Posted on 11/27/2006 3:41:07 PM PST by lowbridge
Posted by Greg Sheffield on November 27, 2006 - 13:25.
The news that six Sunnis were captured by Shiites, doused with kerosine and burned alive, was too sensational to not be picked up by the mainstream media. But it turns out that the event never happened. Furthermore, the Iraqi "spokesman" relied on to give all information regarding this event is as fictional as the story itself.
Jamil Hussein, the man news reports called "police Capt. Jamil Hussein," was the source for all information regarding the burning. Although he is mentioned by USA Today, the Associated Press, CBS News, and other outlets, Central Command says no such person exists. Centcom also asked the Associated Press to retract the story unless it has proof beyond Jamil Hussein's word.
Flopping Aces has a press release from Centcom, which is in charge of all U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Dear Associated Press:
On Nov. 24, 2006, your organization published an article by Qais Al-Bashir about six Sunnis being burned alive in the presence of Iraqi Police officers. This news item, which is below, received an enormous amount of coverage internationally.
We at Multi-National Corps - Iraq made it known through MNC-I Press Release Number 20061125-09 and our conversations with your reporters that neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story. A couple of hours ago, we learned something else very important. We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team.
Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spokesman, Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq, supposedly of the city’s Yarmouk police station, does not work at that police station and is also not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP. The MOI has supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning.
I know we have informed you that there exists an MOI edict that no one below the level of chief is authorized to be an Iraqi Police spokesperson. An unauthorized IP spokesperson will get fired for talking to the media. While I understand the importance of a news agency to use anonymous and unauthorized sources, it is still incumbent upon them to make sure their facts are straight. Was this information verified by anyone else? If the source providing the information is lying about his name, then he ought not to be represented as an official IP spokesperson and should be listed as an anonymous source.
Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a retraction, or a correction at a minimum, acknowledging that the source named in the story is not who he claimed he was. MNC-I and MNF-I are always available and willing to verify events and provide as much information as possible when asked.
Very respectfully,
LT XXXXXXXXXX X XXXXXXXX
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer
Retraction will be on page 56.
They just can't help themselves....ROTFLMAO...the free press unfortunatly allows lies to be printed, especially Democrat-al-quida news.
Meadow Muffin
Um, what about the other half-dozen or more stories with quotes attributed to "Capt. Jamil Hussein"?
The reporters who "met with him" for statements should be questioned.
How many words were wasted on this story on this forum?
Radical Muslims are becoming experts at PR.
The Palistinians have been playing the Western Media for years.
Now, the Radical Muslims in Iraq are also playing the Media.
The Media is so hungry for anti-American, anti-US Military, anti-West materials that they will buy anything. They are being taken in.
And people wonder why I take most news with a large chuck of salt unless I can get it from at least two independent sources.
Michelle Malkin's Hot Air is piling on, too.
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/11/27/bombshell-centcom-says-aps-iraqi-police-source-isnt-iraqi-police/
AP: Investigative reporting without the investigation, intellectual honesty, and curiosity to find out what the real story is.
Did you see the latest real or photoshop?
Thanks for posting this, lowbridge. Stay well!
The press have firmly established themselves as propaganda shills for any political movement, philosophy, or event that they favor. To wit: The Democrat Party, global warming, and defeat of America in Iraq.
They do not need facts to further their agenda, pure fantasy and fabrication will suffice. Truth and facts no longer matter, whatever nonsense fed to them that supports their storyline will receive frontpage treatment.
Remember that the press have locked themselves away within the Green Zone, or in an impregnable fortress compound from which they never sally forth. They could just as well be reporting from Fargo, North Dakota, except that it would be difficult to pay their Al Qaida operatives who serve as stringers.
Pay no attention to the MSM, if you want truth, you must look elsewhere.
How many deaths is the Anything For A Story Media responsible for?
Remember the koran flushed down the toilet at Gitmo story? It was false. Yet, riots erupted around the world, people were killed.
This latest story inflamed the Sunnis and retaliation was horrible.
The media does not care. People getting killed because of fabricated stories? No big deal. They got the ratings and ratings trump human life every time.
On the other hand, the true story of hundreds of Americans being burned to death on 9-11 is not worth covering because it would just make us angry. < / sarcasm >
thanks for reminding us who the enemy is...
here we go...FYI
If you google for Jamad Hussein, you will come up with a lot of stuff.
