in the wake of the uproar over his off-the-record comments (which he insisted were misinterpreted) at a Davos meeting concerning U.S. military involvement in the accidental deaths of several journalists in Iraq.” That’s not what Jordan said, and Mitchell knows it. Jordan accused the US military of deliberately assassinating journalists in Iraq…

It’s interesting that Jordan chose Iraq as the subject for his return. After all, Jordan admitted to selling out CNN to Saddam Hussein to keep its Baghdad bureau open. He had his reporters read talking points written by Saddam’s henchmen as independent news stories. [E&P writer Greg] Mitchell doesn’t bother to ask about this, even though it goes straight to the question of Jordan’s credibility on any reporting he does on Iraq.

Jordan’s return proves that anyone shameless enough can push his way back into the national spotlight after destroying his credibility.

Update: My friend, photojournalist/milblogger extraordinaire Michael Yon, is scheduled to be in Baghdad on the 19th. He may get answers before we even get off the ground.

Bill Ardolino is also getting ready to embed in Iraq before the end of the month. Bill Roggio is there now.

More questions from Jim Hoft.

***
Previous:

Eason Jordan is back
AP: Still not off the hook; Plus: The Question
Free Jamil Hussein
Questioning a NYTimes reporter; challenging CBS News & ASNE
The alleged war atrocity that the NYTimes can’t substantiate
Rumors and reporting in Iraq
Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?

“Who is Jamil Hussein?” is becoming the new “Who is John Galt?”–a blogospheric refrain that both summarizes and challenges MSM apathy about its questionable war reporting.

Townhall’s Mary Katharine Ham is the latest to pose the question in the Washington Examiner.

Historian and Army infantry officer Robert Bateman, using the latest AP scandal over its six burning Sunnis report as a hook, has a must-read reminder in the NYPost today about the botched war reporting of the Associated Press:

The most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous – used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong – but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is, the AP crew spins, obfuscates and attacks. Now they’re at it again in Iraq.

I have got direct experience of this – from challenging the AP’s seriously flawed 1999 “scoop” about the masssacre near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War.

Bad things did happen at No Gun Ri, of this there can be no doubt. My own research and other historians’, as well as the joint U.S.-Korean government investigation, confirms that a tragedy occurred – there were civilians who were killed there, by our side, and that was wrong.

But the AP’s sensationalistic story painted it as a deliberate massacre, done with machine guns at extremely close range.

The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.

Daily’s account was chilling. It was also – as AP should have known – a fantasy.

The AP story took at face value Daily’s claims that he was a combat infantryman who won a battlefield commission just a few days after the events at No Gun Ri, and had been awarded the Distinguished Cross and three Purple-Hearts.

In reality, he was an enlisted mechanic in an entirely different unit, nowhere near No Gun Ri. He had fabricated his biography and credentials as well as his entire account of the events at No Gun Ri.

When I later confronted AP editors with the facts and records that showed their source Daily to be a fraud, they blew me off. What would a historian know about this topic after all, or a soldier?

The AP didn’t issue a retraction, or even attempt to reinvestigate; and it certainly didn’t withdraw the story from the Pulitzer competition. Instead, it attacked the messenger.

Sound familiar?

Bob Owens looks at the magnitude of the AP’s Jamilgate:

This developing Associated Press implosion may go back as far as two years, affecting as many as 60 stories from just this one allegedly fake policeman alone. And Jamil Hussein is just one of more than a dozen potentially fake Iraqi policemen used in news reports the AP disseminates around the world. This does not begin to attempt to account for non-offical sources which the AP will have an even harder time substantiating. Quite literally, almost all AP reporting from Iraq not verified from reporters of other news organizations is now suspect, and with good reason.

Instead of affecting one show on one network watched by 14 million viewers as Rathergate did, “Jamilgate” means the Associated Press may have been delivering news of questionable accuracy to one billion people a day for two years or more. In this evolving instance of faux journalism, “60 Minutes” is now potentially 60 billion false impressions, or more.

