January 08, 2007

What Happened to the AP's Hurriyah Mosque Attack Video?

Kathleen Carroll continues to attack those questioning her news organization’s ability to turn four burned mosques and several homes into one burned mosque, and their ability to turn 24 dead men, women and children into six, while still not acknowledging that they cited an al Qaeda-linked source to get the number up to 24 in the first place. The Associated Press and Executive Editor Carroll are still claiming to stand behind their reporting when the "facts" of the story have been rewritten in the neighborhood of 75-percent...

Oh wait, where was I going with this?

...Ah yes, I remember now.

Kathleen Carroll says she still stands behind the AP's reporting from Hurriyah.

There are reportedly just four mosques in the Hurriyah neighborhood, pulled from this 2003 map:

That would be the four mosque locations noted in the bottom left quadrant. Is it accurate? Perhaps, perhaps not. It is after all, three years old, and apparently generated by a U.S.-government agency known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency . How accurately they map specific buildings in a foreign capital seems to be open for debate.

The AP claims four mosques in Hurriyah were destroyed:

The militiamen attacked and burned the Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa mosques in the rampage that did not end until American forces arrived, Hussein said.

The gunmen attack with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and automatic rifles. Residents said militiamen prevented them from entering burned structures to take away the bodies of victims.

Now, let's leave aside the inconvenient fact that apparently none of these mosques seem to have actually been destroyed, that American units no longer patrol this neighborhood, and that the Associated Press has decided to write three of the mosques out of their narrative by November 30, less than a week after the news organization's previous claims:

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.

Let's ignore that AP dropped the number of attacked mosques from four to one, and that the 18 dead people claimed by their pro-al Qaeda source have suddenly vanished from their reporting without correction or retraction. Let's instead concentration on this interesting detail from AP reporter Steven R Hurst (scroll down):

The attack on the small Mustafa Sunni mosque began as worshippers were finishing Friday midday prayers. About 50 unarmed men, many in black uniforms and some wearing ski masks, walked through the district chanting "We are the Mahdi Army, shield of the Shiites."

Fifteen minutes later, two white pickup trucks, a black BMW and a black Opel drove up to the marchers. The suspected Shiite militiamen took automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers from the vehicles. They then blasted open the front of the mosque, dragged six worshippers outside, doused them with kerosene and set them on fire.

This account of one of the most horrific alleged attacks of Iraq's sectarian war emerged Tuesday in separate interviews with residents of a Sunni enclave in the largely Shiite Hurriyah district of Baghdad.

The Associated Press first reported on Friday's incident that evening, based on the account of police Capt. Jamil Hussein and Imad al-Hashimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, who told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were soaked in kerosene, then set afire, burning before his eyes.

AP Television News also took video of the Mustafa mosque showing a large portion of the front wall around the door blown away. The interior of the mosque appeared to be badly damaged and there were signs of fire.

Somehow, I'd missed this where the AP specified that it was the Mustafa (Ahbab al-Mustafa) mosque where these men were abducted from and burned, possibly because in later AP stories and releases the exact name of the mosque was dropped. AP also says that AP television took video of the Mustafa mosque after it was attacked...

So why haven't we seen the AP video of the attacked mosque yet?

Why has that part of the Associated Press narrative disappeared? It seems odd that after being bombarded by critics for weeks because they haven't produced any evidence to back up their claims that they would pass on the chance to show the very evidence that they once seemed to think would bolster their claim.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:05 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Monday Morning Jamil Roundup

While I've been busy over the weekend doing family stuff, other bloggers have kept up the pressure on the continuing on-going scandal called Jamilgate, where the Associated Press claimed that 24 people were burned to death and four mosques were rocketed, machine gunned, burned and blown up along with several homes burned in a Baghdad neighborhood on Friday, November 24, 2006.

The AP has since attempted to rewrite their story after the fact, now only maintaining that six people were immolated and that only one mosque was attacked. Though the claims made in the story have been changed by roughly 75-percent, one of their primary sources is facing arrest, another retracted his claim, and another key source was a group aligned with al Qaeda, the AP's executive editor Kathleen Carroll continues to prove she is the Mike Nifong of professional journalism.

Carroll says she stand by AP's reporting on this story, even as her reporters have dramatically changed it over time (See Protein Wisdom for an excellent summary of the events so far).

Among the bloggers that continued to cover the AP over the weekend have been Dafydd ab Hugh and Sachi X of Big Lizards. On Friday, Sachi released a three-part critique on the main defenders of the Associated Press, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters. Start with Media Matters In the Meme Streets of Baghdad - 1 and read all three parts. Sachi's partner in crime, Dafydd released So Where IS Lieutenant Kije? yesterday afternoon, wondering what, if anything, Jamil Hussein might have in common with an eight-foot tall invisible rabbit named Harvey (I'd point out as an aside that Harvey was at least "seen" by a decorated U.S. Air Force combat pilot who retired as Brigadier General James Stewart. To the best of my knowledge, that is one more U.S. military officer than has seen Jamil Hussein).

On Saturday, Kurt at Flopping Aces revealed an email exchange he had with Bill Costlow, CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) representative on his way back to Baghdad to work with the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. Costlow points out something I've heard, but haven't previously commented on: Jamil Hussein may have been difficult to find because that is not the name he is known under as an Iraqi police officer. While the AP credits him as Jamil Hussein, the Iraqi Police Captain calls himself Jamil Gulaim, and when an officer by the name of "Captain Jamil Ghlaim" was questioned several weeks ago, he denied being AP's source.

If Jamil Ghlaim Hussein is the AP's source, and is the same man denying being the AP's source, what kind of position does it place the Associated Press in, on not just the immolation stories, but the dozens of other stories sourced to Jamil Hussein since April of 2006?

Of course, it isn't just bloggers that are concerned over the implications of Jamilgate. Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner hits the same point I've been repeating that liberal bloggers and liberal blog commenters either don't seem able to grasp, or would prefer to overlook:

But even if it is stipulated that AP has been right all along, it has been using a source who is an Iraqi Police Captain by name of Jamil Hussein, that isn't proof that he is a credible source.

Don't forget that al Qaeda and the insurgents have made clear that they consider learning to manipulate the western press is a major front in their war of Jihad.

And there is abundant evidence that there are significant numbers of insurgent sympathizers among the Iraqi Police forces. Neither is it beyond the realm of possibility that Hussein is in fact a double agent.

I talked earlier today with an old journalism friend who has covered just about every significant foreign military action involving U.S. troops in the past 15 years, including both the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and Iraq War of 2003.

My friend explained the difficulties faced by AP and other Western journalists in the theater. Because it is so dangerous outside the Green Zone in Baghdad, few Western journalists venture out beyond its confines.

So they have to rely upon local stringers drawn from among the Iraqi population. Because being a news stringer can put dollars in the pocket, there is a tremendous competition among these folks to bring the Western journalists the best stories.

That competition is, of course, an open invitation to exaggeration, rumor and outright lies being peddled as legitimate news. It is also an opening for a resourceful insurgent or al Qaeda operative to become a source for Western journalists.

Because of AP's ill-advised "trust me" attitude when bloggers first began questioning the credibility of Hussein as a source, the emphasis was on proving his existence.

Proving that he exists is not the same thing as establishing his credibility as a source, especially since there is so much contrary evidence regarding the six Sunnis being burned alive.

Going back to the Duke Lacrosse rape case that I used as an analogy last week, merely proving that the accuser exists does not prove the story, especially when the stories keep changing, the credibility of the witnesses is in jeopardy, and there is little or no physical evidence supporting any of the ever-changing allegations made.

Of course, Tapscott is far from being the only professional journalist concerned over the AP's apparent shifting stories and dubious claims. Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald posts at his blog Forward Movement:

The AP publishes hundreds of stories a day. Why should anyone give a damn if any of them are accurate? Grubby impertinent news reader people. Just because the AP's claim of four mosques torched and six people burned to death as troops looked on was outlandish, remains unsubstantiated and government officials said the source didn't exist.

E&P scribbler Joe Strupp and Carroll enthusiastically repeat several times that "Hussein" has been threatened with arrest for talking to reporters. They fail to mention that's for unauthorized blather about incidents that may not have actually occurred and could represent insurgent propaganda. If in fact Jamil exists, of course. The Ministry of Interior's record on that is spotty and the AP seems to have lost track of him just as he's been "found."

Crittenden and Tapscott hit at the heart of the matter: the stringer-based reporting methodology and apparently weak editorial checks-and-balances indicate that the world's largest news organization highly susceptible to insurgent propaganda efforts. After all, one of the sources AP used in its Jamilgate coverage is a Sunni group affiliated with al Qaeda that the Associated Press ran without any apparent concerns as to their credibility. If the Associated Press will run claims made by known terrorist supporters, how susceptible do you think they are to running claims by those who first establish an air of legitimacy?

Jamil Hussein is one source cited by name in more than five dozen AP stories, and used anonymously an unknown number of times as an AP source since 2004 to provide information on stories well outside of his jurisdiction as a police officer. You wouldn't cite a Brooklyn cop on stories occurring in Queens or Harlem, any yet, that is precisely what the Associated Press did, time after time after time as the used Jamil Hussein. I checked 40 of the 61 AP stories where Jamil Hussein was cited as a source, and have been able to convincingly verify just one, the death of a Defense Ministry Public Affairs employee, and that only through research done by a native Arab-speaker in the Arab press.

The Associated Press may have very good reasons for failing to account for the varied storylines they've presented, for attempting to shift the blame from themselves to the Iraqi Government, the American military, and various bloggers, but the fact remains that they've had more than six weeks to provide these very good reasons, and the only defense they 've offered so far is to repeatedly attack their critics, and claim they stand behind their reporting, even as they feverishly rewrite it.

Slowly, but surely, the AP’s story and credibility are falling apart.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:52 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 05, 2007

And the Questions Remain the Same

I'd never quite appreciated how amusing the Leftist swarm could be until last night and this morning, where an Associated Press report that Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf had finally, at long last confirmed the existence of Captain Jamil Hussein hit the wires, and liberals around the country (and around the world) conflated Hussein's ability to exist with the veracity of his claims.

The illogical leap this took—to purposefully decide that someone's state of existing is an immediate and overwhelming vindication that everything he claimed was true—is massive in its undertaking, and truly staggering to behold. Rarely have so many been willing to overlook so much in the simple hope of being able to say—or in many cases shriek—"I told you so!"

But the simple fact of the matter is that simply existing does not grant validity to the stories that several someone’s purport to have occurred.

The accuser in the Duke Lacrosse rape case assuredly exists, but it is her multiple stories and the lack of evidence that throws her accounts of what happened on the night of March 13, 2006 into question. She has presented multiple accusations, and multiple versions of her accusations, and yet, nearly the overwhelming majority of people following the case to any degree feel she probably falsified the events she reported. The feel this way because her story kept changing, and while there should have been copious evidence to support her claims, none has thus far been found.

And so it is with the on-going Associated Press scandal that started with the claim of one Iraqi Police Captain by the name of Jamil Hussein on November 24, 2006.

Karl, a guest poster at Protein Wisdom provides an excellent and well-documented summary of the events leading us to this point.

It is a history both intertwined with the existence of Captain Hussein as a long-running Associated Press source, and separate, in that so many of the claims made by this accuser seem to have no basis in fact. As these claims have become problematic, the Associated Press has quietly attempted to write them out of existence without an acknowledgement that these claims were unsupported, without issuing a retraction, or even so much as a correction. In their dogged pursuit of faith-based journalism, they are praying that no one will notice that they have presented a story that reeks of incompetent and biased journalism from bottom to top.

Regardless of Hussein's existence, Kathleen Carroll and the Associated Press have much to account for in their varying, oft-changing accounts of what happened on November 24 in the Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah.

In the span of less than a day, they claimed that Iraqi soldiers allowed the alleged murders of two dozen of their fellow citizens right under their noses, that four mosques were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns, and assault rifles, and then these four mosques were set on fire and blown up, with a total of 24 Sunni civilians burned to death.

How do we know this? Because the Associated Press tells us so in a story published around the world.

Jamil Hussein, and Jamil Hussein alone, 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.

To the best I can determine, not another source made such a claim, and yet the Associated Press felt that this single-source claim was enough to level such an inflammatory charge.

Further down in the same Associated Press account, they run the following accusation, again apparently single-sourced to Jamil Hussein:

In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said.

Has the Associated Press brought forth another witness to buttress this claim? On the contrary; the Associated Press has since backed away from such a claim... and it is not the only one.

In the very same article, the Associated Press cites the following account:

Two workers at Kazamiyah Hospital also confirmed that bodies from the clashes and immolation had been taken to the morgue at their facility.

This is a fascinating "fact," in that Kazamiyah Hospital does not have a morgue, but instead a freezer, as stated by the same Iraqi General that now vouches for Jamil Hussein's existence. Any dead at Kazamiyah Hospital are transported by the police to the Medical Jurisprudence Center at Bab Almadham. Is this general credible, or not? I'll leave that for you to decide.

But even that troublesome and apparently incongruous statement pales in comparison to the next single-sourced claim regurgitated by the Associated Press:

And the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque.

So who is this organization called the Association of Muslim Scholars? The Associated Press cites them as a single source, and yet leaves out this very important detail found in Wikipedia:

The Association of Muslim Scholars... are a group of Sunni Muslim religious leaders in Iraq. The Association is believed to have strong links with Al-Qaeda terrorists.[citation required]

They did not recognize the U.S. appointed government as legitimate and have at times questioned any democratically elected government and democracy itself. They have previously asked for withdrawal of American troops, who they accuse of causing the deaths of over 30 000 Iraqis since the war began. They publicly support Al-Qaeda and support the car bombs and the sectarian violence.

Do you think that having such strong alleged tied to al Qaeda might warrant a mention by the Associated Press, if for no other reason than to establish that they might be providing a potentially biased account? If you though so, you obviously disagreed with the Associated Press.

But the apparent affection between al Qaeda and the AP's single-sourced statement is far from being the only item of note in this paragraph; indeed, they make the very specific claim that "18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque."

In another version of this story, the Associated Press claims specifically that the Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa mosques were attacked "with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and automatic rifles," before being burned. There is zero evidence that any of the mosques were assaulted in such a manner, and only the Nidaa Allah suffered minor fire damage from a molotov cocktail easily extinguished by an Iraqi fire company.

Military units in the area late claimed the al-Muhaimin mosque was never attacked at all. Within days, the 18 people that "died in an inferno" quietly left AP's narrative, never to be seen again, as did the allegations of attacks on all the mosques but Nidaa Allah, which suffered only minor fire damage. To this day, neither Jamil Hussein nor the Associated Press has told us which mosque the “burning six” were pulled from, a relevant fact that again, somehow slipped away from the AP, unnoticed.

And so we now find ourselves in a curious position, where AP claims to still stand behind their reporting on one hand, while on the other, dropping the number of alleged fatalities from 24 to six, and the numbers of mosques burned and blown up from four to one.

The Associated Press has not even begun to account for how their story has shifty almost completely from one account, into another story entirely.

They claim to still stand behind their reporting... but which reporting would that be?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:23 PM | Comments (56) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Libs on Jamil

The overwhelming majority of liberal bloggers were dead silent from late November throughout the month of December, and into January in regards to the Jamil Hussein affair, with the rare exception of those who feverishly insisted upon misconstruing what conservative bloggers were attempting to discover about Husseins' dubious track record, and those who hoped these same bloggers would go to Baghdad unescorted and get gunned down.

Now that the Associated Press has come forth with an admission from the Iraqi Interior Ministry that Hussein does exist, and precisely where AP said he was, many of these same bloggers that refused to comment on the situation before are now bravely attacking those who questioned the AP and accepted to competency of the MOI to be able to read a list.

My favorite emerging narative from the left on this are the sudden woeful claims of concern: "What happens to Jamil Hussein now that you've exposed him? He's going to be arrested, tortured, and killed, and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!"

Get a grip.

The Associated Press "exposed" Jamil Hussein 61 times between April and November using him as a named police source in articles published around the world. It was the Associated Press that provided Husseins' full name, and the Associated Press that named his past and present duty stations. Blaming anyone other than Jamil Hussein himself (he did, after all, decide to go on the record to begin with) and the AP for "exposing" him is especially dim, yet perfectly predictable leftist rhetoric.

As for the sudden liberal concern for this one Iraqi police officer, I find it laughable.

This sudden compassion for Jamil Hussein's is coming from the very liberals that so desperately want us to withdrawal immediately and precipitiously from Iraq, further endangering not one, but 26 million people. This same sudden concern for Jamil Hussein's well-being is coming from the same people opposed to a surge that we hope may help slow or halt the the daily sectarian and terrorist attrocities occurring across Iraq. These same people who now suddenly care so much about the life of a single police captain whine almost daily about the cost of the war, never caring that cost includes the price of arms, ammunition, training. body armor, and other equipment for these same policemen.

