Author Topic: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq  (Read 11163 times)

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Lanya

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Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« on: January 04, 2007, 11:17:09 PM »

Shocking Twist: Iraqi At Center of Dispute Over AP Source Does Exist -- And Faces Arrest for Talking to Media

By E&P Staff

Published: January 04, 2007 5:20 PM ET updated 8:00 PM ET

NEW YORK The Associated Press has just sent E&P the following dispatch from Baghdad, as it was about to be distributed on its wire. The existence of Jamil Hussein had been hotly disputed by conservative bloggers, some Iraqi officials and the U.S. military in recent weeks.
*

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.

Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press.

The captain, whose full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, was one of the sources for an AP story in late November about the burning and shooting of six people during a sectarian attack at a Sunni mosque.

The U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry raised the doubts about Hussein in questioning the veracity of the AP's initial reporting on the incident, and the Iraqi ministry suggested that many news organization were giving a distorted, exaggerated picture of the conflict in Iraq. Some Internet bloggers spread and amplified these doubts, accusing the AP of having made up Hussein's identity in order to disseminate false news about the war.

Khalaf offered no explanation Thursday for why the ministry had initially denied Hussein's existence, other than to state that its first search of records failed to turn up his full name. He also declined to say how long the ministry had known of its error and why it had made no attempt in the past six weeks to correct the public record.

Hussein was not the original source of the disputed report of the attack; the account was first told on Al-Arabiya satellite television by a Sunni elder, Imad al-Hashimi, who retracted it after members of the Defense Ministry paid him a visit. Several neighborhood residents subsequently gave the AP independent accounts of the Shiite militia attack on a mosque in which six people were set on fire and killed.

Khalaf told the AP that an arrest warrant had been issued for the captain for having contacts with the media in violation of the ministry's regulations.

Hussein told the AP on Wednesday that he learned the arrest warrant would be issued when he returned to work on Thursday after the Eid al-Adha holiday. His phone was turned off Thursday and he could not be reached for further comment.

Hussein appears to have fallen afoul of a new Iraqi push, encouraged by some U.S. advisers, to more closely monitor the flow of information about the country's violence, and strictly enforce regulations that bar all but authorized spokesmen from talking to media.

During Saddam Hussein's rule, information in Iraq had been fiercely controlled by the Information Ministry, but after the arrival of U.S. troops in 2003 and during the transition to an elected government in 2004, many police such as Hussein felt freer to talk to journalists and give information as it occurred.

As a consequence, most news organizations working in Iraq have maintained Iraqi police contacts routinely in recent years. Some officers who speak with reporters withhold their names or attempt to disguise their names using different variants of one or two middle names or last names for reasons of security. Hussein, however, spoke for the record, using his authentic first and last name, on numerous occasions.

His first contacts with the AP were in 2004, when the current Interior Ministry and its press apparatus was still being formed out of the chaotic remains of the Saddam-era ministry.

The information he provided about various police incidents was never called into question until he became embroiled in the attempt to discredit the AP story about the Hurriyah mosque attack.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Thursday that the military had asked the Interior Ministry on Nov. 26 if it had a policeman by the name of Jamil Hussein. Two days later, U.S. Navy Lt. Michael B. Dean, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Navy Multi-National Corps-Iraq Joint Operations Center, sent an e-mail to AP in Baghdad saying that the military had checked with the Iraqi Interior Ministry and was told that no one by the name of Jamil Hussein worked for the ministry or was a Baghdad police officer.

Dean also demanded that the mosque attack story be retracted.

The text of the Dean letter appeared quickly on several Internet blogs, prompting heated debate about the story and criticism of the AP.

At the weekly Interior Ministry briefing on Nov. 30, Khalaf cited the AP story as an example of why the ministry had decided to form a special unit to monitor news coverage and vowed to take legal action against journalists who failed to correct stories the ministry deemed to be incorrect.

At the time Khalaf said the ministry had no one on its staff by the name of Jamil Hussein.

"Maybe he wore an MOI (Ministry of Interior) uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money," Khalaf said then. The AP has not paid Jamil Hussein and does not pay any news sources for information for its stories.

On Thursday, Khalaf told AP that the ministry at first had searched its files for Jamil Hussein and found no one. He said a later search turned up Capt. Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, assigned to the Khadra police station.

But the AP had already identified the captain by all three names in a story on Nov. 28-- two days before the Interior Ministry publicly denied his existence on the police rolls.

Khalaf did not say whether the U.S. military had ever been told that Hussein in fact exists. Garver, the U.S. military spokesman, said Thursday that he was not aware that the military had ever been told.

Khalaf said Thursday that with the arrest of Hussein for breaking police regulations against talking to reporters, the AP would be called to identify him in a lineup as the source of its story.