A principled, professional news organization owes its consumers the truth. To date, the Associated Press, as voiced by comments from officers international editor John Daniszewski and executive editor Kathleen Carroll, has refused to address the rampant inconsistencies in the “burning men” story, produce physical evidence proving their allegations, or produce star source Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein. Arrogantly, they attack the messenger (both U.S military and Iraqi government sources and bloggers), and insist we must believe them, even though they give us no compelling reason to do so, and many reasons to doubt them.

Related: Hot Air has video of Mark Steyn’s appearance on O’Reilly last night slamming the AP.

Meanwhile, AP editors have resurrected Green Helmet Guy.

Who is Jamil Hussein?

***
Previous:

Free Jamil Hussein
Questioning a NYTimes reporter; challenging CBS News & ASNE
The alleged war atrocity that the NYTimes can’t substantiate
Rumors and reporting in Iraq
Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?

Milblogger Greyhawk takes on the Times’ Ed Wong and his reporting in Hurriya. Greyhawk zeroes in on this paragraph:

From morning until afternoon, at least four mosques were attacked in Hurriya, a mixed neighborhood in the capital. Two were destroyed, and at least 5 Sunnis were killed and 10 wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. A hard-line Sunni Arab group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said 18 people had been killed when one of the mosques burned down.

Apparently a separate incident from the “6 Sunnis burned alive” claim – and one with no quotes from neighbors to support or dispute it, something admittedly within Ed’s ability to deliver. As I’ve noted before, 18 is more than 6, and a “burned down” mosque is relatively easy enough to verify. Given Ed’s passion for balanced reporting, it’s unfortunate he failed to at least note the well known connection between the Association of Muslim Scholars and al Qaeda – opting instead for the ambiguous “hard line” descriptor. And yes, this is the same group that claimed 184 Sunni mosques had been attacked within hours of the Shrine bombing (and that now appears to be rupturing after their leader fled Iraq)…

…if the NY Times is serious about accurate reporting from Iraq, they might want to start examining the work of their own man on the scene, who’s never met an unsubstantiated rumor of atrocity he found unfit to print.

Recall, as Curt at Flopping Aces noted, that the military refuted the mosque-burning stories on Nov. 25:

Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood.

Soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division conducted a patrol in Hurriya Friday afternoon in response to media reports that four mosques were being burned as retaliation for the VBIED attacks in Sadr City on Thursday.

The Soldiers set up a checkpoint near the Al Muhaimen mosque at approximately 2 p.m. and found the mosque intact with no evidence of any fire at the location.

While investigating the Al Meshaheda mosque, the patrol received small arms fire from unknown insurgents. The patrol returned fire, and the insurgents broke contact and fled the area. A subsequent check of the mosque found the mosque intact with no evidence of a fire.

At approximately 3:50 p.m., a local civilian reported to the patrol that armed insurgents had set the Al-Nidaa mosque on fire by throwing a gas container into the mosque. The patrol pursued the insurgents but lost contact with them.

The Soldiers called the fire department and set up a cordon around the mosque. Local fire trucks responded to the scene and extinguished the fire at approximately 4:00 p.m. The mosque sustained smoke and fire damage in the entry way but was not destroyed.

An alleged attack on a fourth mosque remains unconfirmed. The patrol was also unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident.

Paging Tom Zeller…

Speaking of Zeller, Ace pointed out something strangely missing in his coverage of the six burning Sunnis story yesterday: Not a word about Jamil Hussein. Why?

Dan Riehl notes that neither Time magazine nor al Jazeera has been able to confirm AP’s report of the six burning Sunnis. We continue our coverage at Hot Air today here.

Curt at Flopping Aces summed up where things stand this way:

Unnamed witnesses. One fraudalent witness. One witness who recanted. No bodies. No family members of the victims found. No evidence of burned bodies on the street such as clothing. No outcry from local clerics and politicians…

But who are we to question the media[,] right?

