January 17, 2007

Jamilgate Hits the Airwaves (Bumped)

Update & Bump: My interview on Melanie Morgan's show regarding the Associated Press and Hurriyah is online:

Part 1 (MP3)
Part 2 (MP3)

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

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

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:04 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Fallen Angels

Just... read.

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:32 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Back From Iraq

The Hot Air crew of Bryan Preston and Michelle Malkin are safely back from Iraq and their embed at Forward Operating Base Justice, and are rolling out reports pretty fast and furious.

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

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

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

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

Me neither.

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

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

She stated in part:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you very much for your time.

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

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

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:30 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 16, 2007

Live The Flavor

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

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:40 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Insty Talks Guns in the Times

Glenn Reynolds has an interesting op-ed in the NY Times today noting that communities with higher levels of legal gun ownership face less criminal activity.

Me?

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

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

Update:

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:27 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Pretty Boy

What's in a name?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:12 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cartoons and Caricatures

Far too often, we tend to oversimplify things, especially when demonizing out ideological opposites. I am as guilty as anyone (my own tagline of "Liberalism is a persistent vegetative state" is a prime example), and yet, that in no way excuses the practice.

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

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

Back? Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:55 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 "The idea that the liberal press has to be overcome for conservatives truly to take power started with the Goldwater campaign in 1964, and today’s bias warriors are the inheritors, through Agnew, of that idea."

This opening salvo says all I need to know about Jay Rosen and his credentials as an objective "critic" of the "liberal press" and those who stand against their arrogant and toxic malfeasance and bastardization of a quasi-public trust. Goldwater and Agnew?

Perhaps instead I am the inheritor of Samuel Johnson or Jefferson. I appreciate a free press, I just don't withhold my contempt for a corrupt one.

To write news in its perfection requires
such a combination of qualities, that a
man completely fitted for the task is
not always to be found. In Sir Henry
Wotton's jocular definition, 'An
Ambassador is said to be a man of
virtue sent abroad to tell lies for
the advantage of his country; a
news-writer is a man without virtue,
who lies at home for his own profit.'

To these compositions is required
neither genius nor knowledge,
neither industry nor sprightliness;
but contempt of shame and indifference
to truth are absolutely necessary.
He who by a long familiarity with
infamy has obtained these qualities,
may confidently tell today what he
intends to contradict tomorrow;
he may affirm fearlessly what he
knows that he shall be obliged to
recant, and may write letters
from Amsterdam or Dresden to himself."
Samuel Johnson: (November 11, 175

And for Jefferson, who wrote that he only read the advertisements, because that was the only place he might find the sole remnants of truth out of the entirety of the newspaper.

I, like those men before me...stand firm in my resolve that a free press is a cornerstone of exacting freedom from tyranny...but firmly believe that a corrupted press is the cornerstone for exacting tyranny from freedom.

Each day I pray for the former, yet feel that it is even more clear that we are in the eye of the hurricane of the latter.

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

2 The Right doesn't "get" Dr. King? Who was it that led an 83-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Which side forced President Clinton into signing Welfare Reform into law by making it THE hot item in his re-election year?

For a more current example: What would Dr. King say about the Duke Lacrosse case? Somehow I doubt he would be on the side of Democratic DA Mike Nifong.

Despite all of this (and much more), it's the Right that doesn't "get" Dr. King?

Yeah.

Right.

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

3 no-one can claim to understand that legacy and what it really means unless you happen to be an African American born prior to 1958, or thereabouts.

I think this is proof enough.

I'd say a decent reading of the Declaration of Independence is the chief prerequisite for understanding King's legacy.

The problem with Americans who don't get King is that they see him as a black hero, and not as an American hero.

Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

King: "In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."

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

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

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

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January 14, 2007

More Sectarian Violence

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

Probably.

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

Yet.

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

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:10 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 12, 2007

The Wild, Wild West of... Ohio?