Should the AP decline to assist in the identification, Khalaf said, the case against Hussein would be dropped. He also said there were no plans to pursue action against the AP should it decline.

He said police officers sign a pledge not to talk to reporters when they join the force. He did not explain why Jamil Hussein had become an issue now, given that he had been named by AP in dozens of news reports dating back to early 2006. Before that, he had been a reliable source of police information since 2004 but had not been quoted by name.
***

E&P note: As recently as yesterday, Michelle Malkin, the best-known blog critic of Hussein's existence, stated flatly "the fact that there is no police captain named 'Jamil Hussein' working now or ever in either Yarmouk or al Khadra, according to on-the-ground sources in Baghdad. Late this afternoon, she posted part of the AP dispatch above with the comment, "Checking it out. Moving forward...."

She later sent a note to the blog of another Hussein doubter, Allahpundit, stating, "Just to clarify, I’m not apologizing for anything."

Dan at Flopping Aces, credited by Malkin with being first to break the story of the AP's source likely non-existence, asked, referring to Hussein: "His phone was turned off? Interesting.....why would his phone be turned off all of a sudden? Would this mean he will once again NOT be produced for questioning?"

Dan Riehl, another blogging Hussein doubter, responded today, "Fascinating. But let me be the first to say to the Left, before they lose themselves in glee, I don't see that bloggers have anything to apologize for, nor do I see this story being at an end."

Also on the right, Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters admitted, "This certainly tends to discredit the blogospheric attacks on AP if true, as well as the U.S. and Iraqi protestations." But he raised "the question about the Iraqi intent to arrest Hussein. Why would they want to arrest him if he told the truth to the AP?"

Confederate Yankee allowed, "As far as the AP's story goes, it does raise some very interesting questions, and I think I'll have a very entertaining weekend trying to make sense of it all."

Eason Jordan, at his new IraqSlogger site, just two days ago had declared that AP was now in a major "scandal." He had earlier offered to fly Malkin and another blogger to Baghdad, on his own dime, to search for Hussein.

A prime Jamil Hussein doubter, Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald, wrote on his blog on Tuesday, "If Jamil Hussein's apparent failure to exist is ever acknowledged, it will be buried. The AP's clients, by and large, don't care. Nor to the 'ethics' gatekeepers in the business."

http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.editorandpublisher.com%2Feandp%2Fnews%2Farticle_display.jsp%3Fvnu_content_id%3D1003528028
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BT

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2007, 12:32:52 AM »
So Jamil Hussein still has not been produced?

Michael Tee

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2007, 02:27:32 AM »
Gee, so apparently the Iraqi "government" and its U.S. "advisers" tell fantastic and ridiculous lies to cover up their atrocious violence . . . and even go so far as to smear journalists who report on it.  I'm shocked, I tell you.  Shocked.

Lanya

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2007, 02:49:26 AM »
He still hasn't been "produced," no.  Maybe  Malkin will feel she just has to  go there  to find him.  I'm sure she won't put any US serviceman in harm's way, right?  Only mercenaries for Malkin, I hope.  Because her little adventure into a war zone is not worth one death of our troops. 
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BT

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2007, 10:04:10 AM »
So you have a ministry person, who deals with the press constantly,  who claimed Jamil  wasn't on the roles, now claiming he was, but only after AP themselves couldn't produce the guy, even to reuters, and suddenly Malkin and those who questioned the existence are wrong?

I think the story isn't over.

Michael Tee

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2007, 02:59:33 PM »
<< . . . but only after AP themselves couldn't produce the guy . . . >

"AP themselves."

as if the power of the AP to produce an Iraqi officer were on the same level as the Interior Ministry of the officer's government

What on earth is so astonishing about the inability of a foreign news agency to produce an Iraqi officer in Iraq whom both the Iraqi "government" and its U.S. military "advisors" have reason to hide in order to cover up their own atrocities?

The obvious conclusion is that the Iraqi "government" and its U.S. "advisors" are covering up their crimes, not that AP invented the guy

BT

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2007, 04:22:55 PM »
jamil was certainly available when he was quoted as a source for the burning of Sunni's at the mosque. Why would it be hard to corroborate his existence when asked? There are plenty of embedded bloggers overthere who could serve to verify his existence. Methinks Jamil is a fictitious entity. Different from an unnamed source which serves the same journalistic purpose, but a named source, named to add credibility to a charge.

Michael Tee

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2007, 05:08:15 PM »
<<jamil was certainly available when he was quoted as a source for the burning of Sunni's at the mosque.>>

Ahh, the right-wing mind at work  Available yesterday = available forever. 