Mark Tapscott at the Examiner calls for an investigation:

It’s time for AP to take the same sort of approach to resolve the Captain Jamil Hussein controversy. But there is one big difference between the present issue and the Dan Rather/”60 Minutes” ordeal – AP provides news to virtually every daily newspaper in America. AP is a cornerstone of the mainstream media. If AP’s credibiilty is harmed, every news organization that uses its products also suffers.

Thus, AP should ask the American Society of Newspaper Editors to oversee the appointment and conduct of an independent panel of respected journalists and outside evidentiary experts to determine the truth behind Captain Jamil Hussein and all other sources similarly in doubt.

To allow this controversy to continue to fester without taking decisive actions to resolve it to everybody’s satisfaction could be disastrous for journalists everywhere.

Wretchard at The Belmont Club contemplates blogs and the collection-analysis-dissemination cycle.

Jim Hoft notes that Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz Hakim addressed dubious media reporting at his meeting with President Bush.

Meanwhile, Brian Montopoli (to his credit) is blogging at the CBS News website. He writes:

In the end, where you stand on this one comes down to who you have faith in. Conservative bloggers tend to believe the military over a press corps that they feel is unworthy of their trust. Journalists, who are inherently distrustful of power, tend to trust their colleagues over the military. In an ideal world, both sides could put aside their prejudices and look objectively at the facts. Bloggers too often let their outrage cloud their judgment, and journalists can be too quick to dismiss criticism. The sooner both sides acknowledge as much, the better. But judging from how this one has played out, I’m not holding my breath.

Well, I’m not holding my breath that anyone at CBS News other than Montopoli will lift a finger to get to the truth.

Paging Katie Couric?

***
Previous:
The alleged war atrocity that the NYTimes can’t substantiate
Rumors and reporting in Iraq
Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?

The controversy over the Associated Press’ coverage of the alleged burning of six burning Sunnis in Hurriya, Iraq last month continues–even if most of the media refuses to confront it.

This morning, the New York Times’ Tom Zeller–one of the few on the case–follows up his blog coverage with an article that calls for separating “hyperbole from horror.” Unfortunately, Zeller’s article doesn’t succeed at doing so–and has left the impression that he is, as Lucianne.com writes, “sneering at the blogosphere.”

Zeller does knock the AP for its paranoid, hyperbolic reaction to the blogger challenge:

Then there was The Associated Press itself, which by Friday had come to view the continued scrutiny of its article as evidence that everyone — the military, the blogosphere, even other media outlets tracking the back-and-forth — was either agenda-driven, insolent, or both, but not legitimately curious.

And most importantly, he does not accept the AP’s word that the incident at Hurriya occurred:

It is important to find out if this really happened in order to separate the hyperbole from the merely horrible in Iraq, so that the horrible will still have meaning. Otherwise it will all become din.

Left out of the article, as Allah notes, is Zeller’s discovery that the NYTimes reporter in Iraq could not substantiate the story. Zeller published the little-noticed e-mail he received from Times reporter Ed Wong on his blog last week:

Hi Tom,

You ask me about what our own reporting shows about this incident. 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. So I mentioned it only in passing in my report.

Best,
Ed Wong

Allah asks:

Why didn’t [Zeller in his article published today] specify that the Times’s own Baghdad correspondent has reason to doubt the AP report? Probably for the same reason he didn’t note that the AP’s new witnesses to the burning were all anonymous or that the agency hasn’t disputed Centcom’s assertion that its initial report about four mosques being burned was wrong: because that would have screwed with his theme of “rag[ing]” bloggers and Bush’s keystone kops military assailing the “venerable, trusted” Associated Press.

Zeller’s article today ends with an embarrassingly shallow conclusion:

Whatever the agenda of the bloggers most interested in debunking the article, it somehow seems important to figure out why this incident — in the face of all the killings in Iraq — remains in such dispute.

“Somehow seems?” Why is it that the “agenda” of the bloggers–finding out the truth–somehow seems so alien and suspicious to Zeller and his colleagues? Imagine! Bloggers who want to know whether what the media reported is true!

