Posted on 11/29/2006 1:55:33 AM PST by hocndoc
. . . [I]nvolving the use of enemy propagandists by our MSM. . . . (snip)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: UNCLASSIFIEDNot only is Capt. Hussein bogus, but another source the AP has used extensively is bogus. . . .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
November 27 with Centcom comments
and
November 28th with references to the "Civil War" we hear so much about.
This is a very small amount of the information at the blog.
I don't post blog entries often - however, Chris Muir referred to these posts in his "Day by Day" cartoon, and the information seems legitimate - or maybe it just fits with what I expected.
I'm not holding my breath.
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The socialist/Marxist/liberal media is the most destructive, relentless, and ruthless enemy of this Republic.
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thanks for posting!
Getting The News From The Enemy, Update II
thanks for the pings and the bumps!
The media is still killing this country ........ along with Congress, the publik skoolz, the entertainment business, the lawyers, and the ..............
One of Dubya's biggest failings is in not figuring out ways to undercut them and go around them.
Maybe his "Born Again Christian" .... "turn the other cheek" .... "new tone" ethic is really not fit for the Presidency in this day and age of twenty four hour hateful media.
Maybe he has failed to respond for other reasons.
No matter what, you are right, he has failed to respond in a meaningful and forceful way. It has been pathetic, and he is very much part of the reason that the Dems. are in charge now.
But, I still blame it on an evil force in this country........ the ruthless, anti-American media!!! The media is killing this country very methodically and consciously.
Sad!
wow. I'm....shocked (not).
Witnesses Detail Iraq Burning Deaths
By STEVEN R. HURST
Associated Press Writer
November 28, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq — 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.
However, the U.S. military said in a letter to the AP late Monday, three days after the incident, that it had checked with the Iraqi Interior Ministry and was told that no one by the name of Jamil Hussein works for the ministry or as a Baghdad police officer. Lt. Michael B. Dean, a public affairs officer of the U.S. Navy Multi-National Corps-Iraq Joint Operations Center, signed the letter, a text of which was published subsequently on several Internet blogs. The letter also reiterated an earlier statement from the U.S. military that it had been unable to confirm the report of immolation.
The AP received no comment Friday when it first asked the U.S. military for information. It then carried portions of a U.S. military statement Saturday that said the U.S. had been unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. The U.S. military said that neither police nor coalition forces had reports of such an incident.
The Iraqi Defense Ministry later said that al-Hashimi, the Sunni elder in Hurriyah, had recanted his account of the attack after being visited by a representative of the defense minister.
The dispute comes at a time when the military is taking a more active role in dealing with the media.
The AP reported on Sept. 26 that a Washington-based firm, the Lincoln Group, had won a two-year contract to monitor reporting on the Iraq conflict in English-language and Arabic media outlets.
That contract succeeded one held by another Washington firm, The Rendon Group. Controversy had arisen around the Lincoln Group in 2005 when it was disclosed that it was part of a U.S. military operation to pay Iraqi newspapers to run positive stories about U.S. military activities.
Seeking further information about Friday's attack, an AP reporter contacted Hussein for a third time about the incident to confirm there was no error. The captain has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions. The captain, who gave his full name as Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, said six people were indeed set on fire.
On Tuesday, two AP reporters also went back to the Hurriyah neighborhood around the Mustafa mosque and found three witnesses who independently gave accounts of the attack. Others in the neighborhood said they were afraid to talk about what happened.
Those who would talk said the assault began about 2:15 p.m., and they believed the attackers were from the Mahdi Army militia loyal to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He and the Shiite militia are deeply rooted in and control the Sadr City enclave in northeastern Baghdad where suspected Sunni insurgents attacked with a series of car bombs and mortar shells, killing at least 215 people a day before.
The witnesses refused to allow the use of their names because they feared retribution either from the original attackers or the police, whose ranks are infiltrated by Mahdi Army members or its associated death squads.
Two of the witnesses _ a 45-year-old bookshop owner and a 48-year-old neighborhood grocery owner _ gave nearly identical accounts of what happened. A third, a physician, said he saw the attack on the mosque from his home, saw it burning and heard people in the streets screaming that people had been set on fire. All three men are Sunni Muslims.
The two other witnesses said the mosque assault began in earnest about 2:30 p.m. after the arrival of the four vehicles filled with arms. They said the attackers fired into the mosque, then entered and set it on fire.