One site points out that a lot of stories have been credited to this terrorist propaganda agent:
http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/
This from somewhere in the middle of the blog:
Reporters Source in Iraq Proven False
I will link to Flopping Aces at the end of this post. He has done a great job staying on this situation and continues to do so.
I am grabbing the parts of his updates (with his permission, of course) dealing with Capt. Jamil Hussein, the main source for many stories coming out of Iraq.
UPDATE
Doing a search via Google I began reading the stories printed about the burned six and each and every one had one thing in common. The only person stating that this incident happened was one Capt. Jamil Hussein. Every news report printed this man as the source of the information.
If you do a search for this name you come up with ten pages of pretty much the same article describing the burning six.
Trying to dig up some information on this man as we speak.
UPDATE II
Since this guys name is in every single story printed about the burning six I have to dig way down to get to older stories involving this guy.
This one from April:
In yesterday’s worst violence, the bodies of six handcuffed, blindfolded and tortured men were found in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.
This one from May:
Violence resumed Saturday as a bomb in a parked car exploded near a busy bus station in southern Baghdad, killing at least four civilians and wounding seven, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
[…]Elsewhere, a policeman was killed and an officer wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in Baghdad’s western district of Mansour, Razzaq said. He also said three policemen were wounded when gunmen ambushed a convoy of Interior Ministry commandos in the southern neighbourhood of al-Bayaa in the capital.
Gunmen in three speeding cars also ambushed a patrol in western Baghdad, wounding 10 people, including six policemen, and two other policemen were injured in drive-by shootings in a nearby neighbourhood, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
Two other policemen were injured Saturday in drive-by shootings elsewhere in western Baghdad, when gunmen in two speeding cars attacked their patrol in Amiriya neighbourhood of western Baghdad, police Capt. Jamil Hussien said.
Here is one from June:
Two explosions struck an Interior Ministry patrol and a market in the Baghdad area on Monday evening, killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said. The first attack was a car bomb that struck an Interior Ministry patrol in western Baghdad, killing four commandos and wounding six, Capt. Jamil Hussein said. About 30 minutes later, a bomb exploded in a market in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 10.
July:
Gunmen also ambushed a bus in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in western Baghdad, killing six passengers, including a woman, and the driver, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
September:
A suicide truck bomb slammed into a Baghdad police headquarters on Wednesday, killing seven and wounding at least double that many, in a deadly 24 hours that saw more than 45 killings in Iraq, including two American soldiers, authorities said.
The truck bomb attack in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora came at 07:45 as policemen were coming on duty and the blast razed the building, said captain Jamil Hussein. He said the number of casualties was expected to rise.
His name is mentioned quite a bit when Sunni’s are attacked it seems.
Now we will jump to the meat of this story.
UPDATE XI 11/27/06 0900hrs PST
BIG UPDATE…..Centcom has confirmed this Capt. Jamil Hussein is NOT a Police Officer nor is he employed by the Ministry of Interior:
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Dear Associated Press:
On Nov. 24, 2006, your organization published an article by Qais Al-Bashir about six Sunnis being burned alive in the presence of Iraqi Police officers. This news item, which is below, received an enormous amount of coverage internationally.
We at Multi-National Corps - Iraq made it known through MNC-I Press Release Number 20061125-09 and our conversations with your reporters that neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story. A couple of hours ago, we learned something else very important. We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team.
Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spokesman, Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq, supposedly of the city’s Yarmouk police station, does not work at that police station and is also not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP. The MOI has supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning.
I know we have informed you that there exists an MOI edict that no one below the level of chief is authorized to be an Iraqi Police spokesperson. An unauthorized IP spokesperson will get fired for talking to the media. While I understand the importance of a news agency to use anonymous and unauthorized sources, it is still incumbent upon them to make sure their facts are straight. Was this information verified by anyone else? If the source providing the information is lying about his name, then he ought not to be represented as an official IP spokesperson and should be listed as an anonymous source.
Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a retraction, or a correction at a minimum, acknowledging that the source named in the story is not who he claimed he was. MNC-I and MNF-I are always available and willing to verify events and provide as much information as possible when asked.
Very respectfully,
LT XXXXXX
XXXX X XXXXXXXX
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer
Ping!