Questions about witness recantations, anonymous reporters, false reporting about the mosque torchings, still-unsubstantiated claims about the six burning Sunnis and the existence, identity, and employment of Captain Jamil Hussein remain. Zeller’s article also glosses over one of the most important matters raised in the blogosphere: the reliance of the “venerable, trusted” Western press on unknown, unidentified foreign stringers in the Middle East.

Last week, I asked the AP’s media relations director Linda Wagner:

Who were the two reporters who went back to the Hurriyah neighborhood around the Mustafa mosque to conduct the follow-up reporting?

Here was her e-mail response:

Michelle,

We don’t publicly identify reporters who work in the field in Iraq because it would endanger their lives. But both are reporters that we know well and who have worked for us for an extended period of time.

Linda M. Wagner
Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs
Associated Press, Corporate Communications

Photographer Bilal Hussein was known well to the AP, too…before he was captured by the US military in Ramadi this spring and held in detention (where he remains) for his suspected ties to terrorists.

Photographer Adnan Hajj was known well to Reuters…before he was fired for faking war photos in Lebanon this summer.

Curt at Flopping Aces, who started the ball rolling in the blogosphere on this story, responds to the New York Times here and scrutinizes AP reporter Qais al-Bashir here. Newsbusters and Jim Hoft are also tracking. A reader at Flopping Aces e-mailed Curt after combing through Lexis-Nexis and asked, among other questions:

At least 16 AP reporters have cited Capt. Hussein as a source. Have they all spoken to him? If they had, I’m sure AP would have said so when his existence was questioned. So how do the reporters get his statements?

That lack of transparency, disclosure, reliability, and credibility is at the heart of the war coverage controversy the MSM doesn’t want to confront. Far easier to attack bloggers as reckless, rumor-mongering “mad rabble” than look in the mirror and face the truth.

***

Jules Crittenden: “Say no to AP’s shoddy work”

Flashback: “Real or fake?”

***
Previous:

Rumors and reporting in Iraq
Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?

I’ve been following up with CENTCOM on the Associated Press/sketchy sources brouhaha. Just heard this morning from Michael B. Dean, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy MNC-I Joint Operations Center, Public Affairs Officer:

From CPATT PAO:

BG Abdul-Kareem, the Ministry of Interior Spokesman, went on the record today stating that Capt. Jamil Hussein is not a police officer. He explained the coordinations among MOI, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defense in attempting to track down these bodies and their joint conclusion was that this was unsubstantiated rumor.

He went on to name several other false sources that have been used recently and appealed to the media to document their news before reporting. He went into some detail about the impact of the press carrying propaganda for the enemies of Iraq and thanked “the friends” who have brought this to their attention.

AP did attend the press conference.

I asked for more details, and Lt. Dean provided a summary and the first half of the press conference transcript. Some other interesting info here in addition to the false sources comments:

Ministry of Interior
Weekly Press Conference
Thursday, November 30, 2006

By Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf Al-Kenani
Ministry of Interior spokesman

Press conference synopsis:

1. Media, especially satellite news channels, must adhere to
responsible practices:

a. MOI is monitoring coverage, and will insist on corrections to
false reports.

b. Unnamed sources should not be used. Two recently named sources
do not work for MOI. Contact MOI PAO for official information.

c. Rumors are rampant, and media should be careful to check with
official sources about information to avoid spreading false rumors.

2. MOI succeeded in a number of operations against terrorists in
Baghdad.

a. The Baghdad Sniper was apprehended, and information gained from
him led to the arrest of 30 others in his organization.

b. Two unauthorized “courts” that had issued death fatwas were
broken up.

c. A kidnapping cell, including one that raped a young girl, was
arrested.

Statement:

This press conference will cover MOI operations from Nov. 23 to 29, 2006.

Before we start the weekly briefing, I have some points to highlight and to remind the brothers that work in the media, especially the Satellite television Channels. We meant by this note to stress the ministry of interior’s intention that we believe in free press and truthful press, in order not to confuse what the free press presents and the misleading media show, where the latter’s intention is to make the situation in Iraq worse than what it is.

