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.
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Maybe I misread, but Salman Pak isn’t 100 miles from Baghdad (where reporters hide), and US troops just went in there the other day for the first time in 2 yrs. You’d think they’d have seen it or been able to confirm it.
Scott,
You did indeed misread that, but no big deal. Kut (where one officer reported from) is 100 miles from Baghdad. Baghdad’s outskirts are about 12 miles from Salman Pak, so the officer in Baghdad was probably more like 15 miles away if reporting from near the city center.
U.S. forces have been there for quite a while in a training role for the local station of Iraqi National police. Without doing more than a few seconds of Googling, I found a MNF-I account about how those U.S. advisors called in AH-64 support against insurgent forces firing on the police station with small arms and mortars May 9. The Apache gunship made short work of their vehicle, and two of the insurgents.
There’s a surprise. AP falling for a jihadi story hook, line and sinker…
Earlier this week there was a report of the taliban attempting to use a 6 year old boy as a suicide bomber. The AP was careful to point out that the claim “could not be substantiated” even though there were several people who claimed to be eye-witnesses. There is nothing wrong with AP being sceptical but it would seem that they practice selective scepticism.
Should an F-16 pilot drop a thousand pounder on the most desolate spot in Afghanistan, totally devoid of plant and animal life, and the Taliban reported that the air strike had killed ten women, thirty children, five baby ducks, destroyed a baby formula factor, a hospital, three schools, and half a dozen mosques, AP would probably publish it as fact-no questions asked.