February 21, 2007

Back to the Board

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post is currently online here:

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

In that post, Hurst states:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It means we don't plagiarize.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Respectfully,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:02 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 20, 2007

Nuts

After Tom Elia tipped me to the story of a liberal stalker attacking a couple of Republican roommates after tracking them down from a Republican web site, I decided to take a commenter's advice and attempt to see if there was any sort of commentary about the arrest on the Democratic Underground.

Nice folks.

I didn't run across any reference to stalker boy, but I did run across a lovely comment related to Prince Harry, the British heir and Army officer intent on deploying to Iraq with the rest of his unit.

What does the DUer smell?

CONSPIRACY!

This has probably been suggested before

But it occurs to me that this would give bush* a very good way of getting the british public more on-side in the 'war on terrorism'.

"PRINCE HARRY KILLED BY AL-QAEDA TERRORISTS" would be a lovely headline for bush*.

What surprises me the most about this comment? They made it all the way down to the sixth comment before implicating the President in a conspiracy to murder the Prince.

They must finally be starting to warm up to him.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:06 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Because One Jimmy Carter Isn't Enough

It appears that Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan were right for the Edwards campaign after all:

There are other emerging fissures, as well. The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the "I" word — Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. As a chill descended on the gathering, the Edwards event was brought to a polite close.

Catholics offended? check.
Christians offended? check.
Jews offended? check.

Johnny Haircut's had a pretty busy month.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:58 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Fire the Puppy-Blending Murdering Fascists!

Fresh off of his masterful exercise in self-deception declaring that Iranian nuclear scientists and apocalyptic Hojjatieh sect members cannot be targeted for precision killings, and by default, therefore must be killed by a conventional heavy bombing campaign that will kill dozensof real civilians, University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos has determined that it is also unethical to hunt dear with precision firearms, and suggested a more appropriate response.

Run Bambi, run!

Far more serious debunkings of Campos' legally illiterate screed are available here, here, and less directly, here.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:27 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Armageddon-it-on

Am I alone in thinking that the only real apparent benefit of United Nations involvement in this project is the threat that if Apophisians don't find a way to change course away from Earth, that they might be subject to rape?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:51 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Desperate Insurgents Detonate Chemical Bomb

A chemical tanker carrying chlorine gas and equipped with a bomb killed 5-6 Iraqi civilians and injured over 100 when detonated outside a restaurant in the Iraqi town of Taji:

A tanker carrying chlorine gas exploded Tuesday morning outside a restaurant in the Iraqi town of Taji, killing at least six people, an Interior Ministry official said. At least 105 other people were either injured by the blast or poisoned by the fumes.

The official said a bomb on board the tanker caused the explosion.

Baghdad Security plan spokesman Gen. Qassim Atta had different casualty figures, telling state-run al-Iraqiya TV that five people died in the blast and 148 were poisoned by the gas.

Taji is located about 12 miles (20 km) north of Baghdad.

Somewhat ironically, Taji was home to a Saddam-era airfield and Iraqi Republican Guard base that had a large complex used to manufacture chemical weapons. UNSCOM found 6,000 canisters at the base that would have been filled with chemical weapons for 122mm rockets. In 1998, UNSCOM weapons inspectors found that the Iraqis had loaded VX nerve agent into missile warheads prior to the 1990-91 Gulf War for apparent use against the coalition, but these weapons were never used.

The use of a chemical bomb in Iraq is a new escalation for the Sunni insurgency, and one that may indicate a certain level of desperation for those who would use a weapon that comes with such a stigma. Based upon the nature of the weapon, it's location, and its target (a civilian restaurant) is reasonable to make the assumption that the remnants of what used to be al Qaeda in Iraq, which has folded along with other collapsing Sunni insurgent groups into an organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq, is behind the bombing.

The group was created last year as coalition forces continued to decimate various elements of the Sunni insurgency, and the survivors decided to come together "to unify their efforts and coordinate attacks" in a futile effort to establish a Sunni caliphate within Iraq under Sharia law.

Last August, al Qaeda in Iraq "oveplayed its hand" when it murdered Sheik Khalid of the Albu Ali Jassim tribe, and in response, Sunni tribes have been actively hunting and killing insurgents in a movement of Sunni tribes known as "the Awakening."

Since then, al Qaeda and its increasingly fewer affiliate Islamists has more often been the hunted than the hunter, and the use of a chemical bomb today hints at the level of desperation they have now reached.

While the western media is almost certain to interpret the attack as an increase in the level of violence to counter the "surge" of American and Iraqi troops and implementation of the the Petraeus plan designed to crush the remaining al Qaeda strongholds, it is doubtful they will recognize, much less publicize, the level of desperation that the Sunni Islamists militants in Iraq have reached to use a weapon that can only diminish their collapsing support.

al Qaeda in Iraq is dying, and there is a noticeable feeling that momentum is shifting no only in Iraq, but at home, to finish this war with victory (h/t Instapundit).