The press release issued by the ministry of interior has three main points: First, a warning to the satellite TV. Channels continue broadcasting false news, and based on that we have formed a special observation room to monitor these TV stations; the purpose of this unit is to determine the fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different.

After the monitoring process, we will contact those TV stations by presenting them with the mistakes and errors they committed by broadcasting such false news, hoping they will correct these false reports on their main news programs. But if they do not change those lying, false stories, then we will seek legal action against them.

For example, we have some of the respected news outlets that deal with news fast and have a relation with many TV channels and the media in general, who distributed a story quoting a person called Jamil Hussein. Afterward, we searched our sources in our staff for anyone by this name– maybe he wore an MOI uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money. And the second name used is Lt. Maythem.

However, all of you know that the ministry of interior has a large public affairs office and its official spokesman, and we are ready to answer any questions you may have. Therefore, you should contact MOI PAO for all your needs to get real, true news. Based on that, we strongly deny any relation with those two names. In order to serve you better and strengthen the relationship with MOI, do not take statements that have no meaning and do not represent any official. We would like this note to be helpful to you and any statement made by those persons to be ignored.

The second subject is rumors. The ministry received in a week more than 12 cases of claims, one stating 50 killed were there, 200 kidnapped here, 30 corpses found there etc. And when we dispatched our forces and investigators to the locations, we found nothing.

On this note, I would like to thank some of the brothers in the media who are cautious and take the extra step to make sure the news he gets is correct or not, by contacting the ministry to verify any news through us that they hear or receive. Not only (do we reply), but we also give them more detail than they expected, and we hope others will follow suit. Also, we ask our people, please do not take any news or give it credibility, except from a well-known source with a name and an address that is part of the security ministries, etc., such as a minister or police station commander. Or if it is from the MOD or MOI, the name of the officer, his rank, his unit, etc. It is not enough to say “a source from the ministry of interior.”

Doing otherwise, you will end up helping the spread of the rumors and make them reality, even thought it was a false rumor. This rumor business — if a large issue, it will take a long time to cover it, but the purpose of the rumors is to disrupt life and make the security apparatus busy with other things than its main tasks. We will end up following rumors instead of hunting terrorists and criminals.

The third subject is, this week the strikes we made against the al-Qaeda terrorist organization in Baghdad were many and very strong in Baghdad. Before my arrival to this press conference, I was informed that one of the three who were just captured or detained is Mazer Al-Jubouri, aka the Baghdad Sniper, and his group. He admitted many things that are very important and very dangerous and our forces used this information about his network and conducted raids in the past 24 hours and detained 30 terrorists.

Those terrorists executed several explosions in Palestine and Beirut streets, and the New Baghdad area. He also admitted that their base is in Diyala province, which supplied them with money, weapons and explosives. They are now under investigation and we think this cell or network has been dismantled.

This week also, we dismantled what are called “courts” in northern and southern Baghdad, and detained the two persons who issued fatwas to kill the people. Our force dismantled what is called the Omar network, this criminal network that used to exercise its criminal activities in southern Baghdad. And they admitted many things about other terrorist networks and our forces are pursuing them now, as well as other networks for kidnapping.

One of them, we regret, kidnapped a girl and used narcotics on her and raped this little innocent young girl. We captured those criminals and the little girl is receiving medical attention. This is not Iraqis’ culture. Just look how far down in debasement they have traveled. With regret, I told you that, because MOI activity does not hold in the media the position it deserves, and also to show the great sacrifice by MOI this week.

***

Curt at Flopping Aces, who got the ball rolling, noted last night:

[T]he AP could solve all of this with one fell swoop by producing Capt. Hussein at the MoI during the press conference with his bonafides. I have a feeling that won[']t be happening tho.

Apparently not.