Even when the "government" and its "advisors" prefer otherwise.

Welcome to Iraq, Mr. Beetee.  Where people can disappear faster than a taxpayer's dollar.

BT

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2007, 09:14:34 PM »
Except that the ministry vouches for his existence or at least an entry now mysteriously appears in the roles.

How about he never existed and the AP made a donation to Khalafs favorite charity.

Would that surprise you?

Michael Tee

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2007, 01:16:47 AM »
<<How about he never existed and the AP made a donation to Khalafs favorite charity.

<<Would that surprise you?>>

Sure it would surprise me.  Because I never heard of the AP paying someone to cover up a fabrication made by one of its own journalists.  It's a lot easier to express surprise and shock and fire the journalist.  The latter has been done before on many occasions by many employers of journalists; the former, to my knowledge, has never happened.

BT

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2007, 01:30:35 AM »
Quote
The latter has been done before on many occasions by many employers of journalists; the former, to my knowledge, has never happened.

Except the AP took ownership of the story, defended the report, scoffed at doubters. And when Jamil never materialized far more was at stake that a journalists career. The profits of the corporation were at stake. Are you saying corporations have never been known to pay bribes?


Michael Tee

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2007, 02:46:14 PM »
<<Except the AP took ownership of the story, defended the report, scoffed at doubters. And when Jamil never materialized far more was at stake that a journalists career. The profits of the corporation were at stake. >>

Yaaaawwwwnnnnn.   Seen it all before.  Many many times.

<<Are you saying corporations have never been known to pay bribes?>>

No, I'm saying that I've seen this resolved the same way every time it happens.  And it happens fairly often.  The journalist's employer fires the journalist, they don't jump down the drain after him.  It would be to my knowledge a first in journalistic history for the AP or any other news agency to spend their own money and further damage their reputation to fix the damage done by a bad reporter.  It is SO much easier to fire the reporter.  There are thousands of others ready and eager to step into his shoes.   You just don't understand the real world - - only the paranoid world of right-wingers whose absurd views DEPEND on their utter divorce from reality.

BT

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2007, 04:00:43 PM »
It is much easier just to fire the reporter, unless they took the wrong fork in the road and made the mistake their own.

And then with their credibility at stake it is a bit late to fire the reporter they defended.

Best to find another way out, one that saves face and isn't all that costly in dollars.

Michael Tee

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2007, 08:04:00 PM »
<<It is much easier just to fire the reporter, unless they took the wrong fork in the road and made the mistake their own. >>

yeah, that's probably what happened.  Why take in the news from reporters in the field when the back-office staff can get out there themselves and get the stories?  No doubt the CEO of the AP and his executive assistant flew out to Baghdad to interview some massacre survivors and told their reporter to take the day off.  Then they made up all these fictitious sources, went back to New York and the shit hit the fan.  Fuck.  What can we do?  Can't even fire the fucking reporter cuz WE wrote up that shit ourselves.  HEY!!!!  Let's bribe the Iraqi Defence Minister.  Nobody will ever know!!!!!   He'll put the guy back on the books, no one will ever ask to see him, and the story will blow over.

<<And then with their credibility at stake it is a bit late to fire the reporter they defended. >>

Maybe then you'll explain to me what's so different about this story that they can't fire a reporter who besmirched their credibility when every other media outlet has been able to do so?

<<Best to find another way out, one that saves face and isn't all that costly in dollars. >>

Yeah, that'll work, firing a reporter for cause for filing a fake story with a fake witness is way more costly than getting involved in bribing somebody else to back up a reporter who we know has lied, and besides we save so much more face by bribing someone.
Wow, BT, WHAT are you smoking?
« Last Edit: January 06, 2007, 08:06:02 PM by Michael Tee »

BT

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Re: Shocking Twist, and Malkin doesn't have to go to Iraq
« Reply #14 on: January 06, 2007, 09:01:52 PM »
Quote
yeah, that's probably what happened.  Why take in the news from reporters in the field when the back-office staff can get out there themselves and get the stories?  No doubt the CEO of the AP and his executive assistant flew out to Baghdad to interview some massacre survivors and told their reporter to take the day off.  Then they made up all these fictitious sources, went back to New York and the shit hit the fan.  Fuck.  What can we do?  Can't even fire the fucking reporter cuz WE wrote up that shit ourselves.  HEY!!!!  Let's bribe the Iraqi Defence Minister.  Nobody will ever know!!!!!   He'll put the guy back on the books, no one will ever ask to see him, and the story will blow over.

I'll give you some time to actually follow the timeline of the story, before spouting ignorant hyperbole about facts you are nowhere near a firstname basis with.

Get up to speed Mikey, before you embarrass yourself further.