Bloody Joseph Stalin is credited with saying, "One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic." Based upon today's faux outrage from those who wail for one man out of one side of their mouths, and the abandonment of the entire nation of Iraq on the other, it becomes painfully obvious that the radical left wing apple never falls very far from that same rotten tree.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:30 AM | Comments (131) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 CY, are you sure it isn't this guy they arrested?

http://lawhawk.blogspot.com/2006/12/jamil-hussein-saga-continues_21.html

Posted by: Ali at January 05, 2007 08:21 AM (hDlfX)

2 Sure they didn't arrest this guy?

http://lawhawk.blogspot.com/2006/12/jamil-hussein-saga-continues_21.html

Posted by: Ali at January 05, 2007 08:22 AM (hDlfX)

3 Not sure if everyone has seen these videos of the US military in Iraq or not, but they are pretty amazing: Hopefully our 'surge' will not include too many of these types...
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2006/12/winning-hearts-and-minds-part-three.html

Posted by: MinorRipper at January 05, 2007 08:31 AM (NeFIG)

4 My advice to you is to start drinking cough syrup heavily.

Posted by: zudz at January 05, 2007 08:59 AM (JZnKv)

5 I dunno, zuds. It doesn't seem to produce a pleasant outcome when you guys do it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at January 05, 2007 09:16 AM (g5Nba)

6 Bloody Joseph Stalin is credited with saying, "One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic." Based upon today's faux outrage from those who wail for one man out of one side of their mouths, and the abandonment of the entire nation of Iraq on the other, it becomes painfully obvious that the radical left wing apple never falls very far from that same rotten tree.

Yep. That's called "hitting the nail squarely on the head."

Posted by: Tully at January 05, 2007 10:03 AM (kEQ90)

7 You're just mad because you and your cokehead alcoholic President are out of favor.

Posted by: jules at January 05, 2007 10:30 AM (CfyWy)

8 we want withdrawal because our own people's lives are not worth it... we are clearly not making things better - why lose more Americans? why do you hate our own people so much you want more of them to die over there? liberals seem to be the only ones speaking out about this... some consternatives believe this way, too, but politics doesn't allow them to speak up..

PS - a self-avowed and proud liberal, I've never heard about this Jamil person...

Posted by: Pete Bogs at January 05, 2007 10:49 AM (5p0p6)

9 C'mon, did you really believe the guy didn't exist? Did you really believe the entire MSM is in some sort of conspiracy to make it look like Iraq is not going well? This poor guy, Jamil Hussein, is going to be put in jail (hopefully not tortured or killed) and have his life ruined because some right-wing bloggers, lacking the courage to fight in the war they claim to believe in, would rather sit home and attack anyone who dares print the truth.

Posted by: steve ex-expat at January 05, 2007 10:52 AM (rJLFg)

10 If the guy's body is found on a Baghdad street one of these days, it will be on your head, you malevolent idiots.

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at January 05, 2007 10:55 AM (lY4Sr)

11 AP and Jamil Hussein himself created this scenario, not the blogosphere.

Posted by: hmm at January 05, 2007 11:07 AM (QK5mq)

12 hmm,

That's really rich! Now it is AP and Hussein's fault that MalKKKin and her evil ilk unleashed their venomous witchhunt. If you, chickenhawks, did not always try to fit the facts around your demented fiction, this would not have happened.

Don't try to wriggle of your responsibilities -- although that is a habit that all the rightnutters have.

If the guy is thrown in jail, tortured, or killed, it will be your fault. Given the hell that is Iraq, it is actually more than likely that Captain Hussein's days are numbered. Rest assured that you will never hear the end of it.

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at January 05, 2007 11:14 AM (lY4Sr)

13 Its right for me, kill the guy and be done with it
Thats what I says about it



Evan

Posted by: young warrior at January 05, 2007 11:25 AM (v1hiI)

14 You let your partisan longings lead you down the primrose path. Now you're busted. Instead of having any sort of dignity you write screeds about how the left is awful/incompetent/hypocritical/etc.

Sorry, bud. The story in this is not the left's response to this faux scandal. You and your cabal own this, were humiliated by it and grow more laughable everyday you refuse to take any responsibility.

Just ask yourself: if the AP had spent two or so months trying to discredit a conservative blogger (all in the screechingest, most high-minded of tones) only for that blogger to present cold hard evidence disproving those claims, how would you expect them to act? (This is the point where you cling to some vague argument that AP is making this up, or that this latest is just an assertion; when you do that we can tell that you are embarrassed even if you won't admit it)

Given that it is a requisite to have no shame as a rightwing blogger, I can imagine that you'd expect them to apologize and admit their mistake. That action, of course, is beneath you and yours when the tables are turned.

Pathetic.

Posted by: Jacob M at January 05, 2007 11:26 AM (PrpvM)

15 Excellent follow-through, Bob. I excerpted and linked at Jamil identified, facing arrest? -- Day 2 (CENTCOM says AP's "Iraqi police source" isn't Iraqi police -- Part 30)

Posted by: Bill Faith at January 05, 2007 11:33 AM (n7SaI)

16 i'm liberal blogger who hasn't written at any time about the so-called jamail hussein affair, in november, december or january (and i still haven't yet). the reason why is because, right from the start, the whole faux controversy could only be explained as madness. the whole thing aways was and still is incredibly ironic. i mean, the idea that a bunch of bloggers sitting in a room in the u.s. could accurately fact-check what was going on thousands of miles away as reported by people who were there is simply absurd. there are a ton of reasons why an iraqi source would not want to step forward and be indentified publicly as an informant to foreign news sources, and they were all obvious from the beginning.

the reason so few liberals wrote about it from the start is because it never made any sense. anyone who wasn't desperately searching for a way to gloss over the problems in iraq could see that from the very beginning. for me, the right's obsession with the story was an ongoing amusing side-show. one that i would occasionally take a peek at and laugh at how stupid the other side could be.

i still think it's a non-story. but the inability of the bloggers who have committed so much to this matter to just admit they were wrong and move on, promises to be another continuing source of amusement. keep it up!

Posted by: upyernoz at January 05, 2007 11:34 AM (CVdJ+)

17 I don't necessarily subscribe to the heated rhetoric above, but it does appear that the controversy driven by the right about his existence is ultimately resulting in his arrest. Yes, he took that chance by being quoted repeatedly in AP stories, but he wasn't arrested following those repeated quotes, only after someone loudly proclaimed he wasn't real and got the Iraqi Interior Ministry and U.S. military involved in resolving the question.

Let me put it this way. There's a large universe of people serving as sources for stories in Iraq. There's another pretty sizeable universe of Iraqis receiving special attention of some kind from the Interior Ministry or Iraqi police. Those two sets of people don't overlap that much, most likely. The Interior Ministry doesn't concern itself with sources for newspaper stories very often. The fact that they have in this case is a fairly direct result of your investigation.

You can't really claim no responsibility here.

Posted by: William Swann at January 05, 2007 11:39 AM (SN1xT)

18 They are like little children...aren't they.

I smelled a rat when EJ offered Michelle that trip and boy, are those rats coming out of the woodwork now.

Eason Jordan, by the way...has just written a weasel worded "we ALL can learn from this" article, that almost COMPLETELY avoids talking about the seminal point. It still (more than ever) looks like the work of a shill in a three card monte game.

(It goes like this: "Boy, AP...you really, really are bad for not telling us where to find Jamil [sotto voce: and...um about the underlying stories that may or may not be true, we should believe you, of course and we want to] so you better tell us if he exists sooner next time!)

Now, EJ is saying...AP you were very naughty in not bringing him forward and he was naughty for not stepping forward and the MILITARY was naughty because they knew or should have known of his existence...now it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that everything will be set right...but, you have to answer these creampuff questions:

1)Why didn't you bring him forward sooner?
("Because, my stars and little garters, it would have put him in mortal danger")

2)Why didn't you work with CENTCOM to identify him?
("because we feared he would be arrested, tortured, killed and made to watch 400 straight hours of Keith Olbermann, not necessarily in that order")

3)Why were you so defensive, secretive and dismissive instead of being forthcoming and
open?
(we are members of the Ministry of Media, you get the "truthyness" we deem valuable...we are protected by the leftist nutjobs and we can frame the issues any way we want, create any strawmen we want and you'll like it...because...it's not YOUR information stream, it's OURS)


Of course, nobody in the lemming loony bin wants to look at the elephant in middle of the room. For over a month, Michelle, Bob, Charles, Glenn have all been asking..."If Jamil exists, is he this guy Gulaim? WHAT ABOUT HIS DETAILS IN THE STORIES THAT DON'T EXIST????"

EJ apparently is quite eager to gloss over this point...because after all...it's the ONLY point that ever existed in the three card monte game.

Get this point straight, so you don't miss it again. Jamil's existence is secondary to whether the STORIES he "sourced" existed. The burning mosques. The immolated bodies. All 61 stories...are they Jason Blair redux? Where's the proof for any of them? Especially the one that started this inquiry.

The leftists don't "get" this point, because it causes them cognitive dissonance. (and a massive migraine) "Why are you asking whether the stories are true...the MORAL is true. That's enough for us, it should be enough for you".

If I wanted fables and fairy tales...I would get them from children's books...not from adolescent screeds.

"Iraq is a dangerous place". No shia, Sherlock. But it does NOT give the Ministry of Media the right to rape our information stream with photoshopped photographs, staged scenes with Green Helmet guy as choreographer, NOR PHONY STORIES ABOUT 6 INNOCENT PEOPLE BEING DRAGGED INTO THE STREETS AND DOUSED WITH KEROSENE.

The cognitive dissonance with lemmings and parrots as they are in full choir now...is that the TRUTH DOESN'T MATTER to them. We only deserve "truthyness" or caricatures of truth.

"Why all this fuss over whether the story was completely fabricated, it reflects what we want you to believe, so why don't you simply just believe it the way we do?" Now, quit thinking for yourselves, here's your hymnal and here's the playbook...go back and rote memorize it so you can mindlessly puke it back when we call upon you to do so, just like we do"

Let me give it to them in a way they can understand: The STORIES were fabricated. The SOURCE was unworthy and unreliable. The EVENTS in the reports didn't exist. How they came into existence as phony reports, is secondary to the issue of WHY WOULD I EVER FIND THIS ACCEPTABLE?

YOU may not care that the information stream is being raped, but some of us still do. YOU don't care, because it's in line with your leftist view of the world. Some of us care, because YOU don't own the truth. I want my information to be based on actual facts, whatever they are. THEN, and ONLY THEN...will I make up my mind.

I believed from the instant that EJ made his offer to Michelle...that somebody was going to "be Jamil". I smelled a rat, but, I STILL don't believe the underlying stories attributed to him, whoever he is. I believe they are false, phony, exaggerated, perhaps wholly untrue and unworthy of belief. And therefore, the SYSTEM is corrupted, and these phony stories are further proof.

You can shout and scream and form into the Bulge and Spittle Corp and read from your playbook and sing from your hymnal...and it won't change a thing. Our information stream is being raped. And you don't give a damn. Timeshare Americans. COW's. World Populists. You have no shame. You have no honor. You have no principles. But you do have your Kool-Aid.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 11:47 AM (V56h2)

19 Young warrior,

Since you are so full of bloodlust, why don't you enlist and go to Iraq? You could be part of the "surge" that your Decider is decidering.

Or are you just another chickenhawk?

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at January 05, 2007 11:53 AM (lY4Sr)

20 Cfbleacher,

You assert that "the STORIES" were fabricated; that "the SOURCE was unworthy and unreliable"; and that "the EVENTS in the report did not exist".

Would you care to PROVE your assertions? Please provide links to verifiable and impartial sources. Malkin, and the rest of the rabid right-wing nutjobs do not qualify as sources. Thank you.

By the way, your psychiatrist really needs to increase the dosage of you anti-psychotic medication.

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at January 05, 2007 12:04 PM (lY4Sr)

21 Being a radical, Islamofacistcommieloving sort of guy (in other words - not a wingnut), I love this stuff... I recall some rather well-known bloggers from the left weighing in on this topic (I'm sure if you used 'teh google' you would find the same), but, as usual, reality based thinking has no place in CY land. And, by the way, this does not relieve MalKKKin of her duty to roam the beautiful streets of Bagdad on her own to prove what a wonderful gift we have given the savages.

Posted by: smike at January 05, 2007 12:08 PM (DWC/t)

22 Sorry, but there won't be any turning this back on liberal bloggers. This is your bag. Deal with it.

Posted by: Xanthippas at January 05, 2007 12:08 PM (GwDrh)

23 So liberal concern for this one policeman is laughable, hey?

How about the utter lack of concern from the right-wing authoritarians for the 3,006 dead U.S. soldiers and their families, and the 20,000+ wounded and/or maimed? How about your advocating sending more troops to be IED fodder? That, I find despicable and repugnant. I would say that the dead and maimed soldiers are on your conscience, if you had a conscience. Clearly, your ilk has no moral compass. You are noxious lower forms of life.

U.S. soldiers are in the middle of a civil war in Iraq, with both sides aiming at them. Get that into your thick skull.

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at January 05, 2007 12:14 PM (lY4Sr)

24 Satan's spawn

You apparently don't get how this works, so let me slip in some reality into your world.

We don't need to "prove" that a phony story is phony. The Ministry of Media has a de facto duty to not feed us lies. It's up to them to source the stories properly, to not photoshop photos, to not stage events with Green Helmet guy, to not Jason Blair events. (all PROVEN faux news, from your beloved left wing propaganda farm)

I don't visit any mental health counselor, I don't need one. But if you would like to give us the name of yours, we can make note of it when you start frothing at the mouth again.

I'm a centrist, but I really, really, really hate the leftists. And the reaction to this phony "news" story...is precisely why. You all have not an ounce of integrity.

Now, back in your cage, Polly. Here's a cracker.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 12:18 PM (V56h2)

25 "And, by the way, this does not relieve MalKKKin of her duty to roam the beautiful streets of Baghdad on her own to prove what a wonderful gift we have given the savages".

You don't really believe that the cowardly skank will actually go to Baghdad, do you?

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at January 05, 2007 12:19 PM (lY4Sr)

26 Cfbleachers,

Wrong, psycho. You assert that this was all a fabrication. You prove it.

Now go back to the psychiatric ward before the orderlies catch you roaming the hallways with your pants off. There, that's a good boy.

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at January 05, 2007 12:24 PM (lY4Sr)

27 Satan's spawn

How about a friendly wager? I will bet $1000 that there were NOT four mosques burned to the ground, as listed in that story.

Care to put up anything other than leftist pap?

Like I said...there are leftists, there is integrity (truth, honor and courage)...and never the twain shall meet.

Don't you have choir practice soon?

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 12:29 PM (V56h2)

28 One of my guestbloggers has posted a very nicely sourced summary of this whole affair. Keep in mind, the only post I wrote on this subject was about the 61 other stories this guy was sourced for (that he may or may not have existed is, as cfbleachers notes above, was immaterial).

The squawking here from DA and others is risible -- out in full force once they think they've uncovered a gotcha moment, filled with phony outrage and claims of mass rightwing delusions.

The guy who posted the above link added additional thoughts in the comments that are worth repeating here:[...] Prior to the discovery of the Captain (by the Iraqis, who will get no credit for admitting their mistake), what little Lefty take there has been on this story has been of the “fake, but accurate” strain. Put another way, “Who cares about this particular story, when Baghdad is clearly a total hellhole?” And it was portrayed as part of a wingnut worldview that simply wants to blame the MSM messengers for the current state of Iraq. There has been little notice, afaik, of the fact that there is significant tension between those two asertions. That is, no one on the Left seems to have bothered to ask why this particular story was the one that set off alarm bells with media skeptics. No doubt some of the Left uncritically bought into the AP’s insinuation that this was part of some secret campaign against the press-—but that still doesn’t answer the question of why this story became a target. And I would suggest, as I did above, that this story set off alarm bells with bloggers for the same reasons it got skeptical looks from the NYT, the WaPo and Eason Jordan, which have much more to do with journalistic standards and practices than with a secret, military-blogospherical complex.In the post I link above, the outside sources for skepticism over some of Hussein's previous claims are to be found in such rightwing organs as the NYT and the WaPo.

Other sources throwing Hussein's claims into doubt include two local imams, some neighborhood residents, and the AP itself -- clearly part of the VRWC.

So continue shouting and hoping that your rhetorical prestidigitation will force us to lose site of the long view. But the fact remains, you shrieking opportunists wouldn't be here in the comments yelping were it not for the fact that you believe you can shout out the kernel by loudly chewing on the husk.

Posted by: Jeff G at January 05, 2007 12:53 PM (U/QYV)

29 Site = sight.

See also, Armed Liberal.

Posted by: Jeff G at January 05, 2007 12:56 PM (U/QYV)

30 Advo,

What a lot of hooey. Just like usual. The story that the AP wrote was already proven to be false. Nobody else said 6 people were immolated. Did Reuters? Did CNN? Did any of your other favorites? AP had to eat their own words when they said 4 mosques had been burned down.

