Ectoplasmic Source Conjured
The Associated Press, after six weeks or so, finally says it has confirmed – through Iraqi government sources – that the mysterious Jamil Hussein actually exists and is about to be arrested. Very good. Now we can stop focusing on the sideshow of whether or not he actually exists and get on with the real questioning. We would like to know why the 61 stories sourced to Hussein have not been reported by any other news source. We would like to know why the AP dropped all reference to the four burned mosques. And we really, really want to know why the most lurid single source stories coming out of Iraq have all come from one Jamil Hussein.
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.
Bob Owens says now the game is getting interesting now. Incidentally, notice how the AP says there was an attempt to discredit them? There is – and always has been – a possibility that this entire thing was a setup to discredit bloggers. But the original questions were raised because of the lurid nature of the reports and the fact that the four mosques reported to have been burned out in the original story appear not to have been damaged. If there is discredit here it is not on the bloggers who just wanted the facts. It is on the AP for stonewalling this for so long. The reporting of extremely lurid news via a single source with no backup validation is highly questionable and the AP damn well knows that. So now let's see where this leads.
By James, January 5, 2007 @ 2:37 am
Now there’s a country the U.S. should support. A place that arrest people for talking to the press. The Soviet Union would be proud.
If anything does happen to him it could be the fault of the right-wing blogs. Hope the guy doesn’t get killed. That would be co-conspiracy to murder.
But am not sure he’s real. First Iraq says he doesn’t exist, then they do. Hmmmmm.
By Gaius, January 5, 2007 @ 6:01 am
I presume you missed this since the AP buried it at the very bottom:
He (Khalaf) said police officers sign a pledge not to talk to reporters when they join the force.
A man who violates his word is who the AP admires and praises as a source. A sole source that they don’t even fact check before printing extremely lurid stories? There’s a media the US should support.
By Ed, January 5, 2007 @ 9:34 am
I was telling you all along, that trusting in the word of the Ministry of Information (which is riddled with Shiite militia members) PR guy versus the Associated Press was foolish. But once again, in you idealogical fervor to attack the “liberal MSM” your wishes got ahead of reality.
Skepticism is always warranted, blind belief that the other side is alway wrong, is just insanity.
By Gaius, January 5, 2007 @ 9:44 am
So now we are to unquestioningly take the word of the Ministry of Information guy because you agree with him this time?
Can’t have it both ways, Ed. Really, you can’t.
Even if this guy does exist, it does not validate the lurid story, does it?