Sharon Tosi Moore, an officer in the United States Army Reserves currently serving in Iraq, writes at The American Thinker:

Sunni “eyewitnesses” confidently denounced the Shiite-dominated government for their inaction. There were bold claims that the Iraqi Army stood by and did nothing as this horrifying crime happened. People around the world braced themselves for the spectacular reprisals that would surely come from the Sunni. The press practically salivated at the bloodshed (and glorious headlines) that would be forthcoming.

A winning situation all around.

Except, well, except for the tiny little detail that the incident most likely never happened. A week has gone by and no charred bodies were produced. No dramatic funeral parades, with all the attendant wailing and gnashing of teeth, occurred. Not one photo. No grand reprisals. Not even any speeches (and it is hard to imagine Iraqi religious leaders miss an opportunity to make speeches). Just a few remarks from the Iraqi government, largely ignored by the U.S. press, that all reports showed that that particular district had been quiet, and pleading the Iraqi people for calm.

No one thought to question this unusual divergence from normal protocol.

The gullible press swallowed the initial claims whole. Of the major news sources, only TIME Magazine used the word “reportedly” in their headline. Besides, there are always new and dramatic stories of gore and bloodshed in Iraq and no one has the time to check their sources carefully or to go back and correct erroneous reports.

Scott Johnson at Power Line and reader Bill Maron point to a closer look at AP International Editor John Daniszewski.

***

The problem of reckless dependence on foreign stringers is not just relegated to AP. Or Reuters. It’s everywhere, as Neil Munro documented earlier this spring even before the fauxtography scandal erupted.

Patterico has lifted the lid on a related controversy over at the Los Angeles Times involving a disputed Ramadi airstrike that deserves more attention than it’s getting. We spotlighted the story today at Vent.

Check out the show and links.

***

Reminder: Bruce Kesler’s got a contact list for the AP Board of Directors.

Tom Zeller Jr. at the New York Times blogs the latest developments and is still left wondering:

The one thing that remains unclear, though, is this: The Associated Press said in its story yesterday that Mr. Hussein “has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions.” The military, meanwhile, seems to suggest that Mr. Hussein is not a police officer, nor a civil servant in the employ of any Iraqi agency.

So who IS Mr. Hussein?

Well, isn’t there a NYTimes reporter in Iraq who can find out?

Allah notes this from Zeller’s blog post and comments:

Author Tom Zeller notes that the Times itself covered the “burned alive” incident this way:

In the evening, a resident named Imad al-Hashemi said in a telephone interview on Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, that gunmen had doused some people with gasoline and set them on fire. Other residents contacted by telephone denied this.

Emphasis mine. I hadn’t heard that before.

He’s also suspicious about how/why an e-mail sent by Centcom to the AP made it so quickly onto conservative blogs. Er, because Centcom shared it with Flopping Aces after he made an inquiry about Jamil Hussein? Surely America’s one-stop shopping center for leaks isn’t tut-tutting at us over this, is it?

Surely, Zeller seems to be.

Patterico has “third-way” musings about Jamil Hussein.

The Belmont Club and Classical Values are watching.

Dan Riehl has been digging into the AP’s witness claims that the burned-alive Sunnis were members of the al-Mashadani clan from Hurriya.

Maybe the NYTimes will follow, eh, Mr. Zeller?

***

I mentioned that the non-AP-related info from the press conference struck me as interesting. Ever-alert and illuminating Rusty Shackleford underlines the significance of the information on the captured sniper. Go read.

Matt at Blackfive adds: “Will CNN report that Juba the Baghdad Sniper (a group or cell of snipers – Juba is probably not a real person) is toast?”

8pm Eastern update. Allah has a question about the MOI spokesman. I asked MNF-I about Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf Al-Kenani last night and meant to post the response this morning. Here’s the response from Lt. Dean:

Ma’am:

We have verified him as legitimate. He is the official Minister of Interior spokesman through the CPATT. The list that includes him was a working list of spokespeople we are in the process of trying to verify that hadn’t been updated.

Vr,
LT Dean

Michael B. Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer

***

Previous:

Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?