The dateline is Indian Hill, and he's acting like a one-man posse, so close enough:

An Iraq war veteran who drew national attention when he ran for Congress criticizing the president chased three men who had crashed into a fence outside his home, then guarded them with an assault rifle until police arrived, according to police reports.

[snip]

According to a police report, officers were called to Hackett's home on Nov. 19 after a car crashed into a fence and sped away. The officers arrived to find three men lying face down near their car and Hackett with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder.

"He said he had done this about 200 times in Iraq, but this time there was not a translation problem," the police report said.

Hackett told police later that he was carrying a civilian model of an AR-15 and that one round was in the chamber but the safety was on. He said he never aimed the weapon at the men or put his finger on the trigger.

The driver of the car was charged with failure to maintain reasonable control, driving under suspension and carrying a concealed weapon, a pair of brass knuckles.

Admittedly, I'm a couple of days late to this, but how is it that the cops show up to find three guys face-down on the ground in front of a guy that chased them down and then displayed an AR-15, and the guy with the rifle doesn't get arrested?

Even when smothered with lawyerly talk, this seems like a fairly cut-and-dried case of brandishing a weapon, if not assault with a deadly weapon, depending on what the victims/defendents here have to say about the matter. You simply cannot go chase down someone and use a weapon to get them to comply to your demands.

While I am not a lawyer, I have heard of similar circumstances where people "compelled" other people to remain on the scene until the cops arrived with the use of a firearm, and when the cops arrived, they charged the person with the firearm for several crimes, including with something akin to kidnapping or unlawful detainment.

I thank Hackett for his service to our nation in Iraq, but Paul--can I call you Paul?--You are no longer in Iraq.

You simply can't chase someone down for a property crime with a weapon. That is a crime. Potentially, it is more than one crime. I'm rather disappointed he wasn't charged on the scene, but at least a grand jury is investigating.

Somehow, I doubt that the (generally gun-hating) netroots would be nearly as accommodating as they seem to be in this case, if any other former soldier decided to use his weapon to enforce the law once he was back home.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:50 PM | Comments (33) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Does Tony Snow Read CY?

This snippit of a transcript from Hugh Hewitt (h/t Gerald Hibbs) kind of makes me wonder (my bold):

HH: All right, yesterday, the President also mentioned that there will be lots of carnage on television screens. Is the administration, and especially the Pentagon, prepared to fight the new media war when that starts to happen, Tony Snow?

TS: We'e been fighting it. I mean, it's not that it has started to happen, it's been going on for some time. What is interesting, Hugh, and you know this as well as anybody else, you're also starting to see little glimmers of guys like Michael Yon and others who get over there and they basically embed themselves in Iraq, and Michelle Malkin's over there now.

HH: Bill Roggio, you bet. They go over and do first hand reporting.

TS: And what ends up…I think what’s likely to happen over time is that people there, and you and I have both seen forces come back completely disheartened and disgusted by the kind of reporting that goes on here, I would not be surprised to see some of those people not going out in the field, but maybe back at barracks, turning on the video camera, shooting a picture, and saying you know what? Let me tell you what's really going on here, and why, and how I see it. That sort of stuff gets on a Youtube, or a Livelink, or any of these other things. It'soing to get out. I mean, there are many different ways now for people to get a glimpse of what' actually happening. And the new media war can take many different fronts, and while Al Jazeera or Al Arabia, or even Al Houra, which is financed by the U.S. Government, they all have cable presence there. But you know, in this day and age, it' exploding more rapidly, and more people are just pulling their news and pulling their video off the internet.

HH: As we saw during the summer war between Hezbollah and Israel, Tony Snow, Hezbollah went to such lengths as to stage atrocities, buildings blown up, and victims left in there.

TS: Yeah.

HH: Are you, as the head of the White House communications operation, prepared to immediately get out there and quarrel with that and stop those sorts of stories from metastasizing?

TS: Yeah, I am looking forward to meeting Captain Jumil Hussein, but other than that, yes. You'e seen the latest on that, right?

HH: No, I haven't I haven't read today. Is he back and not existing again?

TS: He’s back to non-existence.

