I wrote about the Deja Vu experience I had with this latest news report from the AP about twenty Iraqi’s being beheaded yesterday:

Twenty beheaded bodies were discovered Thursday on the banks of the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad and a car bomb killed another 20 people in one of the capital’s busy outdoor bus stations, police said.

The beheaded remains were found in the Sunni Muslim village of Um al-Abeed, near the city of Salman Pak, which lies 14 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The bodies all men aged 20 to 40 had their hands and legs bound, and some of the heads were found next to the bodies, two officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Bob at Confederate Yankee became suspicious since the report stated that the two sources for the story were many many miles away.  One being 100 miles away from where the bodies were supposedly discovered for god sake.  He checked with his source at MNF-I and today we got official notification.

It was a hoax. 

The AP bought it hook, line, and sinker just like the burning six story.  Here is the report from MNF-I PAO:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Friday, news media reported a mass killing in a village near Salman Pak where 20 men were allegedly found beheaded. It now appears that the story was completely false and fabricated by unknown sources.

Upon learning of the press reports, coalition and Iraqi officials began investigating to determine if the reports were true. Ultimately it was concluded the reports were false.

Anti-Iraqi Forces are known for purposely providing false information to the media to incite violence and revenge killings, and they may well have been the source of this misinformation.

“Extremists promote falsehoods of mass killings, collateral damage and other violence specifically to turn Iraqis against other Iraqis,” said Rear Admiral Mark Fox, spokesperson for MNF-I. “Unfortunately, lies are much easier to state, the truth often takes time to prove,” said Fox.

Not all media reports can be immediately substantiated by Government of Iraq or Coalition Forces. They must go through a process to verify such claims, to include checking with various Iraqi Ministry’s, local police and security forces. Meanwhile, extremists have achieved their goal of spreading false information aimed at intimidating civilians and destabilizing Iraqi security.

Ultimately, media reporting based on verifiable sources will reduce the possibility of misinformation unnecessarily alarming citizens.

How often do you think this kind of thing happens?  After the Jamil Hussein episode the AP took to removing all names of their sources in an attempt to prevent people such as Bob and myself from making a big stink about their made up stories.  Instead of fixing the problem they just changed the rules a bit to keep the train rolling.

All because it tells the narrative they HOPE is happening on the ground in Iraq.

UPDATE

Reuters has the story:

Media reports attributed to Iraqi police of 20 decapitated bodies found south of Baghdad this week were untrue and may have been planted by insurgents to provoke revenge attacks, the U.S. military said on Saturday.

"Coalition and Iraqi officials began investigating to determine if the reports were true. Ultimately it was concluded the reports were false," the military said in a statement.

Local police, speaking off the record, said on Thursday that the bodies had been found dumped on the banks of the Tigris River near Salman Pak, about 30 km (19 miles) south of Baghdad.

But the Iraqi Interior Ministry later said that a team sent to the location with U.S. forces had found nothing.

This won’t stop them from printing any unsubstantiated story that comes their way tho, as long as it fits with the narrative they hope to tell in Iraq.

Bob at Confederate Yankee has discovered that the AP is up to it’s old tricks.  This time it was in a report about 20 beheaded bodies found 14 miles southeast of Baghdad.  Sounds gruesome right?  Kinda like people dragged out of a mosque and set on fire….

Twenty beheaded bodies were discovered Thursday on the banks of the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad and a car bomb killed another 20 people in one of the capital’s busy outdoor bus stations, police said.

The beheaded remains were found in the Sunni Muslim village of Um al-Abeed, near the city of Salman Pak, which lies 14 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The bodies all men aged 20 to 40 had their hands and legs bound, and some of the heads were found next to the bodies, two officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

And just like the Jamil Hussein story, when you first read it your first instinct is to gasp in horror.  Then you read on about who supplied the information to those straight shooting and completely honest AP reporters:

One of the police officers is based in Baghdad and the other in Kut, 100 miles southeast of the capital. The Baghdad officer said he learned of the discovery because Iraq’s Interior Ministry, where he works, sent troops to the village to investigate. The Kut officer said he first heard the report through residents of the Salman Pak area.

100 miles from Baghdad?  Huh?  And the Baghdad officer heard of it from reports that came in from Iraqi troops sent there through the MoI….

Sound a bit familiar?

Jamil Hussein worked in a specific area of Baghdad, a very large urban city, but reported on incidents throughout the region, incidents many miles away and areas covered by other police stations, but still…the AP bought it hook, line and sinker.  It fit with their views of the Iraq war so how could it not be true.

Now we have a story about 20 beheaded bodies written with not one eyewitness but based on 3rd and 4th hand accounts of people who know people who know people who went to the scene.

And this is the kind of reporting the MSM expects us to accept nowadays?

Bob again:

I’m not Associated Press reporter Sinan Salheddin, nor am I Kim Gamel, AP’s Baghdad news editor, but if I was investigating a story about a 20-corpse mass murder in—let’s say, Manhattan—then I’d try to find a local police officer at the scene to interview about the case.