Then, the witnesses said, the attackers brought out six men, blindfolded and handcuffed, and lined them up on the street at the gate of the mosque. The witnesses said the six were doused with kerosene from a 1.3-gallon canister and set on fire at intervals, one after the other, with a torch made of rags. The fifth and sixth men in the line were set afire at the same time.
The witnesses said the burning victims rolled on the ground in agony until apparently dead, then the gunmen fired a single bullet into each of their heads.
The witnesses said residents, in the meantime, had taken up arms and began a gunbattle with the suspected militiamen that raged in the neighborhood until 4 p.m. They said eight to 10 gunmen were killed and left in the streets. Iraqi law allows each household to own an AK-47 assault rife for protection.
One witness said he and other people from the neighborhood took the six immolation victims to the Sunni cemetery near Baghdad's Abu Ghraib suburb and buried them after the gunbattle. That witness said one of the victims was the Mustafa mosque muezzin or prayer caller, Ahmed al-Mashadani. He did not know the names of the five others, but said they were all members of the al-Mashadani tribe.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ap/story.asp?AP_ID=D8LMEGUG0
November 28, 2006
Questioning Reports Out Of Iraq
A number of right-leaning bloggers are criticizing the Associated Press for a pair of stories from Iraq. The first story, a version of which ran on CBSNews.com, stated that suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia "grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene." The source for the story was police Capt. Jamil Hussein. CENTCOM has issued a press release disputing the legitimacy of the source and the story, and asking for a retraction or correction if the organization does not have "a credible source."
From the press release: "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." Hussein has been cited in other stories about atrocities as well; this blog, Flopping Aces, has more.
Today, the righty blogs are also criticizing this piece, which includes the following passage:
Separately, police and witnesses said U.S. soldiers shot and killed 11 civilians and wounded five on Sunday night in the Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya. The U.S. military said it had no record of any American military operation in the area.
"We were sitting inside our house when the Americans showed up and started firing at homes. They killed many people and burned some houses," said one of the witnesses, a man with bandages on his head who was being treated at Imam Ali Hospital in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The police and witnesses spoke with Associated Press Television News on condition of anonymity to protect their own security.
Writes Riehl World View: " The military denies any operation in the area, still the AP feels compelled to print this trash from sources who won't even identify themselves?" CENTCOM claims "Anti-Iraqi Forces opened fire, targeting civilians in the al-Husseiniya area….There was no Coalition involvement."
These posts have been given headers like "It's Official: Media Body Burning Story is Bogus." The stories, along with one from the Los Angeles Times, are being used as further evidence that, in the words of the Anchoress, "The press has done everything else it possibly could to undermine our troops and the president, since 2003." She goes on to question whether such reporting has increased the likelihood that American troops will be killed. "I wonder how many of our troops are being further endangered by the fakery we’re discovering here? I wonder how many of their deaths in the coming weeks will be due to this sort of stuff?" Writes Michelle Malkin, in a post in which she refers to "the Associated (with terrorists) Press": "…we cannot trust third-hand accounts from shady 'spokesmen' funneled through dubious foreign stringers working for the terrorist-sympathizing, anti-Bush press to give us the straight scoop."
It's important to remember that we don't actually yet know if the AP's stories are "bogus." They may well be. They may not. Reporters face unique challenges in a war, and it's worthwhile to question the way they operate in Iraq, on everything from the necessary-but-risky use of stringers to the reliance on named and anonymous sources that may not be trustworthy. But because of their instinctive distrust of the mainstream media, some bloggers have drawn conclusions that, at this point, strike me as premature.
The press has an incentive to report on the sensational, which is why a reporter might put some degree of trust in a dubious source. But it also needs to maintain its credibility, and it's not in the AP's interest to run stories it does not believe to be true. News organizations do sometimes get this stuff wrong, and they should be held to account when they do. But most of the time they get it right, which is no small feat when covering a war. It's important, when looking at a situation like this, to take a step back and try to look objectively at all the facts, even the ones that don't fit our preconceived notions. The blogs deserve credit for raising this issue. Now it's time to get to the bottom of it.
UPDATE: USA Today got a comment from AP International Editor John Daniszewski, who writes that the "attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question." He also writes that the AP stands by its story, and that "we have conducted a thorough review of the sourcing and reporting involved and plan to move a more detailed report about the entire incident soon, with greater detail provided by multiple eye witnesses."