What you don't seem to realize, or are just to obstinate to understand, is that the center of this whole story was not Jamil Hussein. It was the story of the 4 mosques being burned, of 26 people dying inside one of them, and 6 people being dragged into the street and immolated after being doused with Kerosene. The AP reported on all of that using Jamil Hussein. It turned out that Jamil didn't work in the original station he was supposed to. Most bloggers just wanted AP to produce him. Now he has been and we can get some answers as to how a guy working in (figuratively) the Bronx knew the details of everything happening in Queens, Manhattan, and Albany.

Get a grip. If several news agencies had not already been caught giving out false information, this may not have blown up the way it did. But AP has restored some credibility by producing Hussein (and who knows why they didn't earlier). Now let's take the next step and get to the bottom of it before your BDS takes over completely.

Posted by: Specter at January 05, 2007 01:04 PM (ybfXM)

31 Bob,

I'm wondering if the name Jamil Hussein in Iraq is like Bob Smith here. How hard would it be to find a Jamil Hussein in Iraq — any Jamil Hussein — when I just found one each in Buena Park, CA, Fairview, NJ, and Allentown, PA, using online White Pages. AP's long delay in responding to this is suspicious, to say the least. Their indignation that anyone would doubt them is comical after their performance in the past five years.

Posted by: Jon Ham at January 05, 2007 01:08 PM (Op3RY)

32 And I would suggest, as I did above, that this story set off alarm bells with bloggers for the same reasons it got skeptical looks from the NYT, the WaPo and Eason Jordan, which have much more to do with journalistic standards and practices than with a secret, military-blogospherical complex. The reason this story set off alarm bells is quite obvious: because of CENTCOM's false assertions that Jamil Hussein didn't exist.
I'm not saying that Jamil Hussein's reports are 100% true (although the question of "burnt mosques" has probably to do with the translation: "set on fire" and "burnt to the ground" are different things, but could be phrased in Arabic identically), but one fact is 100% indisputable: CENTCOM was pushing lies. There's no running away from this.

Posted by: Nikolay at January 05, 2007 01:26 PM (m8XvX)

33 Since you are so full of bloodlust, why don't you enlist and go to Iraq? You could be part of the "surge" that your Decider is decidering.

Or are you just another chickenhawk?

If that would give him "moral authority" where does your sitting here leave you in terms of moral authority?

Posted by: Purple Avenger at January 05, 2007 01:35 PM (clafO)

34 This sudden compassion for Jamil Hussein's is coming from the very liberals that so desperately want us to withdrawal immediately and precipitiously from Iraq

"Us"?

Surely you meant the "U.S." because your ass hasn't been seen limping around Iraq and in need of withdrawal.

"Us" is reserved for soldiers, not clowns.

Posted by: tbogg at January 05, 2007 01:41 PM (d7Sqx)

35 "...that was the real point of the Jamil Hussein rants -- to call into question media reporting generally on Iraq, in order, in turn, to suggest that things are not actually going badly there. Or, as Reynolds put it just recently: 'What if we are winning'?"

Incorrect. The point in bringing this up and harping on it like a Durham-District-Attorney-going-after-a-highly-questionable-rape-case-in-light-of-any-evidence-to-the-contrary-just-to-win-a-re-election is to point out that the press needs to better research its stories.

Who is more responsible: those who exaggerate stories or the ones that point out the exaggerations?

Stop trying to shoot the messenger, DA.

Posted by: Bard at January 05, 2007 01:52 PM (6pO0v)

36 Why arent you guys latching on like pit bulls to the story of Americans dressed as Arabs caught with a car full of explosives, they were detained by IRaqi police until US soldiers got there and forced them to release the American terrorists? Or investigating why british special ops guys who also were busted with a car full of explosives? And when they were held in jail a british tank drove over the jail to free them? Why aren't you questioning the veracity of Saddam Hussein being found in a "spider hole" a day before any US forces were even in the region? How about why Saddam Hussein had to be hanged so quickly? Why wasn't he tried in an international court? How about questioning the veracity of Rick Santoram who was running raound before the election shouting to anyone who would listen that we found WMDs in Iraq? HOW ABOUT QUESTIONING THE VERACITY OF PEOPLE LIKE CHALABI AND AL LIBBY AND THEN POWELL AND KRISTOL AND WOLFOWITZ AND PEARLE AND CHENEY AND RICE AND NEGROPONTE AND FINALLY BUSH! I mean really, if you're looking for lies you don't have to go all the way to IRaq!

Posted by: Libby McLiberal at January 05, 2007 02:01 PM (/4nPP)

37 I find it funny that Democrats are once again trying to use one fact to hide another. Jamil Hussein LIED, he exaggerated stories, at the very least he passed on UNCONFIRMED REPORTS.

Jamil Hussein is under arrest not because he talked to the Press, but because he LIED to the press. When both the Iraqi and US Governments say there are serious questions as to his reports, when Al Arabyia PULLS THE STORY because it DIDN'T HAPPEN AS TOLD, you must sit back and realize the truth.

Or you can harp on about how Jamil Hussein really exists and keep screaming as loud as you can about it until all the idiots forget why everyone wanted to find him in the first place.

One option is honest, the other is liberal.

Posted by: Naieve at January 05, 2007 02:03 PM (+PWjE)

38 DA,

What is it that you don't get - AP should have more than one source and verify that sources veracity.

Posted by: hmm at January 05, 2007 02:09 PM (QK5mq)

39 Libby, why don't we also begin tearing into Sandy Burger about top secret documents he stole THEN HID?

Do you know why? Because they aren't members of the press. This is about members of the press either not corroborating stories from their sources, or hoping we (the American people) are too lazy and/or stupid to check up on them.

The topic here is the trustworthiness of the press, let's try not to derail, eh?

Posted by: Bard at January 05, 2007 02:18 PM (6pO0v)

40 Now that you've "exposed" AP, what about doing the same with Fox "News", Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, John Gibson, Bill Kristol, Washington Times, etc.? After all, you folks detest manufactured news and facts, don't you?

BTW, why aren't you in Iraq or Afghanistan, helping your dear leader win the war......? Okay, I get it.........Chickenhawk are we, aren't we?

Posted by: Fox "News" at January 05, 2007 02:40 PM (eTxeL)

41 Jamil Hussein is under arrest not because he talked to the Press, but because he LIED to the press. When both the Iraqi and US Governments say there are serious questions as to his reportsBoth Iraqi and US Governments LIED about Jamil Hussein (i.e. said he doesn't exist), so I guess you have to take their other claims in this story with a grain of salt.

Posted by: Nikolay at January 05, 2007 03:13 PM (RfRKC)

42 Jamil Hussein is under arrest not because he talked to the Press, but because he LIED to the press. When both the Iraqi and US Governments say there are serious questions as to his reportsBoth Iraqi and US Governments LIED about Jamil Hussein (i.e. said he doesn't exist), so I guess you have to take their other claims in this story with a grain of salt.

Posted by: Nikolay at January 05, 2007 03:15 PM (RfRKC)

43 1. The right-wing blogosphere invents a controversy over one AP story out of thousands of reports in a desperate attempt to find proof that Iraq is in fact a happy land of candy and flower-tossing contests, but the liberal terrorist-loving media paints it otherwise in order aid the jihad against the United States and Baby Jesus.

2. The source of the article who ratted out the shiites who burned and shot sunnis at the mosque would've likely remained unnoticed, but is now known to every man, women, child, and shiite terrorist in Iraq.

3. The right-wing blogosphere, after being proven wrong again, simply shrugs and moves on to the next invented controversy in order to whip themselves into another orgasmic outrage.

You guys just don't get it. The lies you tell yourselves are so precious, I know. They are the only thing holding together your fantasy world that is crashing down around you. But just this once admit you were wrong. Just this once. The healing of your mind cannot begin until you admit that you're wrong.

Posted by: Ian at January 05, 2007 03:17 PM (Fc1wu)

44 Would someone other than a barking moonbat please answer some questions for me? I'm not used to so many trolls in one place and this flurry of mass hysteria is so uncommon for this place from my brief experience, I need a primer on how they think, how not to feed them, what makes them tick. (tic?)

1)Do they truly not understand that the issue regarding our information stream needing to be truthful and accurate is the whole point, are they so dense that they don't get it, or is there something more nefarious going on?

2)Do they always revert to the same childish themes of "now he's going to die and you are responsible", "nyah, nyah Fox News does it too", "Bush lied, people died"...or is it unique to this particular case of media distortion that suspends them in arrested adolescence?

3)Do they really buy into the "Jamil exists, therefore all his lies are now truthy" defense, or are they simply so wrapped up in the frat boy "our side is better than your side" pillow fight, that they just wind up sounding like little girls at a sleepover?

4)Why is it they were so quiet, had virtually nothing to say about Green Helmet Guy, the photoshopped photos, and this matter for months....even now they have not even the slightest inclination to talk about the four mosques blown to pieces...um one, sort of, maybe, the six immolated Sunni's, well not really, at all, any...all they want to do is say over and over and over again "You're President"..."You're war"...what the hell does that have to do with OUR information stream being bastardized? And what country are they rooting for? Certainly not America.

Please, explain these people to me. Who are they and why are they like this? Does anyone have a diagnosis?

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 03:26 PM (V56h2)

45 Quite frankly, I'm surprised that there's only one Jamil Hussein in the Iraqi police force. That's like a guy named John Smith. Seriously, that's got to be second to, I dunno, Mohammed Mohammed in the list of most common Iraqi names. I had assumed all along that it was a pseudonym, which made the right-wing search for the "real" Jamil even more comical.

Still, though. You guys said he didn't exist and this became cornerstone #342432843284392 for the mighty Liberal Media Hates America building for how many months? Admittedly, it's even worse than changing gray smoke to black smoke. But when it turns out that you guys were absolutely 180 degrees wrong on the question of whether Jamil Hussein exists, and you don't even skip a beat in declaring that his existence makes your case even stronger... Alice in Wonderland comes to mind.

Posted by: scarshapedstar at January 05, 2007 03:28 PM (glUhi)

46 I find it funny that Democrats are once again trying to use one fact to hide another. Jamil Hussein LIED, he exaggerated stories, at the very least he passed on UNCONFIRMED REPORTS.

hmmm.... speaking of UNCONFIRMED REPORTS.... where are the WMDs ?

Posted by: I Am The Bomb at January 05, 2007 03:30 PM (+dx2l)

47 Let's see, shorter confused Yankee.

"We drummed up all kinds of outrage over this non story, but the liberal bloggers treated it as a non story.

And now that it's been shown our outrage was, to say the least, incredibly silly, now you hear those liberal bloggers pointing out how silly we are!"

Well, it's because you created the story. The story is no longer about some source for stories in Iraq, that story never had any legs to anyone other than those like you with "the courage to believe".

It seems the only story left is "Look at those idiots, wouldn't you think they'd have the common sense to shut up about it now?"

Which is in itself a stupid question. Of course they don't.

Posted by: Davebo at January 05, 2007 03:41 PM (vdjgh)

48 Dear Bard,

The thread seems to be about right-wing bloggers driving themselves to ragegasm for the past twi months demanding that everyone acknoweldge that news from Mall Brat MalKKKin is more reliable than news from the AP.

Yet again, facts seems to have a liberal bias. Tragically, this time you clueless gits have brought focus to a man who has been arrested and given conditions in Iraq, may possibly wind up dead in a ditch.

Do any of you have any shame ever?
As with this entire disaster you and your Deciderer-in-Chief created, you just walk away from any responsibility or self-evauation and move on to the next disaster waiting to happen.

Posted by: Joe in SF at January 05, 2007 03:45 PM (us9O5)

49 Why aren't you enlisted and in Iraq, instead of sitting in your parents basement dispensing this drivel?

Name a single thing you, or the administration, has been right about with regards to Iraq?

I hear crickets....

Posted by: Neil at January 05, 2007 03:53 PM (asNGL)

50 "Now that you've "exposed" AP, what about doing the same with Fox "News", Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, John Gibson, Bill Kristol, Washington Times, etc.? After all, you folks detest manufactured news and facts, don't you?"

Are you kidding me? We're still working on Dan Rather. (here's two freebies to google search: "The Wall Within" and "Rathergate"). See? I can play that game all day long too. Again, let's stick to THIS topic about the AP and their questionable source.

Posted by: Bard at January 05, 2007 04:00 PM (6pO0v)

51 "..let's stick to THIS topic about the AP and their questionable source."

You mean you guys aren't done embarrassing yourselves yet?

Posted by: Frederick at January 05, 2007 04:07 PM (jSBbA)

52 Green Helmet Guy STAGING false news.

Photoshopped pictures STAGING false news.

Four mosques DETAILED as having been obliterated...false news.

Six Sunni's taken out into the street and doused with kerosene and burned and taken to a morgue, uh...no, taken to the cemetery, yeah that's the ticket....false news.

But hey, we DID find ONE of the guys we quoted with our fake news stories! Yay!

The rest are anonymous or have yet to be found. This particular liar was on our payroll...so, as we tour the mosque sites that were obliterated...um...don't look over here, um..don't look over there...um...don't look at the third one....um...HEY JACOB THE LIAR...UM I mean, Jamil EXISTS...that concludes our tour of Moonbat Media Mania.

Jamil Lives! The story dies. All is well is the Orwellian land of the lemmings.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 04:17 PM (V56h2)

53 Green Helmet Guy STAGING false news.

Photoshopped pictures STAGING false news.

Four mosques DETAILED as having been obliterated...false news.

John Kerry "snubbed by the troops"... false news.

And the self-correcting blogosphere timer starts ticking once more... I won't be holding my breath, though.

Posted by: scarshapedstar at January 05, 2007 04:26 PM (glUhi)

54 The bleeding heart in me almost feels sorry for you wingnuts. Truly. I snap out of it pretty quickly though, but you guys really don't have anything anymore. Neocon dream shattered into a million pieces. Fearmongering doesn't even work anymore. And you're left with pathetic stories about pics of John Kerry, and a "scoop" about an Iraqi policeman. But even these turn into another colossal embarrassment. Ouch.

But do enjoy your time in the wilderness, I think it will be a long walk, so bring a compass. It will be a good thing for a long walkabout, helps to clear the head.

Posted by: naked lunch at January 05, 2007 04:39 PM (TPrgD)

55 I think it will be a long walk

I got $100 says the republicans regain at least one house of congress within 4 years.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at January 05, 2007 04:41 PM (clafO)

56 I was gonna come in here and troll, but I see it's being handled by professionals that are far more well informed than I am.

Nevertheless, as ill-informed as I am, I'm still light-years ahead of CY and Malkin on this sad, sad story.

Hope you're proud of yourself.

Posted by: Jody at January 05, 2007 04:43 PM (ISz5u)

57 Four mosques DETAILED as having been obliterated...false news.
The quote was: "In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said."
This doesn't necessary mean "obliterated". This could well mean "set on fire". Lost in translation. A "fog of war" to some degree, but nothing malicious.

Posted by: Nikolay at January 05, 2007 04:47 PM (m8XvX)

58 cfbleachers,

Ok, I get it now.

Major syllogism: We don't like the news we here out of Iraq.

Minor syllogism: Several [out of thousands] of those stories turned out to be false or exaggerated.

Conclusion: All news from Iraq that we don't like is false or exaggerated.

Brilliant.

Posted by: berzerklyoid at January 05, 2007 04:47 PM (7o9r+)

59 "1)Do they truly not understand that the issue regarding our information stream needing to be truthful and accurate is the whole point, are they so dense that they don't get it, or is there something more nefarious going on?"

I suspect there's something more nefarious going on, although I mean something different by that than you probably expect.

There are dozens of stories that come out of Iraq every day -- maybe hundreds. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that 30% are inaccurate in the sense of containing some major cited "fact" that isn't true or is muddled in some way.

It wouldn't surprise me if that's the case. There's a lot of noise in a war zone, and stories often rely on what people are saying at a given moment, much of it not very precise, I would imagine.

My question is this. Are you guys looking to "clear up the information stream"? Or are you looking to undermine stories that contradict your world view, while leaving the others alone?

Here's a test case for you. There are reports every day out of Baghdad about the number of people found murdered and/or tortured in various parts of town. Sometimes those numbers are as low as 15-20, sometimes they are as much as 100. There are reports from some quarters that the civilian slaughter has reached epic in proportions, perhaps 100,000 people or more.

There's some kind of reality behind those reports, and it's murky given the dramatic range in the numbers. When was the last time one of your right wing blogs examined a daily report that said 15 people died, and found that ... well, no, it was more like 70 or 80 that day? That must be the case, on at least some days.

Do you ever report anything that even modestly undermines your worldview? That's my question.

If not, you're not "clearing the information stream" so much as tilting it in a certain direction.

I also wonder about your focus on these various specific incidents. It would be far more meaningful to figure out what the real big picture is in Iraq, and there's lots of studies and data points from widely varying sources that could inform that analysis.

It's also more important to figure out what we should do now if our policies aren't working.

I kind of sense that the questions you ask so stridently aren't lined up that nicely with a clear-headed and rational concern for where we are now and what we should do.

