Posted on 11/27/2006 3:41:07 PM PST by lowbridge
Title requirement posting rule: Original Title.
And It's official anyways.
My question is based on what you have in parenthasis at the bottom of your post - see 135 in reference to this article. The issue I have with the MSM is that they do not indicate their sources.
We have to then glean from the article whether the situation did or did not happen, and if others in the MSM are refuting the veracity of one press source's claim - then what are we to believe?
As much as I disbelieve the AP story and the media's willingness to distort truth, I ALSO find little credibility in signing the letter as follows:
"Very respectfully,
LT XXXXXX
XXXX X XXXXXXXX
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer"
Without a viable name, this letter could be as fake as the AP story was. In dealing with a liberal enemy... say on yahoo message boards, without a name and verification the letter means squat and if I posted the source of the letter as is... they'd laugh and tear me up a new kerryhole.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1744813/posts
Once I got word that names were fine I put em in.
80 posted on 11/27/2006 11:16:37 PM CST by Starman417
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
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 Dean
Michael B. Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer
81 posted on 11/27/2006 11:17:39 PM CST by Valin (Rick Santorum 08)
I guess we will not hear that this is a bogus story since the interior minister /interior minister's spokesman fesses up to this one or maybe we will:
Gunmen kill Shi'ite families in Baghdad
TIT-FOR-TAT SECTARIAN KILLINGS
Iraq is gripped by tit-for-tat sectarian killings between majority Shi'ites and Sunnis.
Haider, a relative of one of the families killed in Jihad, said all of the dead were Shi'ites. "The gunmen broke into the house. They locked the mother and the sisters in one room and killed the five brothers in another room."
Interior Ministry sources said three headless bodies were found.
The attack came a day after Mehdi Army militias loyal to anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burned homes and killed at least two people in the religiously mixed Hurriya area in western Baghdad, witness and Interior Ministry sources said.
Dozens of Sunni families, including women and children, fled Hurriya on foot and in trucks at nightfall and took refuge in schools and mosques in neighboring Amil district.
An old man wept and cried for revenge: "I call upon all Sunnis to carry guns and fight the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, who burned our houses and displaced us."
Gunmen kill Shi'ite families in Baghdad
Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:24 PM GMT
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen killed nine members of two Shi'ite families in Baghdad Sunday a day after militias raided a mixed neighbourhood and forced dozens of Sunni families to flee in a serious escalation of sectarian violence.
Officials and relatives of the victims said about 30 gunmen stormed a home in a mostly Sunni area in southwestern Baghdad and killed five brothers from one family after separating them from the women. A father and three sons from another family, all of them policemen, were also killed.
"The gunmen broke into the house. They locked the mother and the sisters in one room and killed the five brothers in another room," a cousin, who identified himself as Haider, told Reuters. Haider, who spoke to the women after the attack, said the brothers were all Shi'ites.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf confirmed the attack in Jihad neighbourhood and said he was unaware of the victims' sectarian affiliation. A source at Yarmouk hospital said all victims were Shi'ites.
The attack came a day after gangs of Shi'ite militiamen burnt homes and killed at least two people in broad daylight in the religiously mixed Hurriya district in western Baghdad, officials and witnesses said.
Dozens of Sunni families, including women and children, fled Hurriya on foot and in trucks at nightfall in one of the worst incidents of sectarian cleansing in the capital in weeks. Interior Ministry sources said three headless bodies were found.
There were also reports of clashes Sunday between Shi'ite militias and the Sunni Janabi tribe in the Amil area in southwestern Baghdad.
Interior Ministry sources and witnesses in Hurriya, a neighbourhood with pockets of Sunnis and Shi'ites, said gunmen from the Mehdi Army militia loyal to Sadr were behind Saturday's attack. Some 100 Sunnis who were forced to flee took refuge in schools and mosques in Amil district.
Witnesses said the attack was in apparent revenge for the killing last month of 202 Shi'ites in a multiple car bombing attack in Sadr City, a stronghold of Sadr, a partner in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.
