I will link to Flopping Aces at the end of this post. He has done a great job staying on this situation and continues to do so.
I am grabbing the parts of his updates (with his permission, of course) dealing with Capt. Jamil Hussein, the main source for many stories coming out of Iraq.
UPDATE
Doing a search via Google I began reading the stories printed about the burned six and each and every one had one thing in common. The only person stating that this incident happened was one Capt. Jamil Hussein. Every news report printed this man as the source of the information.
If you do a search for this name you come up with ten pages of pretty much the same article describing the burning six.
Trying to dig up some information on this man as we speak.
UPDATE II
Since this guys name is in every single story printed about the burning six I have to dig way down to get to older stories involving this guy.
This one from April:
In yesterday’s worst violence, the bodies of six handcuffed, blindfolded and tortured men were found in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.
This one from May:
Violence resumed Saturday as a bomb in a parked car exploded near a busy bus station in southern Baghdad, killing at least four civilians and wounding seven, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
[…]Elsewhere, a policeman was killed and an officer wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in Baghdad’s western district of Mansour, Razzaq said. He also said three policemen were wounded when gunmen ambushed a convoy of Interior Ministry commandos in the southern neighbourhood of al-Bayaa in the capital.
Gunmen in three speeding cars also ambushed a patrol in western Baghdad, wounding 10 people, including six policemen, and two other policemen were injured in drive-by shootings in a nearby neighbourhood, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
Two other policemen were injured Saturday in drive-by shootings elsewhere in western Baghdad, when gunmen in two speeding cars attacked their patrol in Amiriya neighbourhood of western Baghdad, police Capt. Jamil Hussien said.
Here is one from June:
Two explosions struck an Interior Ministry patrol and a market in the Baghdad area on Monday evening, killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said. The first attack was a car bomb that struck an Interior Ministry patrol in western Baghdad, killing four commandos and wounding six, Capt. Jamil Hussein said. About 30 minutes later, a bomb exploded in a market in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 10.
July:
Gunmen also ambushed a bus in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in western Baghdad, killing six passengers, including a woman, and the driver, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
A suicide truck bomb slammed into a Baghdad police headquarters on Wednesday, killing seven and wounding at least double that many, in a deadly 24 hours that saw more than 45 killings in Iraq, including two American soldiers, authorities said.
The truck bomb attack in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora came at 07:45 as policemen were coming on duty and the blast razed the building, said captain Jamil Hussein. He said the number of casualties was expected to rise.
His name is mentioned quite a bit when Sunni’s are attacked it seems.
Now we will jump to the meat of this story.
UPDATE XI 11/27/06 0900hrs PSTBIG UPDATE…..Centcom has confirmed this Capt. Jamil Hussein is NOT a Police Officer nor is he employed by the Ministry of Interior:
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
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 XXXXXXXXXX X XXXXXXXX
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs OfficerNot only is Capt. Hussein bogus, but another source the AP has used extensively is bogus.
The insurgency knows what they are doing here. They understand the ONLY way they are going to win against us is to borrow a page out of the North Vietnamese playbook. Namely, forcing the morale of this country down to the point where funding is withdrawn and we leave.
So they employ fake Police Captains and other assorted informants to contact the MSM and create a picture of utter chaos.
All that and much more is over at Flopping Aces.
So, Associated Press has been TOLD that their source is bogus and they KEEP reporting from him, knowing his status and rank are both false.
What does that tell you?
This is not the first time we are hearing the military call out the news media on lies and the news media refusing to print corrections.
10/27/06- This week’s exchange with the New York Times isn’t the first time the Department of Defense has expressed concern about inaccuracies in a Times editorial. A September 7 editorial (“A Sudden Sense of Urgency”) asserted that, with the transfer of 14 high-value terrorist suspects to Cuba, “President Bush finally has some real terrorists in Guantánamo Bay.” In fact, those held prior to the transfer included personal bodyguards of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda recruiters, trainers, and facilitators. Another individual held at Guantánamo was Mohamed al-Kahtani, believed to be the intended 20th hijacker on September 11th.
The Times declined to issue a correction, noting that “the phrase in question was meant to be somewhat lighthearted in tone and not literal.”
10/24/07- The Pentagon today asked the New York Times to correct an editorial, which claimed that “There have never been enough troops, the result of Mr. Rumsfeld’s negligent decision to use Iraq as a proving ground for his pet military theories, rather than listen to his generals.” Whether the Times believes there were (or are) enough troops in Iraq, it is demonstrably untrue that troop levels in Iraq are the result of Secretary Rumsfeld’s “not listening to his generals.”
Generals involved in troop-level decisions have been very clear on this matter, making numerous statements that are not new—or difficult—to find, such as extensive commentary in General Franks’s book, American Soldier. The implication is that the New York Times either believes these generals are not being truthful, or that they are too intimidated to tell the truth. The Pentagon would vigorously dispute both characterizations.
Read what generals themselves have to say about the subject, in a Pentagon letter to the editor.
10/20/06- In response to a Newsweek article on Afghanistan (“The Rise of Jihadistan,” October 2, 2006), the Department of Defense sent Newsweek a lengthy rebuttal of points of fact and opinion, as well as a request for an “opportunity to submit a stand-alone column that not only rebuts some of the more sensational charges, but offers your readers a clearer view of the very real challenges we face in Afghanistan—as well as the many achievements of the past five years.”
Newsweek dismissed the rebuttal as the “government position,” as well as the request for a stand-alone column. The Pentagon’s response to that letter read in part: “First, a ‘concise’ letter to the editor, of say, 200 words, cannot adequately address an [sic] 2200-word article containing a series of false assertions. Second, the issue is not Newsweek’s position versus the ‘government position.’ The issue is that your readers were given a one-sided, opinion-laced article on Afghanistan based on falsehoods—which is something that journalists and editors are usually concerned about. Your dismissive reply is disappointing, to say the least.”
Read the whole exchange here
10/18/06- DOD Disputes Weekly Standard Column.
It is about time the government starts calling the hands of the left media. They have continuosly lied, distorted and misrepresented things purposely as I have showed here on this blog multiple times as shown here, here, here, and here.
The whole of the exchanges can be found on the DOD site.
Seems reporters are not required to verify the truthfulness of what they are reporting anymore. They can pull someone off the street, ask their name and just print anything they say without proving it is true.
Now, some do not care if what is reported is true or not, as long as it matches what they want to hear. Some of us prefer to be told the truth though.Michelle Malkin is asking some questions and gives the link to contact LA Times to ask your own questions.
Curt from Flopping Aces opened a new post for continuing updates also, right here.OpFor is onto yet ANOTHER case of news not being what it should be and he makes a very good point about milibloggers.
My related Posts: Enemy Propaganda from our Media and Media Bias? Say it ain't so!!
Hot Air is jumping on this also now.
[UPDATE]
More on the LA Times piece at Patterico's Pontifications.
FINALLY Junkyard Blog connects names in the AP story with a name in the LA Times story. Junkyard Blog continued.