Lefty blogs are guilty of the same thing, by the way. They don't often consider with any seriousness what we should do to try to make this policy work.

That's why I find this whole tit-for-tat between left and right uninspiring. Nobody goes outside their well-worn comfort zone in this debate to consider the real (but difficult) questions of consequence.

Posted by: William Swann at January 05, 2007 04:48 PM (SN1xT)

60 Sad beyond words.

Posted by: salvage at January 05, 2007 04:57 PM (jQnuN)

61 william swann summed it up pretty well. sometimes news reports coming out of a war zone cannot be confirmed or later turn out to be inaccurate. that doesn't mean it's not a war zone, or that things, in fact, are honky-dory there. why are you nice people on the right having such a hard time understanding that?

Posted by: upyernoz at January 05, 2007 05:09 PM (CVdJ+)

62 and again I ask, Yankee - why won't you address one simple question?

1. The people ACCUSED of the Mosque burnings in the AP story were Shiite Mahdi Army thugs - and Shiite policeman, who stood idly by and let it happen.

2. The Iraqi Police are run by the Ministry of the Interior - which is completely controlled and run by Muqtada Al Dadr and his Mahdi Army. AKA, the same thugs who attacked the mosques in the first place.

3. When the AP report the story, the Ministry of the Interior, AKA the Mahdi Army, AKA the PRIME SUSPECTS in the crime - deny that the crime happened, or that the witness exists. Centcom repeats these lies.

4. The wingnuts, instead of thinking "geez, maybe the people who perpetrated the crime aren't the most reliable source" gullibly swallows this nonsense, and proceeds to scream loudly that the AP is making it up. This obsession works quite nicely for them - they can ignore Decembers mounting pile of corpses in Baghdad, both US and Iraqi, and instead attack the AP for telling them unpleasant truths they don't want to hear.

5. Again I ask: are you wingnuts so ill-informed that you didn't KNOW that the Ministry of the Interior - your source for all this nonsense - is run by the very people ACCUSED OF THE CRIME?

6. If you DID know that -then why were you so eager to accept the word of Muqtada Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army?


On more piece of impeccable logic:

A. "It's not our fault if he's in danger, the AP put him in danger when they used his name."

B. "The AP can't be trusted because it uses unnamed sources in its stories."

therefore - OK, now I get it - since according to you, the AP shouldn't use named OR unnamed sources for its stories - they should - what - simply stop reporting from Baghdad?

See, it all makes perfect sense here in fantasyland. "Since the media insists on reporting reality from Iraq, and we don't LIKE reality, the media should just stop reporting completely, so we can all be comfortable here in fantasy land. "

Children. You are all such children.

Posted by: Reality based at January 05, 2007 05:13 PM (Bg91R)

63 "Tragically, this time you clueless gits have brought focus to a man who has been arrested and given conditions in Iraq, may possibly wind up dead in a ditch."

Yeah...as a Sunni propaganda"asset," Jamil is burned. He's been pretty quiet since Thanksgiving, anyway.

Cordially...

Posted by: Rick at January 05, 2007 05:19 PM (Ohkx7)

64 Wow, wingnuts... The last half-dozen comments pretty much demolished your little house of cards. There's just nothing left standing! Whew. You guys just got one fantastic ass-whoopin. I hope it leaves a mark.

Posted by: I Am The Bomb at January 05, 2007 05:19 PM (+dx2l)

65 Jamil is burned. He's been pretty quiet since Thanksgiving, anyway.

I suppose if you were an Iraqi and the MOI and the US military suddenly started asking questions about you and your conversations with reporters, that you'd go right on talking. Unlike all those other people in Iraq who attract unwanted Shiite attention and then one morning turn up dead in a ditch with drill holes in their heads, you'd just keep on singing. Wouldn'tcha ?

Posted by: The Walrus at January 05, 2007 05:24 PM (+dx2l)

66 "YOU may not care that the information stream is being raped, but some of us still do. YOU don't care, because it's in line with your leftist view of the world."

Keerist, that is rich. Didn't Rumsfield set up a whole Department of Propaganda to support the War Against Truth? The whole friggen' war was based on lies and through the smoking ruins of a country that, coincidentally, happens to sit on the #2 oil reserves, you folks want to take the high road on the 'rape of the information stream'?

What you guys really want is NO news coming from Iraq...then you'd all be free to paint your rosy little delusions to convince each other of how righteous your support for the war criminals have been. What a bunch of pathetic parrotheads.

Posted by: Innocent Bystander at January 05, 2007 05:29 PM (+JNxq)

67 LOL! Goo-goo-ga-joob! Mr. Baghdad p'liceman sitting pretty little p'licemen in a row!

You obviously are ignoring the import of l'affair Jamil: his multiple mosque/multiple burned-alive story didn't check out. So his silence may be taken to mean that AP is being a bit more careful with him as a source.

Thus, my note that as a possible asset for one of the warring factions--60 some citations in AP stories, w/o attention being paid by the sinister MOI and our babykillers-- he himself is now burnt.

Why our CENTCOM folks would be expected to be up-to-speed on Iraqi intra-mural militia violence is not explained.

Cordially...

Posted by: Rick at January 05, 2007 05:34 PM (Ohkx7)

68 I think what is keeping this such a popular topic in the blogosphere is the lack of play in the regular media and the rabid denials of liberals in the blogosphere. The denials come across almost as if they are shouting "Don't look behind the great and powerful Oz's curtain!"


Frederick said "You mean you guys aren't done embarrassing yourselves yet?"

Granted, I think this is getting more play in the blogosphere than it deserves, but to rail against it like this is to say "they are saying what we agree with, let's ignore if it's right or wrong". Is that really the message you want to convey? Partisanship > All ?


To me, that stance is much more embarrassing.

Posted by: Bard at January 05, 2007 05:37 PM (6pO0v)

69 And the self-correcting blogosphere timer starts ticking once more... I won't be holding my breath, though.

scarshapedstar,

Here's a start: LGF & Hotair.

On behalf of all wingnuts, I wish to apologize to Senator Thurston Howell for believing he's not so popular with the military that they wouldn;t wish to proclaim him Augustus, as surely they voted in naught-four.

Cordially...

Posted by: Rick at January 05, 2007 05:42 PM (Ohkx7)

70 It's not about concern for Jamil Hussein, but about the attempted Swiftboating of the AP and it's sources when the facts ran counter to American right-wing extremists' agenda. When the facts don't suit right-wing extremists in America today, the right-wing extremists attack the messenger, Swift-boat style.

Posted by: Silvio Dante at January 05, 2007 05:42 PM (nkATT)

71 upyernoz raises the only question I have about this wart on a footnote:

CY, do you REALLY read the "overwhelming majority of liberal bloggers?" Do you need help finding work?

Cheers!

Vulf

Posted by: shieldvulf at playful at January 05, 2007 05:55 PM (SlsY6)

72 I hate to stray from a subject, but I hate ignorance being flouted as fact even more. Let's get the whole "WMD" thing straight once and for all.

To begin with, the Iraqis had tons and tons of cholinesterase inhibitors stored in camoflauge bunkers right next to artillery shells designed to accept a liquid payload. Those cholinesterase inhibitors have always been classified as "pesticides" by the ISG and others.

Cholinesterase inhibitors are indeed pesticides. Almost every mix made by a commercial pesticide applicator has some form of cholinesterase inhibitor in it, resulting in the need for cholinesterase blood tests every week when using the stuff. But you know what? Cholinesterase inhibitors are usually organophosphates. And the interesting Organophosphate cholinesterase inhibitors are nerve agents like Sarin, Tabun, Soman, etc.

That's why the antidote to never agents is the same antidote I carried around as a pesticide applicator: Atropine.

There has been an incredible amount of pesticides found in camoflauged bunkers in the middle of vast ammunition dumps in Iraq. They were often found, by pure coincidence, next to artillery shells designed to carry chemical weapons.

They obviously were very concerned about keeping their ammunition dumps insect free. But nope, no WMD.

Let's also ignore that Saddam had 500 tons of uranium with 1.8 tons already enriched to a low level.

Coincidentally enough our troops have also found enriching equipment (various pieces and parts).

Now add to all this the convoys of large trucks leaving Iraq into Syria just prior to the war (would love to know why we didn't bomb those caravans) along with testimony from Saddam's chief scientist and you have all the pieces needed for a gun and bullets, all that's needed is to put them together. But nope, no WMD's there *roll eyes*

But wait! What did the IAEA have to say about this?

http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/nwp2.html

"Weaponisation
Facilities

*Tuwaitha had facilities and infrastructure for all Group Four activities except for the fabrication, handling, and testing of high explosives
*Experimented with high explosives to produce implosive shock waves
*Developed a 32-point electronic firing system using detonators and lenses developed at Al Qa Qa
*Tested firing system
*Tested flash X-ray systems, gas gun systems, fiber optics with fast response electronic equipment, high speed electronic streak cameras towards nuclear weapons
*Produced and recovered polonium by irradiating bismuth

.................

As of 16 December 1998, the following assessment could be made of Iraq's clandestine programme:

Iraq was at, or close to, the threshold of success in such areas as the production of HEU through the EMIS process, the production and pilot cascading of single-cylinder sub-critical gas centrifuge machines, and the fabrication of the explosive package for a nuclear weapon"


To the main point on this, Saddam was to have NONE. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not a single shred of any sort of WMD. But he did and evidence shows he was indeed intending on restarting his program if it ever truly stopped.

Now that you know the truth, can we finally get back to the topic at hand of the AP needing to do a better job of corroborating their sources?

Posted by: Bard at January 05, 2007 06:04 PM (6pO0v)

73 OK - this may come as a shock . . . many liberals may not have said anything about this because there was nothing to say rooted in anything but speculation.

It seemed unlikely that the AP invented a source, but it's not utterly impossible. It seemed weird for the US government and Iraqi government to deny he existed, but it could be explained as either (1) covering their butts or (2) Iraq is pretty chaotic with a weird administration (have you ever done a background check on yourself and realized how much of your data is NOT going to be found?).

That was about all anyone had any information to say. Not that interesting. Now, I understand that y'all don't worry about empirical information in your speculation, but that's one of the reasons you're different from us.

Oh - and why is the Iraqi ministry arresting him exactly? Were all of you concerned over Judith Miller and those leaks to the press? Or is anonymity only valuable to protect conservative politicos who want to attack opponents or spread lies with impunity?

Posted by: MDtoMN at January 05, 2007 06:20 PM (Z3W4h)

74 The quote was: "In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said." This doesn't necessary mean "obliterated". This could well mean "set on fire". Lost in translation. A "fog of war" to some degree, but nothing malicious. Posted by Nikolay at January 5, 2007 04:47 PM

No, no, no, no no. That's the whole point, Nikolay. If there had been "nothing malicious" in the reporting, then AP when confronted with the undamaged mosques and the complete refutation of the immolation story...simply "retracts its story and regrets its error". They didn't do that. They stood by a phony story. Just like Dan Rather. Just like Green Helmet Guy. This is a pattern...not an isolated incident.

Get some "facts" wrong...I have no problem with the "fog of war" alibi. Repeatedly STAGE false news, overstate the case ALWAYS IN THE SAME DIRECTION...and I begin to see a pattern. Fake photos, staged scenes of death, phony rocket-grenade and machine gun attacks, complete lies about dousing with kerosene? Sorry...that is simply NOT a "fog of war" issue. These are specific instances of PHONY news items. It can't be whitewashed.


cfbleachers,

Ok, I get it now.

Major syllogism: We don't like the news we here out of Iraq.


No....you don't get it. If the truth is bad news, I WANT to hear it. If it's good news, I WANT to hear it. If it's mixed good and bad, I WANT to hear. What I don't want to see and hear...are a bunch of lies. Fake photographs. Staged scenes. Passed off as news.

Minor syllogism: Several [out of thousands] of those stories turned out to be false or exaggerated.


I really don't give a damn if it's ONE false story INTENTIONALLY told to mislead me. One little rape by a Kennedy on the lawn, one little secretary driven off a bridge, one little grope by Clinton, one little archive stolen by Berger....you can whittle down the BS all you want...I simply want the truth. The leftists don't own it...and I wish they stopped acting as if they did.

"Conclusion: All news from Iraq that we don't like is false or exaggerated."

What I don't like is lies. You eat them up like they are Boston Cream pie. Sorry, I don't share your appetite for swallowing bullshit.


Posted by berzerklyoid at January 5, 2007 04:47 PM


"1)Do they truly not understand that the issue regarding our information stream needing to be truthful and accurate is the whole point, are they so dense that they don't get it, or is there something more nefarious going on?"

I suspect there's something more nefarious going on, although I mean something different by that than you probably expect.

There are dozens of stories that come out of Iraq every day -- maybe hundreds. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that 30% are inaccurate in the sense of containing some major cited "fact" that isn't true or is muddled in some way.

It wouldn't surprise me if that's the case. There's a lot of noise in a war zone, and stories often rely on what people are saying at a given moment, much of it not very precise, I would imagine.

My question is this. Are you guys looking to "clear up the information stream"? Or are you looking to undermine stories that contradict your world view, while leaving the others alone?



I don't know who "you guys" are...but if you are speaking with me, I want the truth. Whole and unvarnished, please. And, I don't mind a few facts getting fuzzy in the fog of war...but doesn't it at least strike you a BIT strange...that it's ALWAYS the leftist viewpoint that gets "found out"...and then we are back to whitewashing it?

Why no apology? Why no investigation? Why the stonewalling? If it's an innocent error, they got the facts WILDLY wrong...then correct it and move on. That's not what happened. And excuse me if I seem a bit incredulous...but Green Helmet guy is a STAGED event...not a "mistake". The photoshopped BS pictures were INTENDED to give an impression that was FALSE...not mistaken.

Do you really, really, really not see a difference between an intentional falsehood, faking news, staging events...and an innocent mistake? Are you really saying that? I wouldn't think so.


Here's a test case for you. There are reports every day out of Baghdad about the number of people found murdered and/or tortured in various parts of town. Sometimes those numbers are as low as 15-20, sometimes they are as much as 100. There are reports from some quarters that the civilian slaughter has reached epic in proportions, perhaps 100,000 people or more.

There's some kind of reality behind those reports, and it's murky given the dramatic range in the numbers. When was the last time one of your right wing blogs examined a daily report that said 15 people died, and found that ... well, no, it was more like 70 or 80 that day? That must be the case, on at least some days.

Do you ever report anything that even modestly undermines your worldview? That's my question.


This misses the point. I don't know if it's 15 or 50. But if someone reports that 50 bodies had crucifixes shoved into their rectums...and it turned out to be FALSE...that's a difference of more than just degree. Don't you see that?

It's not that there were 10 mosques reported to have been blown to bits...and 8 were found, two were mistaken. It was that four mosques were blown to bits...and NONE were in reality. That six people were doused with kerosene and burned to death while soldiers watched approvingly.

If it's a lie...and it's a LEAD STORY...then it needs to be corrected. The source needs to be interrogated as to how and why it was SO wrong...and it needs to be retracted.

We are talking about matters of substance, not trifling matters of 8 vs 9 Iraqi soldiers were on guard one evening. Do you not see that?

"If not, you're not "clearing the information stream" so much as tilting it in a certain direction."

It's already COMPLETELY tilted...I just want it straightened. EVERY story is about Iraq being a mess. The worldview of ONE side is being overtold already. I'd just settle for that one side at least not being staged and full of lies.

"I also wonder about your focus on these various specific incidents. It would be far more meaningful to figure out what the real big picture is in Iraq, and there's lots of studies and data points from widely varying sources that could inform that analysis."

That misses the point, though, doesn't it. It would NOT be 'far more meaningful' if we could stop STAGED events from being passed off as "news" and "facts". Iraq is a war zone. Fine, we concede. Now, what? Everything else is meaningless? We can be told a pack of lies, we can have our information stream bastardized...because after all...Iraq is a mess. Sorry, not having any. We depend on the media to give us our facts...if they have an agenda,...if they dummy up the facts to be presented to tell us a "story" that is really a crock of shit...I'm not interested.

Leftists wish to say that's ok...look at the bigger picture. But, there isn't an honest man alive who wouldn't swear on his life...that if the STAGED events were coming from the right...that leftists would blow a head gasket.

And they would be right to do so.

"It's also more important to figure out what we should do now if our policies aren't working."

More important than what, exactly? How do we know if our policies are working if the 'facts' we are getting are tainted and not worth believing.

It's precisely this point that makes all the difference. FIRST we need to get the truth, THEN we should make up our minds as to what to do. Leftists want to manipulate the "truthyness" and have us decide based on STAGED events. This is amoral.

"I kind of sense that the questions you ask so stridently aren't lined up that nicely with a clear-headed and rational concern for where we are now and what we should do."

Based on what? My clear-headed and rational concern is that I can't make a decision if you give me garbage as facts. Can you? How do I know "where we are now"...when I'm getting staged and dummied up facts from ONE point of view? I want FACTS, not opinion masquerading as "news".

"Lefty blogs are guilty of the same thing, by the way. They don't often consider with any seriousness what we should do to try to make this policy work."