The Sunni Islamists in Iraq are becoming ever more desperate. The war in Iraq is far from over, but there seems little chance that these elements of the insurgency, increasing turned upon by the very Sunni tribes that once made up their base of support, will survive as any sort of cohesive force.

Update: Hot Air reminds us that this was not the first attempt to detonate a chemical bomb, just the first successful attempt.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:55 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 19, 2007

More Fauxtography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some smoking gun.

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

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

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

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

I'm less than impressed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:03 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Onward Christian Soldiers

The Jawa Report notes the canonization of "Saint Harry" today (h/t Hot Air) and provides examples of other, less flattering photo compositions of conservatives that made it on the front pages of media sites over the past few years.

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

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

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

Heavens, no.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:09 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Surge Impact in Baghdad

A source in Iraq has forwarded me a copy of the DynCorp CIVPOL Intel Report from Feb 15-16, which shows the kind of impact that the "surge" in Baghdad is having on the various Sunni insurgency and Shia militia elements operating there.

DynCorp is a United States-based private military contractor which helps train police in both Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to providing teams of military contractors in other theaters. According to Wikipedia, DynCorp also assisted recovery efforts in Louisiana and neighboring areas after Hurricane Katrina.

From the summary:

There was a total of 24 incidents reported during this period, which was the lowest total recorded in over a year. The low total can be linked not only to the new security plan but the torrential rain during the evening of the 15th which severely hampered the emplacement of IEDs. Several reports through open media sources state that insurgents continued to attempt to disrupt the new security plan with the use of IDF, IEDs and VBIEDs and they had little, if any, effect to slow the US-Iraqi program.

During the review period, US and Iraqi forces pushed deeper into Sunni militant strongholds in Baghdad, where cars rigged with explosives greeted their advance. In the Doura District two parked cars wired with explosives were triggered as a joint US-Iraqi patrol rolled past. The convoy was unharmed, but the blast killed at least four civilians and wounded 15. The explosions did little to disrupt the security sweep attempting to weaken militia groups' ability to fight US-allied forces (as well as each other). Most of the latest resistance has come from Sunni factions, which perceive their Saddam Hussein-era influence slipping away as the majority Shiites extend their political force and bolster ties to Iran. The Pentagon hopes its current campaign of arrests and arms seizures will convince average Iraqis that militiamen are losing ground.

A leader of the main Sunni bloc in parliament, Adnan al-Dulaimi, claimed the US-led sweeps have "started to attack" mostly Sunni areas. "It should concentrate on those who are perpetrating the violence and terrorist acts in all districts," he said; an apparent reference to the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City.

Throughout the capital, US and Iraqi soldiers set up dozens of roadway checkpoints and conducted top-to-bottom searches of vehicles and motorbikes. Generally the public’s sentiment is that they are willing to put up with delays so long as the security sweep shows some results after bombings that have killed hundreds of civilians this year.

The US military said that five suspected militants had been detained and numerous pistols, rifles, AK-47s and small arms munitions seized during searches of more than 3,000 structures since an operation began Tuesday in mainly Shiite northeastern Baghdad. It also said clearing operations were continuing in the predominantly Sunni northern neighborhood of Adhamiyah.

According to ministry officials, The number of Iraqi civilians killed in Baghdad's sectarian violence fell drastically during the review period, crediting the joint US-Iraqi security operation that began in force just days ago. Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, a spokesman for the Baghdad commander, said only 10 bodies had been reported by the morgue in the capital, compared to an average of 40 to 50 per day.

Two charts in the report show the overall decreasing level of violence in Baghdad over the timeframes of 01-02 Feb through 15-16 Feb, and 09-10 Feb through 15-16 Feb respectively.

The abbreviations in the chart above are for improvised explosive devices (IEDs), rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), small arms fire (SAF), indirect fire (IDF - typically meaning mortars), and COMP which, quite frankly, has me stumped.

The report also mentions a tantalizing vehicle heist believed orchestrated by the Madhi Army, which may hint that another attack on coalition forces like the Karbala incident thought to have been carried out by Iranian Quds Force commandos that saw U.S. soldiers kidnapped and killed in a sophisticated raid, may be on the horizon:

DynCopr Armored vehicles stolen by Madhi Army-Bumper numbers A223 (Black Suburban) and A 60 (Green Chevy Suburban). Vehicles stolen while enroute from FOB Warhorse-May possibly be used in attck [sic] similar to Karbala or as VBIEDs.

Obviously, this report does not address the most recent attacks 30 miles north of Baghad, which occurred after this report was released, nor the smattering of attacks inside Baghad itself over the weekend.