An old man wept and cried for revenge: "I call upon all Sunnis to carry guns and fight the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, who burnt our houses and displaced us."
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-12-10T172359Z_01_L10594936_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ.xml&pageNumber=2&imageid=∩=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2
Thanks TK for the ping.
The clowns who concocted the No Gun Ri story some years ago also worked for AP, and I hear they never returned their Pulitzers.
Thanks.
September 30, 2006
On Thursday morning, American and Iraqi forces closed down all entrances to the Hurriya district and started a wide house-to-house campaign to search for weapons. Following the bloody sectarian attacks that I mentioned in my last post, the situation at Hurriya almost escalated to all-out war between Sunni and Shi’ite militants in the district after two car bombs exploded near the Hurriya market Wednesday. After the first explosion, Mahdi militiamen dragged two Sunni brothers from the street and shot them in front of Sadr’s local office at Hurriya Al-Uwla. Hours later, the office was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade, sparking violent clashes that lasted about an hour. After the Iftar at sunset, an armed group gunned down 10 Sunni men heading to the Al-Mashahda mosque for the Taraweeh prayers.
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:xXKR7oO_zvYJ:healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2006_09_01_healingiraq_archive.html+Hurriya&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=38
by Anne Garrels
All Things Considered, September 22, 2006 · Tensions are rising again between the U.S. military and the Mehdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The militia is growing increasingly powerful in Baghdad, and it is accused of running death squads out of Iraq's Interior Ministry.
But Iraq's Shiite-dominated government -- which includes Sadr supporters -- refuses to take on the militia. U.S. troops put down two "uprisings" by the Mehdi army in 2004.
Earlier this week, U.S. and Iraqi forces detained Sadr officials meeting in Najaf, south of Baghdad. Among those arrested were Sadr's top representative from the Baghad district of Hurriya.
Sadr's response came Friday, as Mehdi militiamen attacked offices of Sunni political parties in Hurriya, according to an eye witness reached by phone.
"I know they were Mehdi Army because they are my neighbors," the source said. "And they were reinforced by volunteers from Sadr City," he said, referring to the area of Baghdad.
The Mehdi Army set several buildings on fire, and attacked two Sunni mosques. Firefighters were shot at when they came to help. According to the eyewitness, who asked not to be identified for his own safety, an Iraqi checkpoint nearby did not respond. Instead, U.S. forces arrived backed by helicopters, and the miltia retreated.
Sadr's militia has regularly retaliated when its people are detained.
At the end of August, Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. forces arrested a member of Sadr's milita in Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, saying the man was planning bombings there. A major battle erupted between the Iraqi army and the Mehdi Army. Some 25 soldiers were killed, including 12 who Sadr militiamen reportedly executed in the public square.
In other areas, people loyal to Sadr are believed to have infiltrated the Interior Ministry and police forces. And Gen. Joseph Peterson says the Mehdi Army, known in arabic as Jaish al-Mahdi, is among the most active of the Shiite death squads now targeting Sunnis.
A former Iraqi police captain who asked that only part of his name, Mohammed, be used, claims that Interior Ministry officers have given vehicles, weapons and uniforms to death squds from various Shiite mlitias.
The U.S. military has launched a new operation called "Quick Look" to reassess the police leadership and provide additional training in the coming month.
They plan to use a range of measures to clean out the police force. They include lie-detector tests, new uniforms that are not easily duplicated, and specially marked vehicles.
My quess is that this guy is a member of the Mehdi militia. Check out my other post at how members of the Mehdi militia has been killing, etc in Hurrihay in the past months. Also in one on the articles there is accusations of the interior minister and/or members of the interior minister in cohots with the Mehdi militia.
Hi, lowbridge -- thanks for posting this.
I'm adding keyword "oldmediamissesiniraq" , so we can keep track of how the media misrepresents whats going on inn the war on terror.
I hope you're off to a good start on the new year -- best to you. Thanks again for good memories of a green algore.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.