Lefty blogs and leftists in general have a one note song. They can't think their way out of a paper bag. I don't think the right is NEARLY as culpable as leftists and their apologists make them out to be.

They have had their voices strangled for 40 years. They are just trying to find a way to show how bastardized the Ministry of Media's work has become. And for that...we ought to get down on our knees and thank the heavens every night.

I don't have much in common with the far right on social issues, but I'll be damned if I would criticize them at all on national security and self-defense issues. The left is filled with liars and miscreants...and they have stolen the truth in our information stream, and I want it back.

The right have been put down much more than they deserve and the left has been elevated much more than it deserves. And it's high time for a reversal of fortune. I'm a centrist...but I am beginning to like the right almost as strongly as I hate the left.

The left is an echo chamber of arrogant dweebs, who parrot everything straight from the playbook. The right, in modern times...has the high moral ground, not the left. I don't have a dog in this fight...but, if I did...I would love to see the left laying belly up.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 07:00 PM (V56h2)

75 Didn't Rumsfield set up a whole Department of Propaganda to support the War Against Truth?

Actually no. The paid placement stories were ummm...actually true. Nobody ever disputed their veracity.

The most effective forms of "propaganda" are in fact true.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at January 05, 2007 07:12 PM (clafO)

76 cf bleachers - again I ask:

5.are you wingnuts so ill-informed that you didn't KNOW that the Ministry of the Interior - your source for all this nonsense - is run by the very people ACCUSED OF THE CRIME?

6. If you DID know that -then why were you so eager to accept the word of Muqtada Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army?

Ever sinse this war started, the media has been consistently proven accurate, and the wing-nut-o-sphere has been consistenty proven WRONG. On EVERY SINGLE POINT.

WMD? Wrong.
Connection to 9/11? Wrong.
"The war will only cost a few billion." Wrong
"We'll win and get out in no time." Wrong.
"A few Dead-enders." Wrong
"There is no insurgency." Wrong.
"Last Throes". Wrong.

By any empirical data point you choose - number of attacks, number of casualties, hours of electricity, barrels of oil, number of refugees - by ANY EMPIRICAL DATA POINT, the war has been a colossal screw up, and has gotten steadily worse for the last three years.

You don't have to rely on the media for these numbers - read the reports published by the US Military and the State Dept.

The reason this matters is that we have got to find a solution out of this mess. And until we FACE THE REALITY of where we are now, we won't.

The Iraq Study Group TRIED, Lord knows - they TRIED to make both Bush, and the wingnuts, face reality.

But that would require both Bush, and the Wingnuts on this board, to have the intellectual honesty to admit just how WRONG they have been about Iraq from start to finish.

However, while GROWNUPS realize that you can't fix mistakes until you face upt to errors, children can't. They just cling more and more desparately to their threadbare fantasies.

The Reality that the 77% of the country who disapprove of Bush on Iraq sees? The reality that this whole thing has been a collossal mistake? Well, the wingnuts just put their fingers in their ears, shriek louder, and blame the media.

And Bush, and the wingnuts, are children. Protecting their own fragile egos is more important than protecting the lives of American troops. So many more of then will die, just so the five-year-olds running the government - and the hysterical wing nuts on this board - don't have to face their own mistakes.

Real People - Real American Soldiers - are dying, because you refuse to grow up.

Posted by: reality based at January 05, 2007 07:27 PM (Bg91R)

77 5.are you wingnuts

I'm a centrist...so, you have to read from somewhere else in your playbook

"so ill-informed"

I would venture a guess that I am better educated, more advanced degreed, better informed than you....but, I have yet to meet a leftist who doesn't believe the propaganda that those who aren't leftists are all "stoopid". It's time to stop reading leftist BS and start thinking for yourself.


"that you didn't KNOW that the Ministry of the Interior - your source for all this nonsense -"


My source for what "nonsense". Here are the facts: Four mosques were reported to have been attacked by rocket-grenades and machine gun fire, then burned. None was. Six Sunni's were reported to have been doused in kerosene then burned alive. None was. What the hell does that have to do with Ministry of the Interior again? I mean since you are so "well informed" and all...maybe you can explain Green Helmet Guy and his staged antics while you are at it.

"is run by the very people ACCUSED OF THE CRIME?"


Accused of what crime? The one that EVERYONE admits now...didn't happen? The mosques are still standing, undamaged...Mr. Well Informed. One of the mosque's doors (out of four that were supposedly obliterated) had a Jamolotove cocktail thrown at it allegedly. Some burn marks. No machine gun damage, no rocket grenade damage, none burned to the ground, no immolated Sunni's.

6. "If you DID know that -then why were you so eager to accept the word of Muqtada Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army?"

I'm not. Their word is irrelevant to the facts on the ground. NOBODY is now saying that four mosques were obliterated, burned to the ground...or even attacked. One door was vandalized. Again, what does this have to do with the Ministry of the Interior again?

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 07:42 PM (V56h2)

78 Devil's Advocate,

O.K. I win youuuu.....piece of ----. Evan fights?~ - LOL
Ha Haaahaaahaahaaha -- go away from me now--?- guy- rule eh-
thanks though-
anyways go away
guy go away
youll be ok-
alright-
with Evan, here is fine., son- just- fine- with Evan
now cookin son
cooks right,-
Son cook rightly
with me-
thats what...- I see-- Right; ba bye-
Evan

Posted by: young warrior at January 05, 2007 07:45 PM (v1hiI)

79 cfbleachers: You really aren't expecting a reasoned argument from these folks, I hope.

Your info might help people lurking decide, though, so keep it up.

Re: wingnut. You don't agree with the oh-so-enlightened and "grown up" folks speaking truthiness to power here, so that makes you a wingnut to the folks flinging the word around even if you do hold centrist views.

Posted by: Patrick Chester at January 05, 2007 07:46 PM (MKaa5)

80 "Jamilgate" was right-wing groupthink run amok. You people simply refuse to face the reality of the massive failure which is the Iraq War, and how our idiot President would rather listen to dweeby neo-con pencil-pushers instead of seasoned generals.

The bad news coming out of Iraq has to all be a grand liberal media conspiracy to you people, so you latch onto non-stories like Jamil Hussein.

You seem like a bright enough person. For all our sake, face reality man.

Posted by: Brian at January 05, 2007 07:57 PM (7oTkR)

81 first, cfbleacher - I'll put my advanced degrees - and my net worth, for that matter - up against yours any time. And I'll win.

Second: Who are the "everyone" other than the wingnuts and Malkin who now say that the attack ddidn't happen? The AP is still standing by tis story.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-11-28-iraq-fire_x.htm

Third - "Their word is irrelevant to the facts on the ground." Oh please.

When the Yankee, Malkin, and all of you hysterice started pushing this nonsense, your WHOLE ARGUMENT was "The Iraqi governement says the guy doesn't even exist! The AP made the whole thing up. THE IRAQI MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR SAYS THE GUY DOESN'T EVEN EXIST! CENTCOM SAYS THE GUY DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. "

(sorry to shriek - but you all WERE shriekeing this very loudly, so I thought I'd better use all caps, for versimillitude. )

You never once asked WHO the people were who were denying Jamil's existence, or what motive THEY might have for trying to suppress the story. Not Once. Never.

It was all about the AP deliberately trying to paint a false picture, when you all just KNOW how wonderful things REALLY ARE in Baghdad.

So, yes, your willingness to swallow uncritically blatanat falsehoods from the Iraqi MOI IS of relevance here.


oh, why do I bother.

Posted by: reality based at January 05, 2007 08:05 PM (Bg91R)

82 "so desperately want us to withdrawal immediately"

Funny, most liberals want a phased withdrawal, not an immediate one. Aren't you embarrassed about such an obvious mistake?

Also, just in case English is your second language, the correct word to use is "withdraw".

Have a fun year

Posted by: TonyT at January 05, 2007 08:37 PM (Wzy7C)

83 "I'll put my advanced degrees - and my net worth, for that matter - up against yours any time. And I'll win."

Whoa, Checkmate, Game, Set, Match! Fat Lady Sings!
Run! Godzilla debates the mere Bachelors of Arts.

Posted by: stevesh at January 05, 2007 08:41 PM (MShLY)

84 hey, CFbleacher brought it up - I'll just be damned if I was going to let the aspersions pass unanswered.

Posted by: Reality Based at January 05, 2007 08:47 PM (Bg91R)

85 Im Funny

Posted by: young warrior at January 05, 2007 08:59 PM (v1hiI)

86 "first, cfbleacher - I'll put my advanced degrees - and my net worth, for that matter - up against yours any time. And I'll win."


LOL. I seriously doubt it. But this is going nowhere, so if it makes you feel better to pretend, fine.

"Second: Who are the "everyone" other than the wingnuts and Malkin who now say that the attack ddidn't happen? The AP is still standing by tis story."

Um...Mr. Well Informed...you better look again. AP has backed off their original story. Not even THEY believe their own bullshit. But, apparently...you still do.

"Third - "Their word is irrelevant to the facts on the ground." Oh please.

When the Yankee, Malkin, and all of you hysterice started pushing this nonsense, your WHOLE ARGUMENT was "The Iraqi governement says the guy doesn't even exist!"

Well, hate to break it to you...I know how the sunshine of truth and reality really blinds the folks in your world...but...um...no. The WHOLE ARGUMENT...was and is...Jamil was not a credible sole source for every district within driving distance and THIS story was PROVEN false. (the mosques are undamaged...even the AP admits now...even though the moonbats are still barking about it).

Unless Jamil has a cape and a propensity for changing in phone booths around Baghdad, he didn't and couldn't have known all the details he was sourcing...everywhere.

It was a canard. A sham. His phony cover has been blown. Let's get that off the table, as the first order of business. He was not a credible source for the story of the burning mosques and immolated Sunni's. Likely not, for dozens of others.


"The AP made the whole thing up. THE IRAQI MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR SAYS THE GUY DOESN'T EVEN EXIST! CENTCOM SAYS THE GUY DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. "


I...don't...care. Read that again, slowly. Or have someone read it to you...with all your net worth, you can afford it. LOL

Patterico said it could be there's a third option. Michelle found some guy with a middle name Ghulaib and asked the AP if this was the guy. I said immediately after Eason Jordan opened his blog, that somebody was going to "be Jamil" when they got there.

His existence or non-existence as a person, is NOT the issue now, nor was it ever for me. His existence as a CREDIBLE SOURCE is an issue for me, and he is not. Certainly not for this story, possibly for dozens more. THAT is the whole argument.

Now I know you leftists hate it when you can't reframe the issues and create strawmen...but, sorry, can't help you here. I'm on record as having smelled this coming...and saying it wasn't the issue.

(sorry to shriek - but you all WERE shriekeing this very loudly, so I thought I'd better use all caps, for versimillitude. )

I didn't notice, I thought all you Bulge and Spittle Corps members could only communicate that way, so it seemed perfectly in character.

"You never once asked WHO the people were who were denying Jamil's existence, or what motive THEY might have for trying to suppress the story. Not Once. Never."


Suppress what story? The fake one? Um...Mr. Well Informed...not even the AP is standing by the original story. It was phony. Fake. Not real. Is anyone home at your place?

"It was all about the AP deliberately trying to paint a false picture, when you all just KNOW how wonderful things REALLY ARE in Baghdad."

Again...are you saying that you are perfectly ok with our media making up fake stories, just as long as they are "truthy". Can you just come out and say that...it will save us all the trouble of maintaining that last sliver of doubt that you leftists have an ounce of integrity or principle.

Are you OK with the media making up stories out of whole cloth, and passing them off as "news" and "facts"....as long as they advance a leftist point of view? If not...your argument is vacuous. It doesn't matter if everything is rosy in Iraq, so-so in Iraq or dangerous in Iraq to the issue of whether the media has carte blanche to lie, fake stories, stage events, photoshop photos. They are separate issues. If you can't separate them...then your "advanced degrees" must be in face painting and mud eating at Medieval Times.

"So, yes, your willingness to swallow uncritically blatanat falsehoods from the Iraqi MOI IS of relevance here."

Why? It doesn't matter to the seminal issue. If he's a real person used as a fake source, or a fake person used as a fake source...the outcome is the same. A phony story, with a source incapable of being legitimate.


"oh, why do I bother".

To let everyone know that you have "advanced degrees" and a large net worth...who otherwise couldn't care less? Just guessing.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 09:07 PM (V56h2)

87 One hopes that with his advanced degrees reality based will learn how to use spell check. Ponce.

Posted by: Uncle Pinky at January 05, 2007 09:35 PM (2eQlr)

88 ewwwww....net worth. Wow. Never saw anybody stoop so low to try to convince me they know what they are talking about. Richest guy I know (multi-billionaire) had no degrees and started off as a clown in the circus. So what?

The fact is that all of the lefties here have not tried to defend the AP's stories. The grab onto the Jamil Hussein stuff and believe that because he MIGHT BE real (not proven yet), the stories are REAL. What a leap of faith.

If you want to convince me the AP is on the up-and-up, show me where they retracted/corrected their reporting. Show me the other major agencies that reported the same story. C'mon - it should not be that hard.

Posted by: Specter at January 05, 2007 10:03 PM (ybfXM)

89 It amazes me how the right, in all their infinite wisdom, never want to admit when they are wrong.

The pin headed MM went to Iraq, had our troops baby-sit her while she attempted to verify the AP claims. I haven't heard her apologize for her inane rants, and most likely won't.

For the weak minded R'cons that still insist Bush is the best leader in the free world, 80% of Americans want this illegal war to end, so stop saying that the Dem's want to pull out. A majority of both parties realize that the Bush War for Oil cannot be won. I do not believe these folks want any more American deaths for the Iraqis. They should step up and defend themselves.

The R'cons that have fallen in lock step with the Dem's have discovered that Bush is totally incompetent to run the war that he had planned years before he was appointed to the Oval Office. And their plan was found to be lacking in every detail.

Iraq has been in a state of unrest for 2000 years, with the exception of Saddam's reign. To think that Bush would be able to force these proud people into accepting democracy is lame. They will never allow us to say that we, the ignorant Americans, have tamed their nation. And if you think otherwise then you need to refresh your knowledge of history. They hate us. They hate Bush even more. If we put another 100,000 troops in Iraq then maybe we can get out of there with a tied score. But we will never win.

Posted by: tony at January 05, 2007 10:04 PM (2Dns0)

90 First, cf: you brought up the personal insults and the issue of credentials. Such slurs are uncommon in the reality-based world I frequent, so I was surprised - but I thought such things were probably the norm over here.

Trust me - If I hadn't retired comfortably at the age of 48, I couldn't waste time arguing with delusional people, just for amusement. (It IS amusing, too. )

Secondly, I'm glad that your overarching concern is that media coverage of Iraq be accurate. That being so, can you please point me to posts you made expressing your outrage when the "toppling of Sadddam" story turned out to be a stage-managed piece of propaganda? Also, I would love to read your outraged posts when the whole "Rescue of Jessica Lynch" made-for-tv-movie turned out to be fiction from start to finish.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/11/07/lynch.interview/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001971815_statue04.html

Please furnish the link to your posts on these topics - I would love to read them. (crickets chirp. )

Second, re the AP backing off of its story - another silly little thing we do in the Reality-based blogosphere is provide evidence, in the form of links, to back up our assertions. So please, PROVIDE THE LINK where the AP recants its story. (crickets chirp again. )

re:

"The WHOLE ARGUMENT...was and is...Jamil was not a credible sole source for every district within driving distance and THIS story was PROVEN false. (the mosques are undamaged...even the AP admits now...even though the moonbats are still barking about it). "

and

"His existence or non-existence as a person, is NOT the issue now, nor was it ever for me. His existence as a CREDIBLE SOURCE is an issue for me, and he is not."

Sorry, but you REALLY can't move the goalposts, just because you have been humilated on the playing field.

The whole argument made by all of you lunatics - loudly, and at the top of your lungs - was that because the guy DIDN'T EVEN EXIST, the AP was abviously making up the whole thing. And you just KNEW he didn't exist, because the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, and CentCom, TOLD you he didn't exist.

Now that that argument has been proven demonstrably false - and all of you proven to have been gullible fools for swallowing it - suddenly, you never CARED about whether he existed?

Then what were you all screaming about, in the first place?

Of course, if you DID state, from the beginning of this farce, that the existence of Jamil was not the point - again, I'm sure you'll provide me with the links to comments you made at the time, saying just that.

(crickets chirp for a third time.)

Really, CFbleachers, you seem like an intelligent guy - I'd love to hear your opinion on the many boosk that have been written, quoting Military sources, that detail not only the deceptions on which this war was based, but the completely inept strategic decisions, and the blatant attempts to curtail accurate media coverage, made by this administration. Books such as "Fiasco" or "Imperial Life in the Emerald City". For that matter, you could actually READ the Iraq Study Group Report, for a thorough analysis of media reporting on the Iraq war.

DO you people over here ever turn off Sean Hannity and, you know, read a book? It could come in handy.