I wouldn’t rely on a desk sergeant in Staten Island who merely heard reports of other officers being dispatched to check to see if there was such a crime, nor would I rely on a beat cop in Albany who is only reporting rumors of what he heard from friends of relatives in Queens.

But the Associated Press didn’t rely on the local police. Instead, they blatantly presented hearsay as the truth, and as a result, ran a story about a brutal massacre that currently appears to have never taken place

Oh, btw, CentCom can’t confirm the story either:

We’ve been working on this query here at the Multi-National Forces Iraq Press Desk throughout the day and have been unable to confirm any of these reports of the 20 bodies at Salman Pak. After communicating with the Iraqi police and searching the area with some of our helicopters, we’ve been unable to find any evidence that proves the initial "report".

You were also very observant and correct to notice that these initial statements were from areas nowhere near the claimed location of the discovery which also leads us to question the validity of this report.

Until we turn up any clear evidence, we’ve concluded that this is an unsubstantiated claim but we’ll let you know if we hear anything otherwise in the next 24 hours.

The AP continues to keep it’s standards as far in the gutter as possible.  All to put out the message that war is bad mmmmkay.

The AP never learns.  Recall the Jamil Hussein story which I broke last November in which the AP used a source, one Capt. Jamil Hussein, to verify many stories of bloodshed and mayhem.  Of course no Jamil Hussein was found by Centcom, by the Iraqi government, or by Michelle Malkin. 

In the end one man was produced by the AP who was NOT named Jamil Hussein and claimed to NOT be the AP source.

One such story of bloodshed and mayhem, the one that began my quest to find this Jamil Hussein, was the story of six Sunni’s taken from a mosque and burned alive.  One source for that story, other then Jamil Hussein, was the Association of Muslim Scholars who said:

And the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque.

Centcom and Michelle Malkin verified, with pictures, that there was NO "inferno" at the al-Muhaimin mosque nor any proof that 18 people died there.

Well today the AP used this same group to report on some more bloodshed and mayhem: (h/t Confederate Yankee)

The Muslim Scholars Association, a Sunni group, issued a statement quoting witnesses as saying Tuesday’s battle began after Iraqi troops entered a mosque and executed two young men in front of other worshippers. Ground forces used tear gas on civilians, it said.

"The association condemns this horrible crime carried out by occupiers and the government," the statement said.

They sure do love to put the violence inside a mosque don’t they?

Guess the AP never learns.

The spirit of Jamil Hussein has arisen once more from Iraq with the report yesterday that more then a dozen children were killed in Ramadi:

A bomb attack near a soccer field in the volatile Iraqi city of Ramadi on Tuesday killed or wounded 19 people, most of them children, police said.

State television Iraqiya said 18 children had been killed by a car bomb at the field. Police said it was a roadside bomb.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military. Iraqiya gave no more details.

Police said the field was near an American military base.

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq.

But today it was discovered that there was no bomb, there was no 18 children dead, but there WAS a controlled explosion of explosives that was a bit bigger then expected:

But Rear Adm. Mark Fox, a U.S. military spokesman, said "the allegation was false" and suggested that rumors began circulating after a controlled detonation by U.S. forces caused injuries in Ramadi.

On Tuesday, a military statement said 30 civilians and one Iraqi soldier were injured by flying debris when troops destroyed 15 bags of explosives. None of the injuries was life-threatening, it added.

"There was no second blast," Fox told reporters, "and there was no 18 children killed."

So how did this happen? 

Exactly as it happened with the Burning Sunni story.  Unverified reports were spread throughout the media by reporters wanting to get a scoop.  Wanting to push a story with more bloodshed.

Damn the facts!  We don’t need no stinkin’ facts! 

Hide in the green zone and call a few people.  That is the summation of work from our wonderful AP and Reuters.  So lets look at how this all unfolded from Gateway Pundit:

Initial reports said it was a roadside car bomb next to a soccer field.
Then.. the media reported that it was a suicide car bomber.
Then… the police said the attack may have been on Monday.
Then… the media reported that 18 boys playing soccer were killed in the attack.
Then… it was 16 children and two women that were killed in the blast.
Then… there was a report that it was 12 children and 6 women who were killed in the blast.
Then… the media reported that it may have been a controlled explosion by the US with minor injuries!
Then… the US is denying that anyone was killed in the Ramadi blast on Tuesday!
Now… The media admits the reports were all wrong!

We all know Jamil gets around but is he digging around the police stations in Ramadi now?

Ok, joking, but come on.  How many more incidents like this need to happen before people start to understand that the MSM inside and outside of Iraq are relying on Iraqi stringers for the WHOLE story.  If the AP had done one iota of true factchecking on the Burning Six story they would have discovered that there was no evidence to suggest that incident happened.  Now if Reuters had sent a reporter out to check this soccer field they would have discovered the same thing with this story.

But I guess this is asking too much from our MSM.