HH: (laughing) But that’s the new media war…

TS: Yeah.

Was Snow's comment, "He's back to non-existence," a reference to posts put up by Curt and myself yesterday that "Jamil Hussein" is a apparently a pseudonym used by the Associated Press in what appears to be a direct breach of their own code of ethics?

Interesting...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:09 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Leftists Attack American Interests, Hit Crap

Don.t shoot the messenger, I'm just repeating what Sky News said:

A leftist group has reportedly claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the US embassy in Athens.

The Greek government said it had received two calls claiming the guerrilla group Revolutionary Struggle was behind the attack.

Public Order minister Vyron Polydoras said it was "very likely" a domestic group was behind the blast.

The rocket slammed into the embassy toilet in the early morning strike, causing slight damage but no injuries.

Reuters more clearly defines the weapon as an RPG-18, a kind of rocket-propelled grenade.

It's too bad for Huff 'n Puffer Mark Seery; no American soldiers died.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:27 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 11, 2007

Hungry, Hungry Hypos

Via SFGate.com:

For the past year, Spocko has been e-mailing advertisers of KSFO-AM with audio clips from its shows and asking sponsors to examine what they're supporting. Some sponsors have pulled their ads, after hearing clips like one of KSFO's Lee Rodgers suggesting that a protester be "stomped to death right there. Just stomp their bleeping guts out."

Now, bloggers and media freedom advocates are concerned about the legal reaction from Disney/ABC-owned KSFO. Shortly before Christmas, an ABC lawyer demanded that Spocko remove audio clips from his blog on the grounds that Spocko's posting of KSFO content was illegal. Digital freedom advocates counter that the clips constitute fair use and worry that critical voices could be silenced by corporations threatening legal action for violation of copyright law.

I agree.

Stop the Censorship!

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:59 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

AP: Discrediting Jamil's Sources

A wise and well-traveled journalist spoke with me via email yesterday regarding the stupidity of mistakes made by the large and the arrogant Goliaths of our world:

...One thing they ALWAYS do, in my experience, is make MAJOR mistakes in the very beginning. Mistakes that are so major that people say, "Nope, that can't be true. They never would do something that stupid." But they do. And then the big people usually rely on intimidation...and if that doesn't work (and it's not with you on this), those initial huge errors they make become HUGE and inescapable...

And so back to the beginning I went, and indeed, the Associated Press seems to have done an excellent job of discrediting Jamil Huss—excuse me, "Jamil XX" on their own. How much did they discredit him?

To the point most rational people would question why he was ever allowed to continue as an Associated Press source at all.

Do you remember this JunkYardBlog post, where See Dubya marveled at the ability of Captain Jamil XX to be report incidents of violence from literally all over Baghdad?

See Dubya noted:

I think I may have been the first to notice the significance of the wide variety of Baghdad locations from which "Captain Jamil Hussein" had reported incidents of violence to the AP. On November 26th, I said he was

...reporting chaos and mayhem in Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods all over Baghdad--Sadr City, Dora, Mansour, and others.

In other words, it looks less like Capt. Hussein is an eyewitness to this event, and more like he's just an unofficial spokesman. But a spokesman for whom?

(As it turns out, Sadr City is one of the few places in Baghdad he hasn't reported from.) The problem of the geographical plausibility of Captain Hussein's claims has been commented on several times since then, most recently by Lt. Col. Bob Bateman, who noted that the distance between Hurriyah and Yarmouk made him an odd choice to comment authoritatively on the Hurriyah mosque burning:

In other words, in going to their "normal" source for this story, the AP went to the equivalent of a Brooklyn local police precinct for a story that occurred in northern Yonkers! Hello? What would a cop in Brooklyn know about a crime in Yonkers? That's what doesn't make sense to me. (And why didn't the AP reveal, until challenged, that this source was not from the district where the events allegedly occurred, or even from a neighboring district, but is from a moderately distant part of this 7-million-person city?)