Posted by: reality based at January 05, 2007 10:06 PM (Bg91R)

91 Ah, the "but why haven't you said anything about THIS?!" attempt at diverting attention.

How... unsurprising.

Posted by: Patrick Chester at January 05, 2007 10:26 PM (MKaa5)

92 Patrick, you're right, of course.

Just because CFbleachers self-righteously SAID

"If the truth is bad news, I WANT to hear it. If it's good news, I WANT to hear it. If it's mixed good and bad, I WANT to hear. What I don't want to see and hear...are a bunch of lies. Fake photographs. Staged scenes. Passed off as news."

- - how silly of me to expect that, in the case of the most egregious and well-documented pieces of fake news in the whole debacle

- the Saddam Statue Charade and the Jessica Lynch story -

CFbleachers would, in fact, have been outraged - and could prove it.

Meanwhile, I hear the same response one hears WHENEVER a wingnut is challeneged to prove his assertion - the same old chirping crickets.

Bored now.

Posted by: reality based at January 05, 2007 11:19 PM (Bg91R)

93 "The whole argument made by all of you lunatics - loudly, and at the top of your lungs - was that because the guy DIDN'T EVEN EXIST, the AP was abviously making up the whole thing. And you just KNEW he didn't exist, because the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, and CentCom, TOLD you he didn't exist."

Please read what I wrote a month ago. And have been saying ever since. I thought "Jamil" existed. I thought it was a setup.

I thought that the leftists would "produce" this "Jamil" and try to cloud the issues. I thought they would try to deflect the probe into why all these phony Green Helmet and Captain Marvel comic book caricatures of truth were polluting our information stream.

I thought it, I said it...I stuck by it. His existence wasn't the issue for me then, it isn't now.

Game, set, match. Kill the crickets.


It's a setup. Somebody is sitting there ready to play the role of the good Captain and Michelle is going to be setup, unable to gain access to anyone who can refute it. Jordan has someone, a bunch of someone's...ready to give "evidence"...and it's a pre-planned script.

It's impossible to believe that he doesn't have contacts there. Especially with the Sunni's, whom he allowed to propagandize while Saddam was still in business. They owe him and here's a chance to repay. Maybe he gets "just enough" "evidence" to cloud the story and give cover to the AP.

I smell a rat, but I'm willing to be convinced that one of the first two prospects is more plausible. Or maybe a fourth that I haven't considered...but this is too neat, too pat...something's not right here.

Posted by cfbleachers at December 14, 2006 08:25 PM

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 05, 2007 11:40 PM (5RM9g)

94 "information stream is being r@ped"

cf, that's been a problem for the last 6 years. Did you "give a damn" when it was the U.S. Intelligence information stream that was being r@ped? Or did you get started when the media information stream quit its embedded cheerleading and turned negative on Iraq?

Posted by: fracas_futile at January 05, 2007 11:59 PM (X8CSV)

95 um - ok, if you want to totally mischaracterize what your post actually SAID?

"Somebody is sitting there ready to play the role of the good Captain and Michelle is going to be setup, unable to gain access to anyone who can refute it. Jordan has someone, a bunch of someone's...ready to give "evidence"...and it's a pre-planned script."

Your post DOESN'T say it doesn't MATTER whether Jamil exists or not - just that MM won't be able to PROVE he doesn't exist.

But just to be generous - I'll give you half a point for that.

Oh, and your links re the AP recanting? and the links to your outraged posts about the Saddam Statue and Jessica Lynch staged news? Those will no doubt, appear?

SO I challenged to you back up three assertions. So far, you're .5 for 3. That's better than average for Kool-aid drinkers - I commend you.

chirp - chirp- chirp.

Posted by: REality based at January 06, 2007 12:08 AM (Bg91R)

96 I gave a damn when Walter Cronkite lied about the Tet Offensive. I gave a damn when Peter Jennings said that his mother was a virulent anti-American and her blood coursed through his veins.

I gave a damn when Ted Kennedy's drunken manslaughter charge was covered up.

I gave a damn when gave a damn when Jimmy Carter wrote a book calling Israel an apartheid state.

I gave a damn each and every time a leftist lied, stole, cheated and was whitewashed by the media.

And if EVER the right gets a stranglehold on the media and arrogantly covers up lies, prints false photos intentionally, STAGES news events to give a phony impression advancing their political aims...I will be standing at the front of the line screaming bloody murder.

But, the right doesn't own the Ministry of Media, the left does. The right doesn't own EVERY Hollywood movie, the left does. The right doesn't own EVERY major campus humanities faculty position, the left does. The right doesn't own every major city newspaper and most periodicals. The left does. The right doesn't own NPR, the left does.

And the left has been beshitting our information stream and arrogantly so. If and when the right has that kind of power...and IF they abuse it the way the left has...you better believe I will be screaming bloody murder against that arrogance and amoral behavior.

Right now...it's aimed at the left. Because they don't have an ounce of integrity.

The right has the high moral ground. We all are victims of the left's control over our information stream.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 06, 2007 12:12 AM (5RM9g)

97 Yep, it's all the Left's fault.

"I want my information to be based on actual facts"

Here's a fact: You're a wingnut.

Come on. Clinton obfuscated a sexual relationship, dirtying up the White House and Bush took us into an unnecessary war, breaking my Army, and emboldening our enemies. Its all the Left's fault.

Posted by: fracas_futile at January 06, 2007 12:26 AM (X8CSV)

98 "Here's a fact: You're a wingnut."

No, I'm a centrist. I just hate the left. Don't think it's possible? Boy are you in for a rude awakening.

The left is pissing off every thinking man and woman in this country. Your arrogance and echo chamber puerile rantings are wearing thin.

You are a group that thinks they own the truth, and you really are beshitting it. You have principles of convenience and not an ounce of integrity. As a group, there may not be an equal in history for your mendacity and arrogance...without cause for the former and reason for the latter.

You are a bunch of losers, who are galvanized by a passion for crapping on your own country, and nuzzling up to the enemy du jour. Socialists, Anarchists and Yippees from the 60's. White Uncle Toms. (the SAY WUT crowd) World Populists. Timeshare Americans. Citizens of the World.

One doesn't have to be right wing (a wingnut) to despise the despicable. You just have to be able to think for yourself and have an ounce of integrity.

"Come on. Clinton obfuscated a sexual relationship, dirtying up the White House"

Clinton was accused of raping a woman, sexually abusing several others, being a serial groper and trading work favors for sexual favors. This is a classic case of sexual harassment in the workplace. He then lied (perjured) himself in a sworn statement in a federal lawsuit.

IF, a sitting President is not immune temporarily from a civil lawsuit for personal behavior...then he didn't simply "obfuscate a sexual relationship"...he lied about material facts (sexual relationship with and favors in return with someone in his employ).

Sorry, that's perjury, under oath, in sworn testimony of a material fact in a pending federal litigation. I really don't care if he had sex with a 19 year old intern...but if you are going to refer to it...at least let's get it right.

Had this been a Republican...the left would have been calling for a national castration. So let's not be coy. It's a double standard of epic proportions.

I couldn't care less, I thought the impeachment hearings were imbecilic and a blight on the nation. But the leftist media twisted themselves into a pretzel to whitewash his behavior. Where were the feminists to cry and scream on behalf of his victims? The left is disingenuous on this one and the right was overreaching in a game of gotcha.


"and Bush took us into an unnecessary war, breaking my Army, and emboldening our enemies."

Well, Clinton, Cohen, Albright, Berger ALL said that regime change in Iraq was absolutely necessary, leaving Saddam WITH HIS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION was the greatest danger to America and the world, and advocated taking him out.

So...this Bush derangement syndrome aside...I don't shed a single tear for taking down Saddam.

We were attacked on 9/11. Saddam passing off WMD's to terrorists was the SINGLE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE WEST AND THE WORLD...according to Clinton, Albright, Berger, Cohen. We removed that threat.

The Iranian Mullahs don't want democracy on their doorstep...so they import chaos.

If the war was unnecessary, if it was a certainty that Saddam didn't want to build more horrific weaponry...then the President, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State...all lied. Clinton, Berger, Cohen and Albright. They are on record, you can look it up.


"Its all the Left's fault."

Not all....but certainly a hell of a lot more than you would get if you simply sat in their echo chamber. The left sucks. Last imbecile out...turn off the lights.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 06, 2007 01:21 AM (5RM9g)

99 Wow! Did a hippie steal your college sweetheart?

For a centrist, you can recite a pretty good right wing rant.

OK, Clinton "lied." Yes, Saddam should have died, but he didn't have to be lynched.

Sure, Saddam was "a" threat, but not the only threat. Regime change and launching a war are orders of magnitude apart. After the 20-40,000 troop surge led by the 9,000 troops we have left, do you think we'll have the troop and equipment capability to again capture Noriega or save the Grenada medical students?

"We were attacked on 9/11. Saddam passing off WMD's to terrorists...BIGGEST THREAT...according to Clinton"

9/11-Saddam's WMD. Sounds like the "information stream is being r@ped."

Bush had the world united behind him after 9/11 and threw all that goodwill away with an unnecessary war he can't even win.

You information stream hasn't been r@ped, it's just plain warped. After your rant, I doubt there's any facts that could move your hardened stream an inch.

You'll have to turn out the lights. I don't see a light switch on this site.

Posted by: fracas_futile at January 06, 2007 02:03 AM (X8CSV)

100 just that MM won't be able to PROVE he doesn't exist.

Anyone who's had a logic 101 course would understand that as a given.

Just curious - substitute WMD for Jamil Hussein and rerun your arguments using your same "standards of proof".

What kind fo results did you get in that case?

Posted by: Purple Avenger at January 06, 2007 02:50 AM (clafO)

101 oh, and cfbleacher? You just lost your half a point.

Since you ALWAYS said that whether or not Jamil existed was not important, it must have been - who, your evil twin? - who posted the entries below.

Dec. 28th

“Jamil we found was a composite sketch
Of sixty painted mimes
Up next we're sure was Marcel Marceau
Til Flopping Aces started dropping dimes”



Dec. 22nd

“There is absolutely NO chance, that the AP was "duped" into believing that Jamil Hussein actually existed for two years, while using him as often a sole source on events outside his district. (snip)

2) The AP has made an open declaration that they have met this "source" numerous times...including in his office. Is there even the most remote chance that they would not be able to describe him in great detail...height, weight, facial hair, noticeable markings...such that they could have cued one of their comrades in the Ministry of Media to go "back them up" on his existence? Not one did”.



December 12th

“Produce Jamil, asshelmet....then we can talk.”
Posted by cfbleachers at December 12, 2006 01:36 PM



Hoist. Petard. Look it up.

However, once Jordan issued his "put up or shut up" challenge to Malkin - THEN you suddenly smelled a rat.

So that answers my question as to whether you folks REALLY BELIEVE the ridiculous things you say. Obviously - since you began backtracking as soon as it looked like proof might be required - you don't.

So, let's see - you've misrepresented your own earlier postings, and you've been unable back up a single one of your assertions with links or evidence. (chirp - - chirp - - chirp.)

You know, this isn't even FUN anymore - this battle of wits with an unarmed man. I mean, you're so BAD at it - and a liar, as well.


Fellow reality-based folks - having waded through some weeks of this guy's posts - it's clear that what we have here is a young man who read Ayn Rand at an impressionable age, liked to listen to Rush Limbaugh with his buddies in the frat house - and never reached the "Adult" developmental stage (the one where you grow up, read actual books, and get a clue.)

Like I said, it's too easy - it's no fun.

signing off.

Posted by: Reality Based at January 06, 2007 03:16 AM (Bg91R)

102 Oh but before I go - having lied about your own earlier positions - by all means, cfbleacher, DO please lecture us lefties about "lack of integrity" some more.

I mean, it sounds so CONVINCING, coming from you.

Posted by: Reality Based at January 06, 2007 03:21 AM (Bg91R)

103 No, no, no, no no. That's the whole point, Nikolay. If there had been "nothing malicious" in the reporting, then AP when confronted with the undamaged mosques and the complete refutation of the immolation story...simply "retracts its story and regrets its error". They didn't do that. They stood by a phony story. Just like Dan Rather. Just like Green Helmet Guy. This is a pattern...not an isolated incident.I'm not sure there were "undamaged" mosques. They were most probably not undamaged, they were burnt (as reported) in a sense "set on fire", but not annihilated. Can you really imagine what sense inventing annihilated mosques would make?

Get some "facts" wrong...I have no problem with the "fog of war" alibi. Repeatedly STAGE false news, overstate the case ALWAYS IN THE SAME DIRECTION...and I begin to see a pattern. Fake photos, staged scenes of death, phony rocket-grenade and machine gun attacks, complete lies about dousing with kerosene?
I don't know enough about other questions you raise, besides the fact that half of "debunking" you mentioned turned out to be nonsense. But what makes you sure about "complete lies about dousing with kerosene"? This story was reported by numerous witnesses, it was all over Iraqi message boards. It was "repudiated" in the same press-release that stated that there is _definitely_ no police officer called Jamil Hussein.

Posted by: Nikolay at January 06, 2007 06:09 AM (m8XvX)

104 I gave a damn when gave a damn when Jimmy Carter wrote a book calling Israel an apartheid state.It's funny, because Carter never wrote such a book. Israel is _not_ an apartheid state and Carter never called it such. To call conditions of life in the West Bank apartheid is absolutely correct. You can argue about Carter's wishful thinking, about the lack of real solution for the West Bank problem, about the fact that Palestinians have themselves to blame, etc. etc. etc., but you can't argue with the fact that there is apartheid in the West Bank. It's just calling black black.

Posted by: Nikolay at January 06, 2007 06:22 AM (m8XvX)

105 Boy, where does one begin. I guess I will start with Mr. Well Informed.

My parodies, songs and jokes may need an erudition that you lefties simply don't possess.

My position on Jamil was...he was being used to supply "sourcing" for ANY report. Yet when asked to be produced...there was silence. Mimes. Silence. 60 stories. All over every district. Composite. Get it?

It's not that some Jamil didn't exist...it's that he was everywhere, being used for everything...then POOF! SILENCE.

And the second paragraph you chose...out of the dozens I wrote...was in response to the possibility that the AP had been DUPED into BELIEVING Jamil the Liar. This is not about whether he EXISTS...but whether the USE of him as a source was valid, but innocent...in foisting untruths on the public.

If you can't follow along...please...don't embarrass yourself. Take Abe Lincoln's advice. He must have been speaking about you when he said, "I would keep my mouth silent and have people think me a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt."

Your "theory" apparently in your little rubber roomed echo chamber....is that I "changed my mind" AFTER Jordan "challenged" Michelle.

More schooling for you. Hop on the little yellow bus and come sit in the corner. Try not to drool.

Look at the DATES. I posted that I smelled a rat on Jordan's OFFER (not challenge) to Michelle. This was BECAUSE I suspected that a "Jamil" existed.

The two posts you chose to try to "out" my "real" beliefs...came AFTER my smelling of a leftist rat and a trap. (you see, in OUR world...December 14 comes BEFORE the 22nd and 28th)

I didn't begin "backtracking", I felt that the left would "produce" this "Jamil"...and some "evidence"...that would cloud the issues and provide cover for yet another bastardization of our information stream. So far, they haven't even produced Jamil or the "evidence"...they simply have gotten confirmation that this phony source was a real guy.

Nothing has changed, Einstein. But thanks for playing. Do those lash marks hurt as much as they appear to?

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 06, 2007 01:07 PM (V56h2)

106 "I'm not sure there were "undamaged" mosques."

That's the report coming from EVERY source now, Nikolay. Three were completely undamaged. One was vandalized. No rocket grenades, no machine gun fire, no burning to the ground. Phony. False. Fake.

"They were most probably not undamaged, they were burnt (as reported) in a sense "set on fire", but not annihilated."

Wrong. Undamaged. Not true. Phony. False. Fake. The report now...is that ONE of the four NAMED mosques...had ANY damage. And that damage was minor. NO other evidence to support ANY of the rest of the story. In fact, all the evidence is contrary.

"Can you really imagine what sense inventing annihilated mosques would make?"

In a world where truth matters, it's senseless. In a world where "truthyness" is all that's important...the it adds logs onto a burning pyre in a leftist agenda to make things look as bad as possible.

Can you imagine anything more vivid than to suggest that holy places were being burned to the ground and innocent people being dragged into the streets, doused with kerosene and burned alive? While the "SOLDIERS" IN PLACE TO DEFEND THE INNOCENT, SAT BY AND WATCHED IN ACQUIESCENCE????

Why, it's so horrific, that it's MEMORABLE. Haunting. In this case, it was simply inconvenient to the leftist media...that it was all a pack of lies.

But hey, Jamil "exists", so all is right with the world now, in lemmingville.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 06, 2007 02:13 PM (V56h2)

107 The overwhelming majority of liberal bloggers were dead silent ... in regards to the Jamil Hussein affair,

Maybe because they strongly suspected it was more right wing BS? Since that was precisely what it was proven to be, I guess that makes them smarter than you, don't it?