Hmmmmmmm...and wouldn't you know that it was THAT thread that got the whole Freeper flame war started...
over a NO story, story.
I don't THINK so........
I just found out about this and i'm astonished at the severe lack of credibility of the news media in general. Un-FReepin'-Believable!!!
NO WAY....one thing I noticed...there weren't very many that weren't dead sure they were right...more right than the White House, CIA, ...you name it.
I'm not going to hold my breath waiting. They'll just find something else.
I just finshed reading this, but thanks for the ping. ;~ )
btw, I missed the flame war over this. you weren't involved in it were you?? hmmm??
"Jamil Hussein"
all 1,958 news articles
http://news.google.com/news?ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&oe=ISO-8859-1&tab=dn&ncl=1111331846
"They are being taken in."
I'd change that to, "They are willing accomplices." ;)
Well, they have fellow travellers at al-Reuters and willing dupes at CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN/etc....
Bastards ... all!
It takes character to apologize, and I haven't noticed much of that showing forth in the usual suspects.....
If the U.S. Military Command issued a Press Release, why is the name of the issuing officer blocked out? Is there an official U.S. military website where the Press Release is posted?
I have no idea.
You are right. They know how to make the news, literally. We are losing the PR war.
WOW!
Very nice site, and the music is perfect!
Thank you!
Allow me to apologize for rising to AP bullsh!t bait. It does not change my opinion that something different must be done, besides "stay the course". MNF press has been misleading as well, admittedly not near to the degree of the rest.
I will apologize for believing an AP report, as soon as you apologize for believing a report signed
"Very respectfully,
LT XXXXXX
XXXX X XXXXXXXX
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer"
Public Affairs Officers are by their very title, public people. It does NOT compromise Operational Security to quote a PAO by name. So which is worse? Believe a blatant lie that is published by AP, or believe Lt. XXXXXX? I contend that we should thoroughly vet any source. Alas, neither the press nor MNC-I nor MNF-I (the military public reporting groups) send their stories to FR for proper review and vetting prior to going to print. Live with it.
FARS any info yet on this?
Were you one of the 'get out of Iraq now Bush is a moron' emotional reactors to this story, Son? Were you one of the ones mocking those who questioned the story's veracity?
If so, apologize. If not, no need to comment.
(IIRC, you swallowed this story without question, didn't you? Made Bush look bad, and so you believed it, didn't you?)
I still believe the six were the six Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
LOL, OUR military is so good they even have to give journalism ethics lessons to the AP. LOL!
Good posting devolve!!
Great gifs! Keep up the good work!
One Mosque Burned in Hurriya
Saturday, 25 November 2006
Multi-National Corps – Iraq
Public Affairs Office, Camp Victory
APO AE 09342
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RELEASE No. 20061125-09
Nov. 25, 2006
One Mosque Burned in Hurriya
Multi-National Corps – Iraq PAO
BAGHDAD — Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood.
Soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division conducted a patrol in Hurriya Friday afternoon in response to media reports that four mosques were being burned as retaliation for the VBIED attacks in Sadr City on Thursday.
The Soldiers set up a checkpoint near the Al Muhaimen mosque at approximately 2 p.m. and found the mosque intact with no evidence of any fire at the location.
While investigating the Al Meshaheda mosque, the patrol received small arms fire from unknown insurgents. The patrol returned fire, and the insurgents broke contact and fled the area. A subsequent check of the mosque found the mosque intact with no evidence of a fire.
At approximately 3:50 p.m., a local civilian reported to the patrol that armed insurgents had set the Al-Nidaa mosque on fire by throwing a gas container into the mosque. The patrol pursued the insurgents but lost contact with them.
The Soldiers called the fire department and set up a cordon around the mosque. Local fire trucks responded to the scene and extinguished the fire at approximately 4:00 p.m. The mosque sustained smoke and fire damage in the entry way but was not destroyed.
An alleged attack on a fourth mosque remains unconfirmed. The patrol was also unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident.
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7540&Itemid=21
Thanks potlatch -
-- Nothing like actual photos & quotes to expose the pimping politicians and MSM pansies as traitors for hire
And you do it very well!!
The story may have been fictional, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. That's why it was so easily believed. I'm relieved it wasn't true, though; it was just too horrific to contemplate.
Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Michelle Malkin ping list...
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