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/11/28/publiceye/entry2212078.shtml
AP calls Centcom accusation “ludicrous,” stands by its storyposted at 6:39 pm on November 28, 2006 by Allahpundit
The boss has details. Yes, they claim, there is in fact a person named Jamil Hussein — Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, to be precise — and yes, he’s a bona fide Iraqi police officer based at the station in Yarmouk. And for Centcom to suggest otherwise smells like a hamhanded attempt to discredit a story that makes things in Iraq look worse than the military would prefer them to look.
They’ve also filed a new story about the incident replete with what they claim are independent corroborating accounts from eyewitnesses:
Two of the witnesses — a 45-year-old bookshop owner and a 48-year-old neighborhood grocery owner — gave nearly identical accounts of what happened. A third, a physician, said he saw the attack on the mosque from his home, saw it burning and heard people in the streets screaming that people had been set on fire. All three men are Sunni Muslims.
The two other witnesses said the mosque assault began in earnest about 2:30 p.m. after the arrival of the four vehicles filled with arms. They said the attackers fired into the mosque, then entered and set it on fire.
Then, the witnesses said, the attackers brought out six men, blindfolded and handcuffed, and lined them up on the street at the gate of the mosque. The witnesses said the six were doused with kerosene from a 1.3-gallon canister and set on fire at intervals, one after the other, with a torch made of rags. The fifth and sixth men in the line were set afire at the same time.
The witnesses said the burning victims rolled on the ground in agony until apparently dead, then the gunmen fired a single bullet into each of their heads…
One witness said he and other people from the neighborhood took the six immolation victims to the Sunni cemetery near Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib suburb and buried them after the gunbattle. That witness said one of the victims was the Mustafa mosque muezzin or prayer caller, Ahmed al-Mashadani. He did not know the names of the five others, but said they were all members of the al-Mashadani tribe.
It’d be easy to verify this if there was no Islamic taboo about disinterment. As it is, Centcom had better check the cop and figure out who he is and why he wasn’t on the rolls of Iraqi MOI pronto. If he’s a legitimate police officer and they have no record of him, it’d be hugely embarrassing. And not just because of what it means for this story.
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/11/28/ap-calls-centcom-accusation-ludicrous-stands-by-its-story/
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006439.htm
From that last post gave, I agree with this guy:
*** John Hinderaker:I have infinitely more faith in the U.S. military than in the Associated Press, but that doesn't mean the military is always right or the AP always wrong. It seems that the AP believes it is in a strong position. I'm tempted to say that one institution or the other must emerge from this affair with its credibility damaged. But perhaps it's just as likely that the facts will remain unresolved, lost in what sometimes seems like an epistemological fog. Or maybe it's just a fog of bad reporting.
On the net regarding the Iraqi interior ministry:
Reining in the Sadrist movement – one of the groups in a Shia coalition that brought Mr Maliki to power but whose affiliated militia is accused of involvement in violence against Sunni Arabs – has been a long-standing US demand.
The suspension of official participation by the five Sadrist ministers and 30 lawmakers may not have lasting impact but it piles up the pressure on Mr Maliki. The group issued a statement saying the Bush-Maliki summit would be "provocation to the feelings of the Iraqi people and a violation of their constitutional rights".
Iraqi officials say Mr Maliki is looking for an accelerated handover of security to Iraqis and a discussion about an agreement to regulate the presence of the 160,000-strong multinational forces, whose mandate was extended for one year on Tuesday by the UN Security Council.
US officials on Wednesday played down suggestions of US displeasure with Mr Maliki, insisting that Mr Bush was convinced of the Iraqi prime minister's "good intentions" and would on Thursday discuss how to turn these intentions into concrete action.
A senior official said the administration was working with Mr Maliki to "improve" his capabilities, praising the Iraqi leader for taking on some of the key challenges, including making changes at an interior ministry that has been infiltrated by Shia militias.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=FT&Date=20061129&ID=6235055
Not just bad reporting, but far more troubling than merely "bad reporting".
Remember genocide in Jenin? I think the Isra-eeelis killed a total of 40-50. Hardly genocide.
Unfortunately, the MSM is hell-bent on our western culture's destruction.
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