Posted by: tb at January 06, 2007 04:18 PM (G/dJe)

108 I would answer tb, but I'm afraid I'd catch it.

I regretfully admit, that at this age, I grow tired and weary of attempting to fill empty vessels.

However, dafydd has it nailed on his site. He disembowels Boehlert with the skill of a surgeon. Sometimes I feel I say things that might resonate, that are skillfully worded enough, that they might even creep into the sealed walls of the echo chamber. And then I read something that just NAILS it...and say...damn, I wish I'd said that.

That is what I feel about just finishing dafydd's three part post. It was beautiful. If you have two synapses firing, you'll love it to you. If you are a leftist, see the above sentence.

(I wish I knew how to hyperlink to it, I simply never learned how to do that, sorry...but I got there through Curt at Flopping Aces, just to give full credit as best I can)

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 06, 2007 04:25 PM (5RM9g)

109 Correction: Typo...sentence should read; I am tired and weary

If you have two synapses firing, you'll love it too. If you are a leftist, see the above sentence.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 06, 2007 04:27 PM (5RM9g)

110 Wrong. Undamaged. Not true. Phony. False. Fake. The report now...is that ONE of the four NAMED mosques...had ANY damage. And that damage was minor. NO other evidence to support ANY of the rest of the story. In fact, all the evidence is contrary.So far it's he said vs. he said, with one side (CENTCOM) caught on blatant lying. Let the truth come out.

Posted by: Nikolay at January 07, 2007 06:53 AM (m8XvX)

111 I really, really enjoyed the thrashing you all put on the 'nuts here. Cudos.

cfbleachers: Wow. Just wow. You are a gift that just keeps on giving. Your "centrist" spittle-inflected rage is just sooo adorable. . .Do you do bar mitzvahs, too?

Posted by: Jayce at January 07, 2007 11:29 AM (YyT3f)

112 B.T.W., i'm eagerly awaiting your outrage at the fact that PJM went on and on about the death of Khamenei, based on one unreliable, anonymous source.

so, where's the outrage?

come on, show me the outrage!

down with PJM, those pernicious peddlers of propaganda!

Posted by: I Am The Bomb at January 07, 2007 12:56 PM (Ex9YH)

113 Dear 8 pounds 6 ounces baby Jesus! Are you all still debating the veracity of Capt. Jamil's stories?

It's been proven he lied, thus the AP needs to do better job of verifying stories (maybe something along the lines of "Can you take me to the 6 burned mosques?" or "Where are the dozens of burned bodies so I can question the coroner?", etc.)

They didn't, thus putting their reporting as suspect, but not so much from partisanship as laziness. What's even more suspect are any stories from Capt. Jamil. These need to be heavily researched as he has now proven to be a questionable source.

Anything else is smoke and mirrors. That's it. The end. Move on.

Posted by: Bard at January 08, 2007 01:26 PM (2vs72)

114 Sorry, JC...but I hear Janet Reno would be happy to perform your bris.

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 08, 2007 03:47 PM (V56h2)

115 thus the AP needs to do better job of verifying stories

Maybe something along the lines of "Can you show me these WMDs? Where are those 30,000 chemical shells President Bush was talking about during his SOTU? Do you have any evidence at all that Saddam has any kind of mobile weapons facilities? Are you sure about those aluminum tubes? Are you sure we can afford those tax cuts? Not six months ago you were telling us that adding troops would delay the Iraqis taking responsibility for their country, why the sudden change of heart?"

How about it - are you ready for the press to take a critical look at Bush administration statements, or do you just want them to look into things that make Bush look bad?

Posted by: The Walrus at January 08, 2007 04:47 PM (+dx2l)

116 "How about it - are you ready for the press to take a critical look at Bush administration statements, or do you just want them to look into things that make Bush look bad?"

Is that kinda like, we leftists want our media to say heads I win, tails you lose?


And it was CLINTON, ALBRIGHT, COHEN AND BERGER who insisted that Saddam had WMD's. Perhaps we should start by looking into whether THEY were lying...because...isn't that where it FIRST came from?

Posted by: cfbleachers at January 08, 2007 07:14 PM (V56h2)

117 **How about it - are you ready for the press to take a critical look at Bush administration statements, or do you just want them to look into things that make Bush look bad?**

Where, in ANY response by ANY conservative in this thread have you gotten the idea where we only want things that are pro-Bush reported? If you will actually READ THE WORDS without trying to force your square opinions into the round holes between the lines, you would realize that everyone harping on this is only wanting the press to report the truth 'REGARDLESS OF SIDE'.

Let me repeat that to make sure everyone understands that it's the main reason for all this hooplah:

...everyone harping on this is only wanting the press to report the truth 'REGARDLESS OF SIDE'.

Here is what I am seeing on this...

Conservative - The AP needs to do a better job of checking their facts before running a story

Liberal - Stop bashing us! Bush lied, people died! BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED!112321!!

Conservative - But the AP used this source many times and the few stories he has "leaked" have been found to be outrageously overblown. Don't you think this is something that needs to be addressed by the AP?

Liberal - Bush lied! WMDs! Arrrrrgh!!

Conservative - Don't you want an unbiased press that does due diligence in validating a story?

Liberal - There is nothing behind the curtain!

Conservative - *sigh*

Liberal - *whispers* wmd's!

Posted by: Bard at January 09, 2007 03:19 AM (JEVhJ)

118 **And it was CLINTON, ALBRIGHT, COHEN AND BERGER who insisted that Saddam had WMD's. Perhaps we should start by looking into whether THEY were lying...because...isn't that where it FIRST came from?**

Heh! I don't think any Liberals want anyone investigating Sandy Berger

Posted by: Bard at January 09, 2007 03:21 AM (JEVhJ)

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January 04, 2007

Game On: AP Claims Jamil Hussein Is Real, Faces Arrest

Well now, aren't things just getting lively?

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.

We'll get to those accusations momentarily, but lets jump down to the end of the article.

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

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

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

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

When contacted for a response moments ago, the U.S military (MNF-I PAO) stated:

Mr Owens,

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

As it is just several hours after midnight in Iraq, the key players in MNF-I PAO were probably caught in bed, something probably not entirely surprising to the Associated Press. I question the timing.

As far as the AP's story goes, it does raise some very interesting questions, and I think I'll have a very entertaining weekend trying to make sense of it all (which is part of the fun of blogging; I'm loving this).

So it appears Jamil Hussein may be real. Good. that means there is a real person to question regarding 61 mostly uncorroborated stories provided as exclusives by Hussein to the Associated Press.

This includes the story that made him (in)famous, where Hussein and the AP claimed 24 people were killed--six by being pulled from a mosque, doused in kerosene, and purposefully burned alive, where the other 18 merely died in an "inferno" at another mosque under attack--during a series of four mosque attacks. In later AP stories, the four mosques trickled down to one, and 18 of the 24 dead mysteriously disappeared, without the Associated Press releasing a retraction or a correction.

I can hardly wait to see where this leads. Is "Jamilgate" over?

Heck no. It's just getting good...

Update: Allah encapsulates things nicely:

I speculated about a mix up due to the conventions of Arabic names back on November 30th, mainly because Khalaf himself had initially been included on Centcom’s list of suspect sources. But that got eaten up by the other (still outstanding) questions: How is it that Hussein was able to comment on attacks all over Baghdad, including some far away from his precinct? How come the AP dropped the detail about four mosques being burned when it was challenged after their first report? Why couldn’t Bob Owens find corroborating stories from other media outlets on so many incidents sourced to Hussein? And why weren’t Armed Liberal’s sources, Eason Jordan’s sources, and Michelle’s sources collectively able to find this guy? I said last week in writing about Zombie’s response to HRW re: the Israeli ambulance attack that “I’ve reached the point where, when one of these blogstorms kicks up, I half-hope the media will produce the smoking gun that proves them right, just so we can have a little faith that they’re covering sensational incidents with due diligence.” Well, here’s the smoking gun. And while I have more faith now in the AP, I have less faith in the certainty of any information I get from Iraq. It took six weeks, with multiple people checking, to confirm the mere existence of a guy whose name, rank, and location were publicly known — and the issue would still be in doubt if Khalaf hadn’t come clean.

Update: Michelle has a nice cross-section of comments in her post on the subject.

The more I look at this, the more I realize that Mickey Kaus got it right:

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

Yep, they've got a source that seems to exist. Kathleen Carroll now has the same level of credibility as Mike Nifong. For her sake, I hope she can build a more convincing case.

01/04/07 Update: Corroboration! Sure, it isn't in English and only addresses one story of 61 sourced to Jamil Hussein, but it is a start.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:05 PM | Comments (75) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Iranian Dies Natural Death

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has apparently succumbed to cancer. It is the first natural death reported in Iran this year.

Typically, Iranians are very unlucky people, with many public figures dying as a result of accidents.

Update: Oops. Not Dead. this means no Iranians have died of natural causes this year, right?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:41 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Squawk Like an Egyptian

If the United States would like to keep Islamic terrorism from despoiling the "final frontier," it needs to start considering the best way to pull the plug on Egypt's powerful NileSat, an Egyptian government-run satellite broadcasting "al Qaeda TV," 24 hours a day.

As noted in the Weekly Standard:

Al Qaeda and its allies now have their own 24-hour television station. Based at a secret studio in Syria, its signal is broadcast to the entire Arab world from a satellite owned by the Egyptian government. This development highlights al Qaeda's increasingly sophisticated propaganda efforts.

Al Qaeda placed great emphasis on communicating its message effectively throughout 2006. Osama bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri issued more tapes in 2006 than in any year since the 9/11 attacks. In the past, al Qaeda tapes were generally released to Al Jazeera, but 2006 saw more Internet releases: the terrorist group's message was thus more quickly disseminated. Al-Zawraa TV, the 24-hour insurgent station, is an extension of this trend.

Al-Zawraa hit the airwaves on November 14. According to Middle East-based media monitor Marwan Soliman and military analyst Bill Roggio, it was set up by the Islamic Army of Iraq, an insurgent group comprised of former Baathists who were loyal to Saddam Hussein and now profess their conversion to a bin Laden-like ideology.

The Islamic Army of Iraq is subordinate to the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni insurgent groups, including al Qaeda in Iraq. The Al-Zawraa channel is not only viewed as credible by users of established jihadist Internet forums, but as a strategically important information outlet as well. Moreover, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is delighted by the station. A U.S. military intelligence officer told us that al-Masri "has long-term and big plans for this thing."

Al Qaeda's previous attempts at setting up propaganda outlets have been limited to satellite radio and the Internet. Al-Zawraa, however, appears to be well financed and may find a much broader audience. The channel is broadcast on Nilesat, a powerful satellite administered by the Egyptian government. Through Nilesat, Al-Zawraa's signal blankets the Middle East and North Africa, thus ensuring that the insurgents' message reaches every corner of the Arab world.

Al-Zawraa's content is heavy with insurgent propaganda, including audio messages from Islamic Army of Iraq spokesman Dr. Ali al-Na'ami and footage of the group's operations. The station calls for violence against both Shia Iraqis and the Iraqi government. According to Marwan Soliman, the station's anchors appear in military fatigues to rail against the Iraqi government while news crawls urge viewers to support the Islamic Army of Iraq and "help liberate Iraq from the occupying U.S. and Iranian forces."

I don't much care how the government chooses to end Al-Zawraa's broadcasting. They should certainly start by withholding or canceling the substantial financial aid given to Egypt by the United States. If political pressure fails, we certainly have the technical means to disrupt or block NileSat’s communications and navigation capabilities, meaning we can simply switch it off, or adjust it's flight path to turn it into a multi-million dollar shooting star as it burns up on re-entry. Frankly, I think the later would send a far more dramatic, and perhaps more suitable, message to those who would choose to broadcast terrorist TV, but then, perhaps that is why I'm not a diplomat.

But we do have diplomats, and they are beholden to our elected representatives. I suggest that anyone concerned about this should contact their Congressmen and Senators. Democrat of Republican, they have no excuse to continue subsidizing a government that sells satellite time to the highest terrorist bidder.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:16 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Lateral or Downward? The Negroponte Shuffle

John Negroponte is stepping down from his Cabinet-level position as Director of National Intelligence to become the #2 man in the State Department, backing Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. What does it all mean? I think Captain Ed has a better feel for this story than most, and even that seems uncertain:

The position carries a high profile and arguably has more influence on policy formulation, but it still represents a step down and a move out of the Oval Office inner circle. The change reflects a possible loss of confidence in Negroponte, especially given his proximity to the President and the obvious opportunity to influence his decisions on policy on a whole range of issues.

Congress appears taken aback by the change. Susan Collins, a Republican who pushed hard for the 9/11 Commission recommendations that created the DNI post, expressed her disappointment at Negroponte's resignation. Jane Harman, who would have been the new House Intel chair had Nancy Pelosi not fumbled the assignment after the election, also objected, making the criticism bipartisan.

With the available information, it looks like Negroponte got shuffled downward as part of the review finishing up on Iraq and the war on terror. The quality of intelligence coming from Iraq has come under some fire over the last couple of years, and eventually that responsibility rests with Negroponte. Alternatively, it could be that Negroponte's experience in Iraq was necessary for Rice to push through Bush's new strategies for Iraq and the Middle East. Negroponte was the first American emissary to Iraq, and with the resignation of Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush may have wanted the most experienced hands focusing directly on Iraq.

It's a puzzlement, without a doubt. I don't recall any recent moves where a Cabinet officer resigned to take a deputy post for another Cabinet officer.

Memorandum.com is all over the NY Times version, and while other bloggers (mostly on the left) seem to be commenting on it, they don't seem to have anything solid to go on either. At this point, it all seems to be mostly blind speculation... so why not add to it?

Liberal Booman Tribune floats a couple of theories, including the theory that that Negroponte is being primed to take over for an incompetent Rice (hey, this is his theory, not mine), who will resign for health reasons after an appropriate amount of time, at which point Negroponte will be elevated to Secretary of State. This is not outside the realm of possibility; as far as politics goes, crazier things have happened. But if we're going to go for wild speculation, shouldn't we go "whole hog?"

So here is my completely groundless theory:

Negroponte is moving in to be in a position to take over for Rice, but not because Rice is going out of office, but up. Vice President Dick Cheney will resign due to much more plausible health problems (the poor guy has worn-out defibrillators, hasn't he?), and Dr. Rice will step in as our first female Vice President sometime during the summer or early fall of 2007. She will then be "pushed" into running as the Republican contender against Hillary, setting up our first guaranteed female president as a result of the 2008 elections. At this point, Pat Robertson will quote some obscure translation of the Book of Revelations and declare this is proof of the End of Days, at which point we all laugh at him.

Again.

Of course, that's just my theory. I could be wrong.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:49 AM | Comments (55) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

You've Got Jmail

click to enlarge

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:19 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 03, 2007

Hates The Troops

Who said this today?

"We didn't put you in power to work with the people that have been murdering hundreds of thousands of people since they have been in power."

Yeah, you guessed right.

The outburst caused Bob Fertik to declare Sheehan was "the most influential person in America!"

Somehow, I doubt Sheehan is even the most influential person in her chatroom, but I guess that is what separates us from the "reality-based" community.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:23 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

He Must Be Real

After all, he has a blog, and everything.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:07 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

BREAKING: Jamil Hussein Arrested for Filming Saddam's Execution on Cell Phone

Upon reading that headline, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll probably became faint.

Luckily, that was (or should be) just one of many comments in Ace's Cool Facts About Police Captain Jamil Hussein, which now has about 300 comments, and is still growing.

Many of the comments are crude... and I mean very, not-for-your-kids-to-read crude... but many are laugh-out-loud funny.

My favorite (republishable) comments so far:

Jamil Hussein singlehandedly implemented an ISO 9000 Quality Certification program for Halliburton, over the weekend of Dec. 2-3.

His name does not appear in any of the documentation.

Posted by Dave in Texas at January 2, 2007 04:32 PM

In the early 80's, Jamil Hussein and Barak Hussein Obama ran a truckload of Coors from Texarcana to Altlanta in 24 hours for Big Enos and Little Enos.

Posted by Rosetta at January 2, 2007 04:51 PM

when he drinks he is often heard to say"man, I really miss Tenille".

Posted by mark c. at January 2, 2007 05:35 PM

In grade school, Jamil Hussein started a band called "The Netherwind Pipers" as a childish fart-joke.

You've might know them by their current name -- OPEC.

Posted by ObserverAce at January 2, 2007 10:13 PM

Jammies Hussein thinks Margaret Cho is funny;
and when he's in the audience, she is.

Posted by MikeB at January 3, 2007 12:17 AM

Head on over and add your own.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:49 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

An Offensive or Defensive Surge?

John Keegan has an article today in the U.K. Telegraph titled, 50,000 more US troops can save Iraq. His article refers to the expected surge of US troops into Iraq, presumably to engage and suppress Sunni and Shia terror groups.

All sorts of pundits have all sorts of opinions on whether or not a surge would be effective. In very general terms, those pundits that are left of center, and a few on the right, hold the view that sending in more soldiers is simply giving the various terror groups more American soldiers to shoot at, and that adding more troops will not appreciably change the military of political situation on the ground in Iraq.