UPDATE

Here is CNN burying the news that the story is false:

The U.S. military is disputing a report that 18 boys were killed Tuesday when a bomb detonated near a soccer field in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

An Iraqi security adviser said that the incident may have been confused with a Monday blast in the same area.

Coalition spokesman Rear Adm. Mark I. Fox on Wednesday called the report of 18 deaths "erroneous" and reiterated previous U.S. military assertions that the only explosion in Ramadi on Tuesday was administered by coalition troops in a controlled setting.

The detonation in the southeast part of the city was much larger than anticipated and a few dozen people received injuries, none life-threatening, Fox said.

The report of 18 boys killed was first aired Tuesday on Iraqi state TV. The Iraqi Interior Ministry later told CNN it had confirmed the blast on the western outskirts of Ramadi, and Iraq’s president, prime minister and foreign minister quickly denounced the attack.

The U.S. military initially said it could not confirm the incident.

Col. Tariq al-Theibani, Iraqi security adviser for Anbar province, said Wednesday that a parked minibus — packed with wood and dynamite — detonated Monday, not Tuesday, near an open area that children use as a soccer field. The blast occurred in the southeast Ramadi area, he said.

Eighteen people were killed and 35 others were wounded, some critically, al-Theibani said. Women, children and police officers were reportedly among the casualties.

I’m calling it "buried" because they include it in a multipost story whereas the story yesterday was front and center all over their show. 

Typical.

Other’s Blogging:

• Hot Air
• Redstate

Well, well, well….maybe it’s time to put that Free Jamil Hussein corner icon back up on my front page.  Recall when the AP triumphantly announced that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior had admitted that there was in fact a Jamil Hussein and he was the source for the 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.

Of course I discovered that was NOT his real name back on January 11th and that the AP had used a pseudonym without telling their readers.

Now Bob from Confederate Yankee has received confirmation that the MoI denies….DENIES telling the AP that "Jamil Hussein" was the source for the AP:

This morning, Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) liason to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Bill Costlow, provided me this morning with a direct quote from the above referenced Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf regarding Jamil Hussein. This statement flatly contradicts what Steven R. Hurst claimed BG Abdul-Karim Khalaf said in his January 4th article.

Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf stated:

“We couldn’t identify CPT Jamil right away because the AP used the wrong name: we couldn’t find a “CPT Jamil Hussein” — but later, when we saw the name “Jamil Gulaim Hussein”, it became obvious that they were talking about CPT Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX [Name redacted for security reasons — Editor]” as the only ‘Jamil Gulaim’ assigned there (ever) and whose assignment records show he previously worked in Yarmouk, as also reported by the AP. Since the issue for us is the release of false news into the media, we’re satisfied that the AP is no longer quoting a questionable source.”

The General flatly states that Jamil Hussein is not Jamil Hussein as AP still contends, but is instead, CPT Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX.

A previous email sent to several bloggers from Costlow on January 11, 2007, stated that that the Associated Press reporters who had interviewed Abdul-Karim Khalaf prior to Hurst’s January 4th article verified to him that CPT Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX was the Associated Press source.

This seems to directly contradict all present and previous AP claims that Associated Press reporters knew Jamil Hussein as Jamil Gholaiem Hussein. Instead it indicates that they knew at some point prior to the Hurst article being published, that Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX was the actual name of their source.

Which jives with my earlier communication with Bill Costlow last month:

Curt,

Seems like every time I talk to somebody about this guy, his name changes.  His personnel record says his name is: Jamil Gulaim (Redacted).

Spokesman BG Abdul-Kareem has spoken with members of the AP in Baghdad and has confirmation that he is their source.  That said, CPT Jamil still denies ever speaking to them.

As far as the MOI is concerned, CPT Jamil gave the AP bad information: there’s still no evidence the six murders occurred.

V/R
Bill

So the MoI had acknowledged to the AP that they had an employee who’s name was similar (except of course the two last names which is no where near similar to Hussein) to the name the AP gave them.  Which means the AP KNEW the real name of Jamil but decided to run "Jamil Gholaiem Hussein" instead without acknowledging a pseudonym. 

This is called a lie. 

Bob also has a post up that gives much more background on the story if coming to the show late. Also check out my round up of all the facts of the case here.

Other’s Blogging:

• The Jawa Report

The AP has issued a new report in which they detail….wait for it….damage to the four mosques that they initially claimed to have been burnt to the ground:

Four Sunni mosques attacked in late November in the embattled Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad still bear scars from the attacks and all are now either under Shiite Muslim control or closed.

Immediately after the Nov. 24 incidents, an Associated Press story quoted an Iraqi police captain saying the four mosques had been attacked and six men doused with fuel and burned alive at one of them. In some early versions of the AP story, which was updated several times as more information became available, the police officer referred to the mosques being burned or blown up.

The report was challenged a day later, when a U.S. military spokesman said it could only confirm an attack on one mosque.

Since then, the AP has confirmed damage at three of the four mosques, including burn damage at two and slight damage at a third.

