[TexKat]

The AP needs to understand that whether this specific incident actually happened is the minor issue here. The major issue, and the one the AP needs to address fully and immediately, is whether a source named Jamil Hussein actually exists and if so is he actually an Iraqi police officer. The AP needs to bring Jamil Hussein forward, verify his identity, and explain why his identity as a police officer was not verified with Centcom. I'm so tired of the msm's arrogant attitude that if they say something then it's true and they don't need verfified sources for their "news" stories.

No they do not need to bring this man forward, nor any other police forward. And if they need to notify Centcom, then that should be between Centcom and them (the media), not for every Tom, Dick and Harry that wants to play the Gotcha game.

[ArmstedFragg]

We're getting off on a tangent here. The only report we have of Hussein's identity not being verified by CENTCOM is from that unsigned letter purporting to be from CENTCOM. The only thing I've seen resembling a sourced comment from them is that the bureaucratic construct in the country makes it impossible for them to determine the guy's legitimacy.

For some reason, there's a lot of folks taking that unsigned letter as the gospel, while rejecting the more limited public comments that we can verify are legitimate. If we're going to get to the truth of this thing, we ought to at least start out with a common understanding of what is and is not verified by a legitimate CENTCOM source. To me, an unsigned letter isn't a legit source.