These concerns are not without some merit. If we send more soldiers over to merely increase the number of patrols and IED hunts (like the one Bill Aradalino just completed) without any sort of a change to our offensive strategic and/or tactical goals, then yes, all we are effectively doing is providing more targets with very little chance of seeing much in the way of a long-term change.

That said, in his article Keegan speaks of the kind of offensive-minded surge that could make a profound difference on the shape of the conflict, and potentially shape Iraqi politics as well:

The object of the surge deployment should be to overwhelm the insurgents with a sudden concentration, both of numbers, armoured vehicles and firepower with the intention to inflict severe losses and heavy shock. The Mahdi Army in Sadr City should prove vulnerable to such tactics, which would of course be supported by helicopters and fixed-wing aviation.

Hitherto most military activity by coalition forces has been reactive rather than unilateral. Typically, units have become involved in fire fights while on patrol or on convoy protection duties. During the surge, the additional troops would take the fight to the enemy with the intention of doing him harm, destabilising him and his leaders and damaging or destroying the bases from which he operates.

The cost of such tactics is likely to be high but not unbearable if enough armoured vehicles are used to protect the attacking troops. The advantage of committing recently arrived troops to such operations is that they will come to operations fresh and enthusiastic. Though there is the disadvantage that they may not be familiar with local conditions or topography, this need not be a disqualification since the purpose of a surge strike would be to create a shock effect, not to alter local conditions by informal action.

The British contingent recently demonstrated that such overwhelming tactics have their effect. After their surprise move into Basra with massed columns of fighting vehicles and Challenger tanks, they succeeded in dominating the chosen area and evoking respect from the local militias.

If additional forces are specifically sent in with the goal of crushing the Sadrist Mahdi Army, affiliated criminal gangs and Shia death squads operating out of Baghdad's Sadr City and Najaf, along with elements of the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists operating out of Ramadi and other areas, then this will be a worthwhile operation to surge in these additional troops.

As I've noted previously, Sadr City may be a slum that is home to two-million people, but it is a compact slum, which can be cordoned off relatively easily and systematically demilitarized by whatever means are deemed necessary. Some will be quick to attempt to compare it to Fallujah, but the simple fact of the matter is that there is little indication that the Mahdi Army is as dedicated or as well-trained as were the terrorists of al Qaeda, despite any expected interference of Iranian Special Forces, and I doubt there will be a full-on military assault as a result. Odds are that most Sadrists will surrender or run, not fight, leaving their weapons caches behind.

Once Sadr City is cleared, US forces can (and probably should) impose checkpoints to keep the surviving Shiite death squad members from picking hteri habits back up after the sweep, even as they consider whether or not they need to also pay a visit to Najaf, an Iraqi city where U.S. Marines previously battled the Mahdi Army, and where al-Sadr's family traditionally draws power. One thing is almost certain: Muqtada al-Sadr should not be allowed to survive. Period.

Once the Madhi Army is fractured and Sadr City's remaining death squads under lockdown, the US military's attention should turn to the Sunni insurgency in Ramadi, where local forces and the U.S. military is slowly taking back the city from Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda on a block-by block basis. While it has gone mostly underreported in the media, this city is where the battle against the Sunni insurgency seems to be at it's most concentrated, even as al Qaeda forces and influence seem to be a on a slow constant ebb.

If the Shiite militias in Baghdad and southern Iraq can be curbed, and the Sunni terrorists in al Anbar are forced into retreat, then the surge will have been worthwhile. If we fight an offensive campaign with the 30,000-50,000 troops projected to be sent to Iraq, then we have a chance to win. If we don’t use our soldiers in an offensive manner, and use them to merely augment our currently forces on their current, mostly defensive missions, then I fear this surge will have been wasted.

While I'm sure he doesn't even know I exist, my counsel to the President would be this: Send them in for combat, or don’t send them in at all.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:15 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Now That You Mention it, Yes, Mine is Bigger Than Yours...

A little Presidential Directive here, a little tug there, and my friend Ward Brewer becomes the first blogger with a military vessel of his very own.

The ship you see is the E-01 Cuitlahuac, formerly and soon again to be the DD 574 John Rogers, the longest-serving of the World War II-era Fletcher-class destroyers.

Ward will restore the ship into a floating museum, or begin pillaging, depending on his mood.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:25 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Nice Friends You've Got There

When it comes to the subject of the Iraq War, bloggers on the right support the military, the general concept (if not necessarily the execution) of establishing democracy in Iraq, media accountability, and defeating Islamic terrorism.

Bloggers on the left want bloggers on the right—a lot of them—to go to Iraq, without escort, presumably on the hope that they—we—will get killed.

Character. Some folks have it...

Update: Michelle Malkin prepares to journey to Iraq, and invites AP's Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll to come along with her. I can only imagine how quickly our "friends" on the Left will respond with veilled blog posts and comments hoping for Michelle's demise.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:34 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 02, 2007

Fulla Crop

As I've stated previously, I'm not real thrilled with those who have decided to prostitute the Saddam Hussein execution video, and now that Allah tells me what the executioners were shouting, I'm even more disgusted.

Instead of professionalism, we get an execution rushed by the Iraqi government, and featuring the taunting of the condemned dictator by Sadrist Shiite guards. It's a throughly digusting display expected of primitives.

That said, the media's reaction in hunting and almost hoping for a Sunni uprising as a result of this travesty of an execution is mockable in its own right.

Dafydd at Big Lizards has a field day mocking the media response:

In a stunning display of perspicacity and sophisticated nuancing, if I'm allowed to coin that neologism, the drive-by media has discovered that long-time supporters of Saddam Hussein in Iraq are irked that he was hanged.

[snip]

So, what are we talking about, how large a "mob of angry protesters?" Was it ten thousand rallying in Samarra? A hundred thousand rocking Baghdad?

[snip]

Great Scott, if we add hundreds to hundreds, we get hundreds -- possibly a thousand. Out of a population of 8.5 million Sunnis.

The photographic evidence seems to bear Dafydd out.

Truly amazing. I haven't seen such a massively cropped protest photo since...

Zoom in tight enough, and crop it tight, and you, too, can have your very own media-worthy mob.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:30 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gone in 60 Stories

On December 5 of this year, I wrote a blog post entitled 60 Billion Minutes, where I wrote:

We also know that Jamil Hussein has consistently been a source for at least 60 news stories over two years, and that Jamil Hussein is just one of many apparently fake sources that has driven Associated Press reporting in Iraq.

This presents us with the unsettling possibility that the Associated Press has no idea how much of the news it has reported out of Iraq since the 2003 invasion is in fact real, and how much they reported was propaganda. The failure of accountability here is potentially of epic proportions.

In the weeks since that date, the Associated Press has maintained that the stories they originally reported on November 24-25 of burning mosques and burning men is true, even though almost every single factual claim made in the account has been disputed. The AP maintains this position today, even after the Iraqi Interior Ministry Officially stated that the AP's source, Captain Jamil Hussein, simply didn't exist, and that no one by that name ever worked at the two police stations where AP said he did.

To all of this, Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll stated:

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 last paragraph printed above has bothered me since I first read it. Executive Editor Carroll, you see, is absolutely correct.

No one raised questions about Hussein's accuracy or his very existence for a span of run of stories starting on April 24 until his late November unmasking as a probable specter; a remarkable run that Curt at Flopping Aces pegged at 61 stories. This run as a named source doesn't begin to account for any stories he may have contributed anonymously as "an Iraqi Police Captain" or "according to Iraqi Police" over his two-year relationship with AP.

And so it was more than a month after Hussein was compromised that I did what the Associated Press editorial process should have been doing the entire time: I began attempting to fact-check the claims made by Jamil Hussein. I took the list of 61 AP stories citing Hussein, opened my web browser to Google.com, and went to work.

In eight hours over three days last week, I tracked down online examples of the first 40 of 61 Associated Press stories citing Jamil Hussein, as replicated in news outlets and even official government press offices around the world. I then took keywords, dates, and phrases from the paragraphs citing Hussein, and attempted to find corroborating accounts from other news organizations.

I am by no means perfectly suited to do the work here that needs to be done. I lack access to LexisNexis, a powerful popular subscription-based searchable archive of periodicals such as newspapers, and I'm not about to pay for their AlaCarte service, where reading this single blog post would cost you $3. Nor do I speak any of the languages of the Middle East in which one might encounter variations of these stories, meaning I am limited to searching English-only content. That said, I did the very best I could with a limited set of skills and tools. The detailed results of my search are here. Knowing what I now know, I don't think that the editorial processes of the Associated Press even put forth that paltry effort.

Put bluntly, a search for other news agency accounts of the events described by Jamil Hussein seems to indicate that most of these events simply do not exist anywhere else except in AP reporting. I was completely unable to find a definitive corroborating account of any of Jamil Hussein's accounts, anywhere.

That I was unable to find corroborating accounts for some stories is quite understandable; even in non-war-torn countries some news organizations have access to some stories denied others, as reporting assets and sources are not evenly distributed. Most of the AP dispatches using Jamil Hussein as a source were simply not that big in the wider and often larger chaos of the bloody sectarian conflict whirling through Baghdad; a gunbattle killing two suicide bombers, or even a non-fatal car-bombing is something that has sadly become far too common in many parts of Iraq, and Baghdad in particular. That other news agencies don't account for every single attack of this kind is not surprising-though it should be somewhat suspect when in 40 straight stories, not a single one of your competitors captured the same event. Not one. At that point, some sort of editorial oversight should have kicked in, should it not?

And yet, in 40 AP stories checked, only in two instances covering a total of four stories did I run into anything approaching possible corroboration.

On May 10, AP reporter Thomas Wagner included in a dispatch the assassination of an Iraqi Defense Ministry Press Office employee:

In Baghdad, suspected insurgents riding in two BMWs assassinated a Defense Ministry press office employee as he drove to work at about 8:15 a.m., police said.

One of the BMWs stopped to block the car of Mohammed Musab Talal al-Amari, a Shiite, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. Three men got out of the other BMW and opened fire in the residential neighborhood of Bayaa, killing al-Amari and wounding an Iraqi pedestrian, Hussein said.

The Defense Ministry controls Iraq's military.

A truism about people: they become involved in things that they can relate to. Journalists in a combat zone are acutely aware that becoming a casualty is a significant possibility, and so when someone in the business gets injured, people take notice. For example, Nabil al-Dulaimi is hardly a household name in the United States, but when this radio news editor was killed in an ambush near his home by gunmen on December 5, more than a dozen English language news accounts mentioned his death.

While Mohammed Musab Talal al-Amari was a Defense Ministry Press Office employee and as such perhaps not a recognized journalist, wouldn't you think that someone other than Jamil Hussein would mention his passing?

To date, we simply don't know if this account was correct. While AP mentioned al-Amari's assassination three times, no other news agency has covered his murder to the best I have been able to determine. The only thing close to corroboration that I have been able to determine so far is the recollection of a CPATT source that a Ministry of Defense Press Office official did die in May. I will have to probably wait several more weeks to get further information.

Likewise, AP had an apparent exclusive on the murder of Iraqi Police Captain Amir Kamil on Tuesday, June 10.

Elsewhere in the capital, police Captain Amir Kamil, who provided security for the Yarmouk hospital, was shot to death on Tuesday at a bus station, Captain Jamil Hussein said.

According to AP source Jamil Hussein, Kamil provided security for Yarmouk Hospital. Even in bloody Baghdad, the deaths of rank-and-file officers warrants notice by the various news services, so why isn't there any corresponding coverage from other news organizations of the assassination of a police captain? Once again, no other news agency reports this death, and I may have to wait for weeks to get word from Iraqi officials.

Over the course of the first 40 stories in which he provided apparently uncorroborated information, it seems that the Associated Press could have easily questioned how reliable of a source Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein might be before they were backed into the corner of having to defend the apparently fictional captain, the apparently fictional five dozen news accounts he fed them, and the eventual and righteous questioning of their basic journalistic methodologies that allowed something so wrong to run for so long.

And so, as Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll noted previously:

No one - not a single person - raised questions about Hussein's accuracy or his very existence in all that time.

This includes the reporters, editors, and officers of an apparently unreliable and unrepentant Associated Press.

Update: We also learned last night from former CNN head honcho Eason Jordan of IraqSlogger that:

In statements, the AP insists Captain Hussein is real, insists he has been known to the AP and others for years, and insists the immolation episode occurred based on multiple eyewitnesses.

But efforts by two governments, several news organizations, and bloggers have failed to produce such evidence or proof that there is a Captain Jamil Hussein. The AP cannot or will not produce him or convincing evidence of his existence.

It is striking that no one has been able to find a family member, friend, or colleague of Captain Hussein. Nor has the AP told us who in the AP's ranks has actually spoken with Captain Hussein. Nor has the AP quoted Captain Hussein once since the story of the disputed episode.

Therefore, in the absence of clear and compelling evidence to corroborate the AP's exclusive story and Captain Hussein's existence, we must conclude for now that the AP's reporting in this case was flawed.

To make matters worse, Captain Jamil Hussein was a key named source in more than 60 AP stories on at least 25 supposed violent incidents over eight months.

Until this controversy is resolved, every one of those AP reports is tainted.

Update: Over at Pajamas Media, Richard Miniter brings some mostly constructive criticism of the assumptions I've made in writing this post. I'm not sure I agree with his conclusions completely, but he is certainly dead-on when it comes to why this matters.

01/04/07 Update: A source has provided me with a translation of this Arabic account, one of several verifying the death of MOD PAO Mohammed Musaab Talal al-Amari, killed on May 10. Why did you click the link? You don't speak Arabic any better than I do. We now have one of the 40 stories I inquired about corroborated by other news agencies.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:32 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gone in 60 Stories: The Grunt Work

It has long needed to be done, and I kept hoping someone else would do it: checking out the list of 61 Associated Press stories ferreted out by Curt at Flopping Aces, where the AP used Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein as a source. Perhaps it has been done and nothing was found warranting suspicion, but that, too, warrants publication. Verifiable, unverifiable, or undetermined, we need to know if Jamil Hussein's stories prior to his very questionable "burning six" story also have reason to be suspect.

The only way I can do this is to take the 61 stories Curt found, Google the keywords and dates of the described events, and see if other news organizations can corroborate the details of the events provided. Those with LexisNexis access might be able to do a better job of verifying or disputing these accounts, but you get to research using the tool set you have, not the tools you would like to have. As I don't have the time to do a complete search, I'll attempt to search through roughly the first half of the 61 stories using Jamil Hussein as a source.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:27 AM | Comments (28) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

January 01, 2007

Viewing Decebalus

If my memory serves me correctly, we react with fury when terrorists and their allies release propaganda videos of our soldiers being shot, blown up by IEDs, or on the rare occasions where our soldiers have been captured, tortured, executed, and mutilated.

And so I find it rather disgusting that so many seem to prostitute the gritty cell phone video of Saddam Hussein's execution by hanging early Saturday morning.

I have no problem with the fact Saddam was executed. Hussein was a monster who spawned and raised two sons to be even more monsterous than he, and the world is a far better place without him. But I do worry when people seem to revel in this final small measure of justice for his litany of crimes. We are, after all, sending our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines into combat day after day in hope of creating a culture where democracy under the law is respected and normal, where brutality and revenge can be usurped, and eventually fade from being part of the normal course of events to being a noteworthy oddity.

Knowledge of his death should be enough. Saddam's execution video is being prostituted (yes, that word seems most accurate) across the Internet like Decebalus' head on the steps of Rome, and in many cases, with the same triumphant flippancy among the denizens.

We should be better than that.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:43 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

December 30, 2006

End of a Dictator

Bumped to the top
12/30/06 00:55 EST: I have it on good authority that Saddam was executed at 4:22 AM... and every media source on the planet is wrong about the 6:00 AM execution.

Previously:

1:54 EST: Just got a reconfirmation from my source minutes ago. Saddam Hussein has about two hours to live, with a midnight execution still scheduled.

2:20: EST: Corroboration.

3:04 EST: Source: "they're gearing up, but logistics could put it in the wee hours after midnight. Absolutely no later than dawn, which is close to midnight our time. The Iraqis are not always as punctual as the U.S. military."

3:08 EST: Source: "It's still entirely possible he'll be dead within the hour. The curtain of secrecy draws tighter as the hour draws nearer. "

Note: this will be my final update until the deed is done-- CY.

According to an anonymous source, the former President of Iraq will be executed by hanging at 12:00 AM midnight Baghdad-time on Saturday/4:00 PM EST Friday afternoon at an undisclosed location.

If my source is correct, Saddam Hussein is facing his final sunrise.

Update:

Sooner, Rather than Later?

Update: Fox News confirms that Hussein's death sentence has been signed, and that Saddam will be executed by Saturday.

Update: What Saddam's impending death means to Jules Crittenden.

Update: Fox News confirms that Hussein's death sentence has been signed, and that Saddam will be executed by Saturday.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:55 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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