AP making it up as they go...
Message 23140654
Paging Capt. Hussein
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 12/27/2006
Media: After Reuters was burned by an anti-Semitic photographer, you would think the "objective" press would be more careful. How to explain, then, the mystery of Associated Press source Jamil Hussein?
The AP claims Hussein is a captain in the Iraqi police force and works in the Baghdad region. Between April and November, he was used as a source in 61 AP stories. In one of his last starring roles, he provided an account of an alleged Shiite militia attack on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad on Nov. 24.
According to that AP dispatch, 50 men blew open the front of a mosque and dragged six Sunni worshippers outside, where they poured kerosene on the six and set them on fire. If true, the story would seem to be yet another incident that reflects badly on the U.S. efforts in Iraq. It feeds the media-generated perception that Iraq is a Vietnamlike quagmire from which we cannot escape.
There's evidence, however, that the story might have been embellished, because Capt. Jamil Hussein of the Iraqi police force may not exist. U.S. military officials told the AP in a letter that they checked out the captain and were told by the Iraqi Interior Ministry that no one by the name of Jamil Hussein works there or as a police officer.
Armed forces officials also said the U.S. was unable to confirm the media reports that the six Sunnis were burned to death. Military officials further said in the days after the alleged incident that neither Iraqi police nor coalition forces had reports of the event.
Yet the AP stands by its man.
"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," Steven R. Hurst wrote in an AP story in late November.
What is clear about all this is that nothing is clear. Maybe there's a Jamil Hussein with the Iraqi police, but he's a sergeant, not a captain. Maybe there's a police captain whose first name is spelled Jamail, not Jamil. Both possibilities have been floated in the blogosphere, but neither has withstood scrutiny.
Editor & Publisher summed it up best when it reported that Jamil Hussein had been lost, then "found," then lost again. Amazing.
Last summer, Reuters, the media outlet that refuses to label terrorists as terrorists, was jolted by the "fauxtography" scandal. Adnan Hajj, a freelance Lebanese photographer, allegedly doctored images of the Israel-Hezbollah war and photographed what appeared to many to be staged scenes of victim rescue and recovery efforts in Qana, a Lebanese village where Israel attacked Hezbollah terrorists. Both were clearly an effort to further inflame a world that had already cast Israel as the villain.
Just as we asked in August if Reuters was "a patsy or collaborator," we wonder the same about the AP. We also wonder if we can trust any AP report from the Middle East. If it can't show us Capt. Jamil Hussein, we're not sure it has anything else we want to see. |