Actually, though, it's worse than that. If I can continue Col. Bateman's analogy, since April, the AP has been relying on that same Brooklyn cop for reports on violence in not just Yonkers, but the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, and Jersey City.

To prove that point, See Dubya and and geoff of Uncommon Misconceptions created the following map.

As you can see, Jamil provided information on incidents of violence from neighborhoods all over Baghdad, and the majority of these reports occurred outside of his jurisdiction.

How far outside of his jurisdiction?

I took the map created by See Dubya and geoff, compared it to the detailed NIMA map, and, as best as I could, filled in the Khadra and Yarmouk districts where the Associated Press claimed Jamil had been stationed, and marked a rough outline of those neighborhoods in red. It is quite logical to expect for police officers to be familiar with, and perhaps on rare occasions even be a witness of, violent crimes in the neighborhoods in which they patrol.

It is also plausible that Jamil might "rub shoulders" with officers in surrounding neighborhoods, and thus have access to stories in the neighborhoods of Ma'mun, Mansur, Qadisyiyah, Ummal, Jahid, Hamra, Firdaws, Hayy at Tayran, al 'Adl, and Andalus. These bordering neighborhoods were noted in orange, as they surrounded the two neighborhoods where the Associated Press says Jamil XX served.

This is the result.

In all of the stories plotted on the map by See Dubya and geoff, six took place in surrounding neighborhoods, only one took place in Yarmouk, and none took place in Khadra.

Time and again, reporters for the Associated Press used Captain Jamil as their source for reports of violence in Baghdad far outside of his jurisdiction. It seems highly likely that almost everything Jamil reported to the Associated Press was second-hand information, provided to him by another party or parties. As a legal matter, this kind of evidence would most likely be considered hearsay, and in most instances, would be inadmissible as evidence.

Obviously, the Associated Press has much lower standards of proof than the legal system would require (presumably even in Durham), but just how low are their standards? Are those standards below what we should expect from a professional news organization that claims:

...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.

As the maps above strongly suggest, Jamil XX was relying upon accounts from people other than himself, and was relaying those accounts to the Associated Press, who consistently cited Jamil Hussein as the source. If Jamil is not the actual source, but is merely relaying these accounts from around Baghdad, can the Associated Press claim that they are acting ethically by citing him as their source?

Shouldn’t they have suspected months ago that he was only serving to forward information from others that the Associated Press should have known were apparently in direct contradiction to it’s own policies of identifying all sources?

The questions that arise are thus:

• Who was providing Jamil XX with these stories of violence from outside of not only Yarmouk and Khadrah, but even outside nearby neighborhoods?
• Did the Associated Press ever question him as to why or how he was able to provide reports from all over Baghdad?
• How could the Associated Press ethically cite Jamil Hussein as source if he was only serving to relay stories from all over Baghdad? Wouldn't that be highly deceptive, and against their own stated ethical guidelines?

As Jamil could not reasonably be expected to provide these dozens of accounts from all over Baghdad through first-hand knowledge, where did he get his information? Did he get it from other police officers around Baghdad?

If so, those are the same police officers and other MOI employees that Associated Press Editor Kathleen Carroll continuously attacked for being suspect and I would posit, unreliable sources:

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.

Is Executive Editor Carroll implying that the Baghdad police are untrustworthy killers? It sure seems that way. Just paragraphs later, Carroll states even more damningly:

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.”)

It seems highly likely that if Jamil XX did get his accounts through official channels, then he got them through the same police officers and MOI employees that Kathleen Carroll excoriated as belonging to death squads and murderous militias.

In her own words, AP's own executive editor discredits the only possible credible and quasi-official providers of Jamil's information.

Of course, their is a "third way."

Would Carroll prefer to discuss which militias or insurgent factions that would be the next most likely unofficial providers of Jamil XX's information? I didn't think so.

To say so much to discredit the Interior Ministry police, and then argue that Jamil Hussein is a credible source, would seem to stretch the credibility of the Associated Press to (or past) the breaking point.