Jules Crittenden notes how the media seems to be hoping and waiting for a Tet Offensive type attack:

This raises a question I’ve been wondering about. We’ve seen surge results, and we’ve seen the brief peace broken. No surprise here. Obviously it is to the benefit of the enemy to paint the surge as a failure, and well with the enemy’s capability to keep launching attacks. They can continue launching sporadic attacks as they are able, and the Surrender Camp will seize on them as signs of failure.

An attack like this on a base is an attention grabber, but it doesn’t sound like it involved a human wave assault, and for an alert and well-defended base, probably never threatened to amount to more than deadly harassment. Awaiting more details on that.

Is the enemy capable of anything like Tet-like offensive? I highly doubt it. No unified command and control; little cooperation among groups; nothing close to the necessary number of troops; and the U.S. is putting heavy pressure on all the leadership … al-Qaeda, Baathists, Mahdi Army, Iranians … everyone’s on the run. If anything, a campaign of coordinated frontal assaults would be a great opportunity to break the enemy … just as it did in Tet. The threat is political.

It is worth noting that the Tet Offensive Crittenden references was a crushing military defeat for the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies, that saw the Viet Cong in particular decimated and operationally crippled, and that it was the American media helped turn the route (an estimated 45,000 VC and NVA were killed, versus just 4,324 KIA for allied forces, roughly 2,800 of them South Vietnamese) into a propaganda victory for the North Vietnamese.

Despite more attacks by Sunni and Shia terrorists and Congressional Democrats led by John "Okinawa" Murtha, there is every indication that the Baghdad "surge" is having an impact at reducing the overall level of violence in Iraq's capital.

Let's just hope that we can see marked improvements that even the press can't deny before Democrats can organize a successful surrender.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:54 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

CY On the Air

I'll be on KSFO 560 With Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan this morning, talking about the recent development in the AP's Jamil Hussein scandal, where Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf revealed that the Associated Press lied when they said he confirmed the identity of Jamil Hussein.

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

Should make for some interesting radio.

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

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:20 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 16, 2007

Democratic Change In Direction

"The bipartisan resolution today may be nonbinding, but it will send a strong message to the president: we here in Congress are committed and supporting our troops,” Pelosi said. “The passage of this legislation will signal change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home safely and soon.”

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi troops faced little resistance as they continued on security sweeps, as the number of violent deaths in Baghdad plummeted from 40-50 a day to 10.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:17 PM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Bad Place to Regroup

One doesn't have to be von Clausewitz to figure out that when folks start shooting at you, taking cover behind something that will stop bullets and shrapnel is probably in your best interests.

Taking cover within a concave bucket of a front-end loader that could deflect incoming fire into your body, though... probably not the best idea.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:03 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I Hate You; Why Don't You Like Me?

For whatever reason, Salon.com picked up Amanda Marcotte's latest blameshifting attempt at dodging responsibility for her long track record of anti-Christian bigotry.

Marcotte is as tedious, suspicious, angrily self-righteous, and blissfully unaware of her own culpability as we've come to expect. Following her same tired script, she blames the "patriarchy" and the "right wing smear machine" for her downfall.

Frankly, I'd skip the article itself and read the other blog reaction to the article. Marcotte can't quite seem to grasp that she came under fire as a result of her own bitter words, taken in context.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:33 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 15, 2007

Iraqi General Disputes AP Claim on Jamil Hussein

Note: This is a background article to the exclusive posted today at Pajamas Media.

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

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

According an AP article released on November 24:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The AP stands by its story.

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll then piled on, oddly:

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

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

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

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

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

We stand behind our reporting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questioning their integrity and work ethic is simply offensive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think he is expecting her call.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:00 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 14, 2007

How to Fail at Suicide Bombing

According to Liveleak.com, this VBIED suicide bomber survived an attack on American forces in Baghdad... briefly.

He wasn't the only one who failed (content warning for language).

Funny how the failed suicide bombings and foiled IED attacks rarely get reported in the media, isn't it?

Bonus: Some pre-release footage from Pat Dollard's documentary, Young Americans.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:38 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Copperheads Decide on How to Define Screw 'Em

Lacking the moral courage to simply vote against the war in Iraq, House Democrats are instead working with anti-war groups--no doubt including the collection of Islamists and Marxists profiled here--to impose limitations that would reduce the number of U.S troops available for duty, putting American soldiers at risk as they plot their strategy for defeat:

The House strategy is being crafted quietly, even as the chamber is immersed this week in an emotional, albeit mostly symbolic, debate over a resolution expressing opposition to Bush's plan to "surge" 21,500 more troops into Iraq.

Murtha, the powerful chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, will seek to attach a provision to an upcoming $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. It would restrict the deployment of troops to Iraq unless they meet certain levels adequate manpower, equipment and training to succeed in combat. That's a standard Murtha believes few of the units Bush intends to use for the surge would be able to meet.