Recall what the AP reported way back when:

In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said.

and:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Sunni residents in a volatile northwest Baghdad neighborhood claimed Friday that revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen had destroyed four Sunni mosques, burned homes and killed many people, while the Shiite-dominated police force stood by and did nothing.

But now with this non-correction they try to push the reader into believing that hey, everything they reported on was correct.  Bryan at Hot Air notes how they bypass the fact that they initially reported Iraqi soldiers stood by as they "destroyed" mosques and set people on fire:

In its initial report, the AP accused the Iraqi Army unit on the scene of standing by while Shia attackers dragged six Sunnis out of a mosque, doused them with kerosene and then set them alight, killing them. The AP’s latest report on Hurriya just glides right past that serious and unsubstantiated allegation.

While Michelle Malkin notes what else this latest AP report missed:

Nowhere does the AP acknowledge that it reported that the mosques were destroyed. (Note to AP: Check Lexis/Nexis like Patterico did if there’s something wrong with your internal databases.)

The AP continues to spin by mischaracterizing the military’s reaction to its initial reporting:

The report was challenged a day later, when a U.S. military spokesman said it could only confirm an attack on one mosque.

Here’s the full text of the military’s response on Nov. 25, which challenges NOT the allegation that the mosques were attacked, but that all four were burned

The AP also now acknowledge they have a reporter living in the same area as the attacks:

An Associated Press reporter who lives in the neighborhood, and whose name has been withheld from this story for security reasons, visited the mosques Friday.

But it took 2 months to get him to do some digging on the story.

Wow.

Of course no name attributed to the guy so no way we can verify that he even exists.

What a bang-up job these media types do huh?

And what is there motive in writing this report?  It adds nothing to the debate, actually it deepens the hole they have dug by admitting (well, not outright admitting but at least acknowledging that NO mosques were destroyed) their initial reports were indeed wrong on so many accounts.

They have yet to produce this Jamil Hussein, only printed a report that the MoI has acknowledged he is their source.  They have yet to respond to the fact that their supposed source is NOT named Jamil Hussein.  They have yet to respond to the fact that Jamil denies being the source.  They have yet to produce ANY evidence that six men were burned.  Nothing, nada, zip, except these occassionaly reports that say nothing.

Way to go guys!

Other’s Blogging:

• Bookworm Worm
• Little Green Footballs

"The Jamil Hussein Fuss: All Sullied Mistakes, Lessons Learned, Lingering Questions"

"The Associated Press and the AP’s supporters surely are breathing a sigh of relief now that the Iraqi Interior Ministry has confirmed to the AP that elusive Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein is genuine.

This comes six weeks after Iraqi and U.S. officials insisted the frequent AP news source, Captain Hussein, was non-existent and that AP reporting attributed to him was baseless." 

"All the key players in the Jamil Hussein controversy have been sullied in this process."

"Iraqi officials and U.S. military spokesmen look foolish for making the mistake of flatly stating in late November that there was no Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein. Those clumsy, baseless statements were unfair to the AP. Those erroneous statements — and their statements questioning the information the AP attributed to Captain Hussein — triggered the six-week-long controversy that followed."

"Jamil Hussein made a mistake by waiting six weeks to speak out on this matter."

"Another mistake: the AP took too long to provide irrefutable evidence of Captain Hussein’s existence."

"The AP’s most strident critics were wrong to accept the word of U.S. and Iraqi officials as the absolute truth while dismissing the AP’s sourcing, stories, and explanations as outright lies."

"In the end, the AP did the right thing — proving Jamil Hussein’s existence — but in the wrong time frame."

While Zawahiri puts out a new video full of his usual stand-up schtick that only the foolhardy and the fanatic Islam nimrod could love Michelle Malkin put out the video of those "destroyed" mosques.  You know, the ones the AP described as so:

In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said.

and:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Sunni residents in a volatile northwest Baghdad neighborhood claimed Friday that revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen had destroyed four Sunni mosques, burned homes and killed many people, while the Shiite-dominated police force stood by and did nothing.

And guess what?  They’re still standing!  I know, I know….shocker:

while Allah notices that Editor & Publisher and well, every single lefty blog, has ignored this news.  Another shocker there:

Today, they’ve got nothing. Nothing on the front page, no recent search results for the keywords “hurriya,” “malkin,” or “mosques,” despite the fact that it’s now been 32 hours and counting since Michelle’s column went live at the New York Post’s website and she wrote it up at her blog.

Go figure.

You’ll also be surprised to find, of the 60+ links to her blog post and the 60+ links to her Post column, not a single major nutroots blog among them.

And even better, Bryan at Hot Air takes issue with a recent Eason Jordon post in which he states Michelle has never even been to Iraq (if the shockers don’t stop coming I may have a heart attack):

Eason Jordan said what?

A better title for this post might be “Can anyone connected to the MSM read? At all? Or is getting an accurate quote, in the age of Skype and digital voice recorders, just impossible?” But that’s a pretty long title.