Kathleen Carroll cannot credibly both attack the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and then defend the accounts of Jamil XX that necessarily rely upon the Interior Ministry to provide the information he used in Associated Press accounts.

But oh, will she try...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:54 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

J-DAMN

And so a major Associated Press claim in "Jamilgate" takes an apparently fatal hit.

According to Bill Costlow of CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) in Baghdad, and as forwarded by Lt. Michael Dean of Multinational Corps-Iraq/Joint Operations Command Public Affairs, our now infamous police captain in Iraq appears to be definitively not Jamil Hussein.

Nor is his name Jamil Gholaiem Hussein as stated repeatedly by the Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll and other Associated Press employees.

Nor is his name Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim, as he has been called previously in other accounts. According to his personnel records at MOI, confirmed with BG Abdul-Kareem and then reportedly verified by BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf with AP's Baghdad sources, his name is actually Jamil Gulaim "XX".

The "XX" protects his second middle name and real last names, of which "Hussein" is not a part.

To sum up the current situation as things now appear to stand:

• There is no Baghdad police officer at the Khadra police station named Captain Jamil Hussein, and never has been. Jamil Hussein, and Jamil Gholaiem Hussein are pseudonyms for Jamil Gulaim "XX".
• The Associated Press published a pseudonym without acknowledging that fact, apparently knowing, if BG Abdul-Kareem is correct, that they were publishing a false identity. Is that a big deal? HUGE. This is a major breach of journalistic ethics.
• The Associated Press has heavily modified the "facts" of their claims since these two stories here and here on November 24 and November 25. Those claims are:
  1. That 24 people were burned to death; Six were pulled from the Ahbab al-Mustafa as it was attacked, the were doused and set on fire, according to AP source Captain Jamil Hussein, and that AP also printed a claim by the Association of Muslim Scholars (a group suspected of strong ties to al Qaeda, a detail the AP left out of their reporting) that 18 more people, including women in children, were burned to death in an "inferno" resulting from a Shiite militia attack at the al-Muhaimin mosque. Current AP accounts have dropped the claims of the 18 killed at al-Muhaimin completely, without a retraction or a correction.
  2. The Associated Press originally claimed four mosques (Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa) were attacked in Hurriyah according to Police Captain Jamil Hussein, along with several houses. AP has since revised its claim down to one mosque instead of four (presumably the Ahbab al-Mustafa where it says the six men were claimed immolated) and they have curiously dropped the mosque's name from their reporting. They have issued neither a retraction nor a correction for the three mosques they have written out of successive narratives
  3. The Associated Press initially claimed that Associated Press Television had video showing damage to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque where they claim these six men were immolated. After November 30, they have made no further mention of this video that would seem to buttress their claims, nor have I been able to find anyone who has seen it. They have not issued a retraction, nor a correction for this claim. Do they still claim to support it?
• AP's Executive Editor and Senior vice President Kathleen Carroll, and AP's International Editor John Daniszewski have both insisted that Jamil Gholaiem Hussein is real. To make this claim, they presumably knew they were pushing a pseudonym to the public, presumably violating their own stated values and principles.
• The Associated Press has claimed that BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf verified the existence of Jamil Hussein. According to Bill Costlow of CPATT, he did no such thing.
• As this new revelation apparently shows, AP knew they were foisting a pseudonym upon the public, and even when questioned, continued to persist in denying what appears to be the truth.

Further, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior claims that their is still no evidence that the six murders by immolation in Hurriyah on November 24 ever occurred.

I await Kathleen Carroll's response.

Update: Broken link fixed.

Update: I just got a response 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.

A fascinating response, for a couple of reasons.

First, the Associated Press insists Jamil Gholaiem Hussein is a Iraqi police Captain at the Kharda police station in Iraq, circa the Jan 4 story they still stand behind (and Wagner referenced). I have a January 11 release saying something quite different, attributed to the same general.

While I have absolutely no power, influence, etc., I did suggest to LT Dean at MNC-I PAO that it might help if Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf spoke at a press conference and squared away these two contradicting stories that are both officially sourced to him. Obviously, they cannot both be correct.