In addition, Murtha, acting with the backing of the House Democratic leadership, will seek to limit the time and number of deployments by soldiers, Marines and National Guard units to Iraq, making it tougher for Pentagon officials to find the troops to replace units that are scheduled to rotate out of the country. Additional funding restrictions are also being considered by Murtha, such as prohibiting the creation of U.S. military bases inside Iraq, dismantling the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and closing the American detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"There's a D-Day coming in here, and it's going to start with the supplemental and finish with the '08 [defense] budget," said Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, who chairs the Air and Land Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

Frankly, I'm not sure how we should respond when members of our own political class proudly declare that they are admitting to planning a "D-Day" against our own military.

Gaius, who has a son currently deployed in Iraq, is not happy:

They frankly do not care how much damage they do to the United States in their blind lust for political power, do they? They frankly don't care that they will, in effect, tie the hands of the military commanders with this strategy.

No, they don't, because in their eyes, victory is not an option.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:15 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Duke's Incredible Disappearing Rape Case

No, this has nothing to do with the collapsing case brought by a stripper against members of the Duke lacrosse team, but instead, a newly alleged rape of a white Duke student by a black male during a party in the fraternity house of Phi Beta Sigma, an African-American fraternity at Duke.

If you haven't heard of it, it may be because the same media, university administrators and Duke faculty that pre-judged the lacrosse players guilty seem to have be purposefully silent, and perhaps for all the wrong reasons.

While I can hope that those who attacked the Lacrosse team have simply learned a lesson on prejudging a case in which the details are far from known, the fact that local media purposefully sanitized accounts of the alleged crime to remove the race of the attacker leads me to beleive we may simply be witnessing a shameful double standard.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:20 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Psy-Ops?

Reports issued last night saying that the man dubbed "Mullah Atari" for his video game addictions, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, may have fled from Iraq to Tehran, are being disputed:

The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said Wednesday that Muqtada al-Sadr has left the country and is believed to be in Iran, despite denials from the radical Shiite cleric's supporters. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell declined to comment on the reasons al-Sadr had left the country or give more details.

"We will acknowledge that he is not in the country and all indications are in fact that he is in Iran," Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.

Lawmakers and officials linked to al-Sadr have denied that he had left the country, with one saying the cleric had met with government officials late Tuesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

An Iraqi government official said al-Sadr was in Najaf as recently as Tuesday night, when he received delegates from several government departments. The official, who is familiar with one of those meetings, spoke on condition of anonymity because he has no authority to disclose information on his department's activities.

Lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie, the head of Sadrist bloc in parliament, also insisted al-Sadr had not left the country.

"The news is not accurate because Muqtada al-Sadr is still in Iraq and he did not visit any country," al-Rubaie told The Associated Press.

The charge, accurate or not, could have the following ramifications.

• If he has already fled, his credibility drops. It will be very difficult for him to retain any political credibility or inspire his followers while hiding in another country, and he might never be able to regain his prestige.
• If still in Iraq, it makes it far more difficult for al-Sadr to leave. If Al-Sadr is still in Iraq as alleged by his followers, political pressure from his own supporters will make it far more difficult for him to actually flee without suffering severe penalties, perhaps dissolving his credibility entirely among both his political allies and his militant followers
• Locking him in to staying makes his capture or death more likely. Despite the near-hysterical shrieking of the fringe left, the Bush Administration has made it abundantly clear that they would prefer to no engage Iran in a war, so if al-Sadr made it to Tehran, he would be far out of U.S. reach. As long as he is in Iraq—perhaps kept there by a fear of becoming marginalized if he fled—then he will be much easier to target, should coalition forces decide that he needs to be taken down.

Whether this is a psychological operation or not is nearly irrelevant at this point. Al-Sadr is now on the defensive, which is precisely where the coalition prefers him to be.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:00 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 13, 2007

A Shred More Class

Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister has followed Amanda Marcotte in resigning from the John Edwards Presidential train wreck:

I understand that there will be progressive bloggers who feel I am making the wrong decision, and I offer my sincerest apologies to them. One of the hardest parts of this decision was feeling as though I'm letting down my peers, who have been so supportive.

There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people like Bill Donohue or Bill O'Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation.

This is a win for no one.

I don't think I've read enough of her blog to know much about McEwan, but I can say this: she exhibited more class and dignity than Marcotte, even as I find it somewhat ironic that someone who calls my fellow Christians "christofascists" accuses others of unleashing "frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation."

They did denounce the frightening ugliness, Melissa. You should know.

You wrote much of it yourself.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:33 PM | Comments (35) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Spin Job

Ask not to whom the AP lies: it lies to thee.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:50 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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