In the NY Observer, Eason Jordan had this to say about Michelle Malkin:

Mr. Jordan said he “took note of the fact that Michelle Malkin—who writes obsessively on Iraq, and how wonderful things are over there—had never herself been to Iraq.”

Ever since I read that quote a day or two ago, I’ve been debating whether to give Jordan both barrels or give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he could have been misquoted. And wouldn’t that have been ironic.

Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.  He was misquoted.   Kinda like Jamil "I’m Not" Hussein being misquoted about all those mosque’s being destroyed and those poor Sunni’s being burned alive.  Of course the man the AP says is Jamil Hussein is not really named Jamil Hussein and he denies ever talking to the AP.  But hey, whats facts got to do with anything?

And finally Bob over at Confederate Yankee on the AP’s continuing refusal to acknowledge they screwed the pooch on their reporting in Iraq:

But what is strongly suggested by Jamilgate is that the media in general, and the Associated Press in this instance, are simply unable to account for how sectarian, tribal and political biases may shape the information passed from source to reporter, from reporter to editor, and editor to publication.

It seems at readily apparent that due to the dangers of reporting in a warzone, and the language barriers that are in place, that it is very difficult for the Associated Press and other news organizations to verify the facts of stories before they are published using their current fact-checking methodologies.

They are, in many instances, apparently reduced to "faith-based reporting, " where sources who have been reliable in the past are taken at their word once they have established a certain degree of credibility. This leads us to a situation where those with biases can entrench themselves as credible sources, and then use their trusted relationship with the media to disseminate agenda-based information after that credibility has been established.

Face it, the AP will never admit that they printed a unverified and bogus story since it fits their model of what they HOPE Iraq is like.  If Iraq is just a bloody mess (which it is not) then they can claim Bush was wrong and all is right in their little world. 

But alas, their shortsightedness may come back to haunt them one day:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 2007 — Mimicking the hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 attacks, insurgents reportedly tied to al Qaeda in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified that documents captured by coalition forces during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members of al Qaeda six months ago "revealed [AQI] was planning terrorist operations in the U.S."

[...]Sources tell ABC News that the plot may have involved moving between 10 and 20 suspects believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq into the United States with student visas — the same method used by the 19 al Qaeda terrorists who struck American targets on Sept. 11.

[...]The plot was discovered six months ago, roughly the same time that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed by coalition forces. Sources tell ABC News that the suspects involved in the effort to launch the U.S. attack were closely associated with Zarqawi.

The plan also came only months after Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s No. 2, had requested that Zarqawi attempt an attack inside the United States.

"This appears to be the first hard evidence al Qaeda in Iraq was trying to attack us here at home," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, former chief counterterrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council.

The plan was uncovered in its early stages, and sources say there is no indication that the suspects made it into the United States. Officials also emphasize that there is no evidence of an imminent attack.

Do you think our MSM would really care?

Other’s Blogging:

• Junkyard Blog
• Mary Katherine Ham
• Hang Right Politics
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• Say Anything
• 186k Per Second
• Gateway Pundit
• Jihad Watch
• The Political Pit Bull
• Jihad Watch
• The Jawa Report
• Counterterrorism Blog
• Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin has written the results of her "Burning Six" investigation for the New York Post and while she discovered two mosques had each had two rooms slightly burnt she found no corroborating evidence that four mosques were burnt to the ground, that the Iraqi police did nothing to stop the attack, and that six men were doused with kerosene and burned alive:

When the AP ran its head- line-grabbing and horrifying account of alleged atrocities in Baghdad last Thanksgiving, its main source was an Iraqi police captain, one Jamil Hussein.

Bloggers led by Curt of Flopping Aces (floppingaces.net) raised questions about the veracity and existence of Hussein and the information he supplied to the AP. U.S. military officials and the Iraqi government initially disputed that Hussein was employed as a legitimate police officer.

[...]AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll indignantly attacked those who had questioned the global news organization’s reporting: "I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story," she told Editor and Publisher. "AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq."

Well, Bryan Preston and I visited the area during our Iraq trip last week. Several mosques did, in fact, come under attack by Mahdi Army forces. But the "destroyed" mosques all still stand. Iraqi and U.S. Army officials say that two of them received no fire damage whatsoever. Another, which we filmed, was abandoned and empty when it was attacked.

WE obtained summary reports and photos filed at the time by Iraqi and U.S. Army troops on the scene. They contain no corroborating evidence of Hussein’s claim that "Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene."

One of the mosques identified by the AP, the Nidaa Alah mosque, had been abandoned and vacant at the time it was hit with small-arms fire, say Iraqi and U.S. Army officials. Two of its inside rooms were burned out by a lobbed firebomb, according to an Army report.

Three other mosques in the area - the al Muhaymin, al Mushahiba and Ahbab Mustafa mosques - sustained small-arms fire damage to their exteriors; the Mustafa mosque also had two rooms burned out by a firebomb.