The second reason I found this fascinating, which you may have caught if you were reading Wagner's comment closely, is that she was responding to something I sent to Steven R Hurst. Hurst wrote the January 4 story, and so I'd contacted him, saying that:

Mr. Hurst,

I refuse to publish his second middle or last name, but I hear that Jamil Hussein is actually Jamil Gulaim [names redacted], and that AP has been using Jamil Hussein as a pseudonym to protect him. Is that correct?

Hurst, instead of ignoring my comment or deleting it, forwarded it upward to Wagner, and I had an official response from AP brass within 1.5 hours.

Now, it very well could be Associated Press policy to forward any and all email inquiries to AP reporters to the Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs, and that those inquiries are quickly and courteously answered within an hour and a half by such senior AP officers, but somehow, I doubt it.

While it is blind speculation, I somehow doubt that a senior staff member would be the one issuing a denial unless there was some substantial reasons to involve a senior staff member. I'd further opine that known the exact real name of their source might just rise to that level of importance.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:33 AM | Comments (58) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 10, 2007

Tuesday, With Morays

With any luck, John Seery, a Pomona College professor and Huffington Post contributor, will die a horrible, painful death-by-eel-bite in the next year... preferably on Tuesday, March 13.

Why?

Irony.

HuffPuffer Seery seems absolutely giddy at the prospect of calculating the deaths of American soldiers over the next year, which--let's face it--is a game his base doesn't mind playing...

Greg Gutfeld is, well, less than amused with Seery's sick game:

The more that die, he understands, the smarter he looks. As a college professor, he's hoping for an invite to a cocktail party where he doesn't have to serve the drinks.

It only leads me to ask: When, and how, will John Seery be killed?

I'm just curious, of course, in the same manner Mr. Seery is. He's asking you to submit a number - the larger the better - which is perfectly appropriate for the Huffington Post - where hoping for the worst is the only hope allowed.

So certainly, me asking the same question about John should be treated with the same respect - don't you think? I mean, of course - the Huffpo won't dare remove me, or hide my post, when I ask for such a somber prediction. After all, Seery is practically lubricating over expected casualties - his summer will be awash in misery if American blood doesn't flow. What if I feel the same way, about him?

While I might not "lubricate" over Seery's impending death this year, I do have to ask:

What dates and methods are you guys picking?

As Seery himself says:

I'm not sure, however, what you'll win, or even if you could call it a victory. But Americans like to play to win, we've been told.

And though we do love to play, and get things when we win, I'd suggest against a pool... once it gets to a certain point, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After contributing to Jamil Hussein's imminent date with a drill, I don't know if I can have that on my conscious as well.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:44 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The "New Way Forward"

From yonder White House.

Have at it. I'm going to be a bad political blogger and not read this until after Bush's speech, but I'm guessing the new way farward is neither through Damascus nor Tehran, so I'm sure I'll be disappointed anyway.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:09 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Dueling Incompentencies

As if having Mike Nifong as the District Attorney in neighboring Durham wasn't bad enough:

A Cary High School student has been released on bond after allegedly spiking a science teacher's water bottle with acid.

Zachary Midgette, 17, was arrested Monday on a charge of assault on a government official. The misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of 150 days in jail.

Police said Midgette admitted putting hydrochloric acid and zinc chloride from the school science lab in his teacher's water bottle last Friday.

You heard it here, folks: try to kill your teacher with two potentially fatal poisons in Wake County, and all you will be charged with is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum of 150 days in jail.

I think it's time for the North Carolina Bar to lay off the hard stuff.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:13 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 09, 2007

Senator's Condition Upgraded

Glad to hear it:

Sen. Tim Johnson's condition has been upgraded from critical to fair, four weeks after he was hospitalized for a brain hemorrhage, his office said Tuesday.

The South Dakota Democrat, who was rushed to the hospital December 13 and underwent emergency surgery, remains in intensive care, said his spokeswoman, Julianne Fisher.