Contrary to Hussein and the AP’s account, military reports note that Iraqi Army battalion members were on the scene - pursuing attackers, securing the area, calling the fire department, providing support and an outer cordon.

Recall that the AP reported, attributed to Capt. Jamil Hussein, that mosques were blown up:

In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said.

Or destroyed: (via Patterico’s Pontifications)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Sunni residents in a volatile northwest Baghdad neighborhood claimed Friday that revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen had destroyed four Sunni mosques, burned homes and killed many people, while the Shiite-dominated police force stood by and did nothing.

The New York Times:

From morning until afternoon, at least four mosques were attacked in Hurriya, a mixed neighborhood in the capital. Two were destroyed, and at least 5 Sunnis were killed and 10 wounded, an Interior Ministry official said.

But according to Michelle’s time stamped pictures none of it is true.

Lets go back in time a bit here and look at the AP report on November 24th:

But Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, confirmed Hussein’s account of the immolations. He told Al-Arabiya television he saw people drenched in kerosene then set afire and burning to death before his eyes.

Two workers at Kazamiyah Hospital also confirmed that bodies from the clashes and immolation had been taken to the morgue at their facility. They refused to be identified by name, saying they feared retribution.

And the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at al-Muhaimin mosque.

How many lies and distortions can be picked up out of this one report?  First, the named Imam went on record regarding the burning of the six men but later recanted.  Here is Michelle on the Imam:

The AP quoted one corroborating witness, Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriya, who "confirmed Hussein’s account" of the immolated Sunnis on Al-Arabiya television. When Al-Hasimi later recanted, AP implied that it was due to pressure from Iraqi government officials. The other possibility: He recanted because it wasn’t true.

Then we have the report that workers at the hospital morgue verified the burned bodies.  Problem is, there is no morgue at that hospital: (Bill Costlow, CPATT representative)

I think many people are also missing something here:  when a police officer tells a reporter that six murders have occurred and the bodies were taken to a non-existent  morgue, investigators want to know why — this has nothing to do with cover ups, as some media reports seem to insinuate — the idea of hiding a mere six killings in Bagdad is laughable.

And finally we have the report of a "inferno" at the al-Muhaimin in which 18 people died.   Michelle again:

Three other mosques in the area - the al Muhaymin, al Mushahiba and Ahbab Mustafa mosques - sustained small-arms fire damage to their exteriors; the Mustafa mosque also had two rooms burned out by a firebomb.

So lets go over this one more time.  We have no inferno, no burned or destroyed mosques, no 6 burned alive Iraq’’s, no named witnesses, no morgue.

And this is what these journalists went to school for? 

Michelle spoke with the American military units that work directly with the Iraqi battalion that responded to the scene:

Capt. Aaron Kaufman of Task Force Justice, which works closely with the Iraqi Army battalion that was on the scene and monitored events as they happened, told us: "It was blown way out of proportion, there was nobody lit on fire."

Capt. Stacy Bare, the civil-affairs officer who took us on patrol in Hurriya, concurred: "There were no six Sunnis burned."

And she spoke to the commander of the Dagger brigade who explains why Capt. Jamil Hussein and his ilk cannot be trusted as a source:

Lt. Col. Steven Miska, commander of the Dagger Brigade at Forward Operating Base Justice, observed: "Part of it is, if you’re relying on Iraqi reporters, well, what are their biases? What clans are they from and tribes? Why are they telling me this? What’s his underlying motivation? And if you quote a police chief, well, those guys have underlying motivations, too . . ."

"I’ve gone out and found police chiefs on the street and said, ‘What happened here?’ Something just blew up and he told me, ‘Well, U.S. airplanes just bombed this building.’

"I said, ‘What are you talking about? It was freakin’ insurgent rockets that just hit the building, I picked them up on radar.’ " But he just told the reporter on the street that U.S. warplanes bombed the building and killed 13 people.

"So, rumors on the street Iraqis will take at face value. Trying to get them to do investigations is like pulling teeth out of their head."

But the AP trusted this guy (real name Jamil Gulaim *Redacted*) for 61 stories.  61 stories of unbelievable bloodshed and destruction.  How much of those stories are fairy tales?

As it stands now I would have to say the majority of them. 

The fact remains that the AP reported anything and everything this guy said. 

Why? 

I believe it’s due to their want of bloodshed to report on, along with the fact that every death and destruction report they can file bolsters their belief that Iraq is lost and Bush was wrong.

I mean look at how the AP summarized the Burning Six story:

It wasn’t the number of victims that was shocking, a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people with bombings in Baghdad’s main Shiite district in Baghdad’s deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began more than three years ago. It was the method.

A method of death that never happened.

But hey, what does facts matter to the AP?

On another front of this investigation Bob over at Confederate Yankee has been doing some follow up to two murders of high level Iraqi officials over the last year.  Each murder was reported by Jamil Hussein:

I’ve continued to do some digging into one of the stories sourced to Jamil (not really) Hussein, the alleged assassination of Iraqi Police Captain Amir Kamil on June 20, 2006.