"The senator continues to make progress," Fisher said. "The next step would be rehabilitation and we hope that would happen within the week."

Johnson's office has said that his recovery is expected to take several months.

He underwent surgery to correct a condition called arteriovenous malformation, involving tangled arteries in his brain.

The senator's doctors said last week that Johnson was improving but still needed a ventilator at night to help him breathe. The ventilator has required a tube to be placed down Johnson's throat, making it impossible for him to talk.

His long-term prognosis is unclear. He has been responsive to his family and physicians, following commands, squeezing his wife's hand and understanding speech.

Senator Johnson's ordeal is not just one he experiences, but one his entire family must endure. If you're of a mind to, prayers certainly wouldn't hurt.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:05 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Did the AP Lie About Jamil Hussein Being Found?

Or is this just being lost in translation? Curt, at Flopping Aces with the apparent bombshell:

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf never acknowledged that there was a Capt. Jamil Hussein assigned to the Khadra station, he confirmed to the AP that there was a Capt. Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim assigned there. Apparently he is the source for the AP even though he still, to this day (according to Bill Costlow), denies being the source.

So what do we have so far?

That the AP has lied again in their response. The AP specifically stated that Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf acknowledged Jamil Hussein exists when he did no such thing. He acknowledged a completely different name the AP gave him but not a Jamil Hussein.

This, of course, means that Michelle Malkin nailed it on December 20. Anyone got a good crow recipe for Eric Boehlert?

I'll have more on this as I process the implications...

Update: Before I get to worked up about this one way or the other, I'm going to want some verification that Costlow is correct. This is something that Curt is asking Costlow to triple-check, and I am also asking MNF-I PAO to verifiy as well. Until then, let's agree to take this with a grain of salt.

Why?

Because if Brig. General Abdul-Karim Khalaf did not tell the Associated Press that there was a Captain Jamil Hussein at the Khadra police station, then we have what many would interpret as an attempt by the Associated Press to deceive it's readership, which numbers roughly one billion people on this planet every day. That would be big news, and potentially indicate there are yet bigger fish to fry.

Likewise, it would be big (though not nearly as big) news if Brig. General Abdul-Karim Khalaf told both AP and Bill Costlow what they wanted to hear. Such a revelation would destroy his credibility as one of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's main spokesmen.

More as this develops...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:28 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Beginning of Surge Combat?

It looks like both coalition forces and the insurgents might be changing tactics in Baghdad, as a signifigant combat operation in Baghdad enters a fourth day:

Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi troops battled with insurgents in a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency in central Baghdad Tuesday.

The firefight began before dawn and followed two days of violence in the neighborhood that left as many as 50 insurgents dead.

The U.S. and Iraqi troops came under attack by snipers, mortar rounds, and small arms fire.

By midday Tuesday (4 a.m. ET), the U.S. military sent in fixed-wing aircraft and Apache attack helicopters to support the ground forces.

U.S. military sources said the insurgent group included elements from the Saddam Hussein regime, foreign fighters, and members of al Qaeda in Iraq.

They said the group was waging a sophisticated, coordinated battle, and was fighting against 400 U.S. troops and 500 Iraqi soldiers.

Combat started Saturday when Iraqi troops came under fire when trying to recover bodies dumped near a cemetery.

At this stage of the war it is rare for Sunni insurgents to engage in a multi-day battle against coalition forces, for obvious reasons: they have lost every single major engagement they have ever engaged in since the 2003 invasion, usually suffering heavy losses. They simply lack the training, support, weaponry or numbers to prevail in such conflicts, and so it is of note that they seem to have chosen to make a stand, of sorts, in this Baghdad neighborhood at this time. Why? What are they protecting, and what are they trying to prove? Why have they not slipped away under the guise of civilians as they so often do?

There is some sort of prize involved here, be it material, personnel, or philosophical. I'll be watching this story with great interest, and will provide updates as I can. This particular battle bears watching as a portent of what "surge" operations in Baghdad may look like in months to come.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:51 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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