According to AP:

Elsewhere in the capital, police Capt. Amir Kamil, who provided security for Yarmouk hospital, was shot to death Tuesday at a bus station, Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

Unlike most of Hussein’s rather vague claims, this one provided specific detail I could attempt to follow up on. We know the name of the victim, who he worked for, where he worked, and at what rank, and even know how and where (in general terms) he was killed.

But guess what?  Not one person, nor any print media (other then the AP and Capt. Jamil Hussein) could corroberate this murder.

Further proof that the AP has been, and still does, get their stories from the enemy.

UPDATE

Check out the email exchange between Bob from Confederate Yankee and the AP’s Linda Wagner in which she sidesteps just about every single question posed to her:

Wagner appears to avoid any direct statements saying that the Associated Press stands behind their Hurriyah reporting, does not acknowledge the existence of the AP television video AP once claimed to have, and most noticeably, refuses to state whether or not they stand behind the stories sourced to the man they call Jamil Hussein.

These are not what I would consider encouraging answers.

The AP up to their old tricks.  Never answer any question directly, side-step when possible, and if neither trick works then just refuse to acknowledge a question.

Other’s Blogging:

• Little Green Footballs
• Hot Air
• Blue Crab Boulevard
• Don Surber
• The Jawa Report
• Austin Bay Blog
• Riehl World View
• Powerline
• Captain’s Quarters
• Dean’s World

Michelle Malkin is back from Iraq and has a new vent up here.  She reports that the morale is up, as Michael Yon reported yesterday, and that the success of this operation is too important to give up on.

She also said that she was able to make it to Hurriyah, the scene of the Burning Six incident.  Can’t wait to find out what she was able to discover….I have a feelings the AP will not like it one bit.

Also, Confederate Yankee has written to the AP’s Kathleen Carroll again. 

The Burning Six story isn’t going away folks.

I decided to step away a bit, but not completely, on the Jamil Hussein story and get back to the crux of the story.  The whole thing has become convoluted and twisted to the point where people are not sure which way is up so I figured a little history on the story would be worth my time to convey with some additional commentary.

If you read through all of my posts on this subject from the beginning you will find that I named my original posts "Getting The News From The Enemy".  I named them that because THAT was the crux of the story.  I put in a lot of work to show that much of what was being reported by the AP should be questioned and appeared to come from stringers.  When I focused on Jamil and my suspicions turned out to be justified the blogosphere went bananas.  But in so doing everyone, including myself, focused on one man, one source, as the crux of the story.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Read the rest of this entry »

The New Yorker ran an article almost two years ago that details the work of a Vietnamese reporter for Time and other well known media outlets.  He was well thought of in media circles and wrote many great articles detailing the toll of the war.

Only problem is he was a spy for North Vietnam:

“Here is Pham Xuan An now,” Time’s last reporter in Vietnam cabled the magazine’s New York headquarters on April 29, 1975. “All American correspondents evacuated because of emergency. The office of Time is now manned by Pham Xuan An.” An filed three more reports from Saigon as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on the city. Then the line went dead. During the following year, with An serving as Time’s sole correspondent in postwar Vietnam, the magazine ran articles on “The Last Grim Goodbye,” “Winners: The Men Who Made the Victory,” and “Saigon: A Calm Week Under Communism.” An was one of thirty-nine foreign correspondents working for Time when the Saigon bureau was closed and his name disappeared from the masthead, on May 10, 1976.

Recognized as a brilliant political analyst, beginning with his work in the nineteen-sixties for Reuters and then for the New York Herald Tribune and The Christian Science Monitor, and, finally, as a Time correspondent for eleven years, Pham Xuan An seemed to do his best work swapping stories with colleagues in Givral’s café, on the old Rue Catinat. Here he presided every afternoon as the best news source in Saigon. He was called “Dean of the Vietnamese Press Corps” and “Voice of Radio Catinat”—the rumor mill. With self-deprecating humor, he preferred other titles for himself, such as “docteur de sexologie,” “professeur coup d’état,” “Commander of Military Dog Training” (a reference to the German shepherd that always accompanied him), “Ph.D. in revolutions,” or, simply, General Givral.

We now know that this is only half the work An did as a reporter, and not the better half. An sent the North Vietnamese a steady stream of secret military documents and messages written in invisible ink, but it was his typed dispatches, now locked in Vietnam’s intelligence archives and known to us only through secondhand reports, which will undoubtedly rank as his chef d’oeuvre. Using a Hermes typewriter bought specially for him by the North Vietnamese intelligence service, An wrote his dispatches, some as long as a hundred pages, at night. Photographed and transported as undeveloped rolls of film, An’s reports were run by courier out to the Cu Chi tunnel network that served as the Communists’ underground headquarters. Every few weeks, beginning in 1952, An himself would leave his Saigon office, drive twenty miles northwest to the Ho Bo woods, and descend into the tunnels to plan Communist strategy. From Cu Chi, An’s dispatches were hustled under armed guard to Mt. Ba Den, on the Cambodian border, driven to Phnom Penh, flown to Guangzhou (Canton), in southern China, and then rushed to the Politburo in North Vietnam. The writing was so lively and detailed that General Giap and Ho Chi Minh are reported to have rubbed their hands with glee on getting these dispatches from Tran Van Trung—An’s code name. “We are now in the United States’ war room!” they exclaimed, according to members of the Vietnamese Politburo.

This Vietnamese media darling even helped plan the Tet offensive which killed over 4500 US & South Vietnamese troops:

An comes into focus again at the Tet Offensive, the simultaneous attack on more than a hundred South Vietnamese cities and other targets during the New Year’s ceasefire of 1968. Planning for the offensive had begun two years earlier, when the head of An’s intelligence network, a colonel known by his nom de guerre, Tu Cang, moved from the jungle into Saigon. Tu Cang was a famous cowboy, a hearty, affable man, who packed a pair of K-54 pistols and could plug a target at fifty metres with either his left or his right hand. A former honor student at the French lycée in Saigon, Tu Cang had lived underground in the Cu Chi tunnels for so many years that by the time he reëntered Saigon he had forgotten how to open a car door. An replaced Tu Cang’s jungle sandals with new shoes and bought him a suit of clothes. Soon the two men were driving around town in An’s little Renault 4CV like old friends.

Pretending to be chatting about dogs and cockfights, they were sighting targets for the Tet Offensive. Tu Cang proposed attacking the Treasury to get some money. An told him the Treasury was the wrong target—“They only hand out salaries there.” An said a better target was the courthouse, where lots of gold was stored as evidence in the trials of South Vietnam’s legion of burglars and smugglers. He advised Tu Cang to bring an acetylene torch.

Tu Cang isolated twenty targets in Saigon, including the Presidential Palace and the United States Embassy. He personally led the attack on the palace, where fifteen of the seventeen members in his team were killed outright. He himself barely escaped to a nearby safe house, and he hid with his two pistols held to his head, vowing to kill himself rather than be captured. The following day, he and An were driving around the city again, this time counting the bodies of the Vietcong soldiers who had died in the attack.

Has the press learned from this experience when using the local stringers? 

Let’s ask Jamil.

(Bumped to the top - Originally posted Jan 9th, 1015hrs PST)

I’ve been in touch with Bill Costlow (the CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) representative) since he has been back in-country and I have a few interesting developments on this story.

First, the AP story:

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.

But guess what Bill just confirmed?  Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf never acknowledged that there was a Capt. Jamil Hussein assigned to the Khadra station, he confirmed to the AP that there was a Capt. Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim assigned there.  Apparently he is the source for the AP even though he still, to this day (according to Bill Costlow), denies being the source.

So what do we have so far?

Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Costlow, the CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) representative, has some more information regarding the discovery of Jamil Hussein:

Curt,

Here’s what I can tell you:

1. Media reports about Jamil didn’t use his name as he is known at  work so we had trouble finding him (Jamil Gulaim as opposed to Jamil Hussein: the initial query we got  from MNFI was for "Jamil Hussein").

2. The real issue is this:  Jamil works in Al Khadra (think of Staten Island) — he’s telling the media about Al Hurriah murders (Think of Queens — it’s a different area of the city):

• Why would any reporter consider this guy a reliable source under these circumstances?
• When you consider that he’s been quoted in more than 60 AP stories, you have to ask how much of that information was secondhand or rumor, considering there is no evidence this last report of his ever happened.
• There’s been a series of murders reported by the AP
  • There are no bodies.
  • The source is a police officer from a different area of the city
  • There’s no official police report to refer to — so where did the information come from?
  • The bodies were reportedly taken to a hospital morgue that doesn’t have a morgue
  • There are no family member reports, complaints or interviews
  • There are no pictures or video of the event.
  • None of the other media in Baghdad are covering this

3. The MOI doesn’t follow AP or any other western media source closely: they are very busy trying to impact the security situation — what raised the issue for them was a request from MNFI Public Affairs to confirm the event actually happened.

Hope this helps,

Bill

Which throws a monkey wrench into the AP assertion that the MoI was inept in not searching for Jamil Hussein via his middle name.

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.

In reality this guy apparently didn’t use his last name much but instead went by Jamil Gulaim. 

Additionally, this may very well be the same guy that the MoI had believed was the Jamil Hussein we were looking for last week but he denied on December 21st that he was ever a source for the AP:

my CPATT sources informed me today that MOI officials have now questioned Captain Jamil Ghlaim at MOI headquarters. Ghlaim continues to deny speaking to AP or any other media outlet.

Not only did he deny being the source, he challanged anyone to prove he was a source:

"I am challenging any one can prove by recording or film that I did that"

So hold your horses everyone. 

Bill is in Kuwait at the moment heading to Baghdad and will have more infomation later.