Jamil Hussein identified –and the AP is right
The Iraqi MOI has confirmed that Jamil Hussein exists and works for the MOI.
I am one of many who found the doubts about the “six burning Sunnis” story as expressed by the Iraqi government and CENTCOM to be credible. The basic reports on the “four burned moques” (which subsequent reports said was one burned mosque) led to my doubt. Then one of the witnesses retracted the story. Then the said no one named Jamil Hussein worked for it.
Turns out he exists and Hussein has been a regular source for two years.
That’s what the AP “re-report” stated.
AP editor in chief Kathleen Carroll is vindicated in her stand. I’ll write a corrective column next week. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and I believed there was reason to suspect a false source. I was wrong in that belief.
Interestingly enough, my advocacy of a “national news council” (which appeared in my November 28 column about the Jamil Hussein question) drew fire from one of my editors. He argues it is a step from a controlled press. I still think a council (staffed by experienced editors and reporters) is a good idea. A fair criticism of the concept is that “it’s all politics” regarding who gets appointed to the council. Yes, and there are politics to everything.
Don’t be so quick to exonerate the AP. Where is another AP report with a discrepancy - an air strike in an engagement in which MNF-I says involved no air strikes. Details at Called as Seen. Something still seems fishy about this.
Comment by Harold C. Hutchison — 1/5/2007 @ 12:13 am
facts are facts. It was right to question the AP and it looks as though it will be right to admit the AP was right. Personally, I admit that I was hoping against the AP.
Comment by samuel stott — 1/5/2007 @ 1:43 am
Does this mean that all those stories attributed to this guy are true? I thought the purpose of trying to find this guy was to cross-check the “facts” that are in dispute. Does finding the guy mean that any of the facts have been settled, one way or another? ED NOTE: Good comment. Now we have a chance to find out. The gut of my column from November 28 was my belief that there is a role for a national news council type organization to look into questionable reporting. I believed the AP needed to produce Jamil Hussein so we could find out if the “burned Sunnis” report were true. Hussein has been produced. I put myself in Kathleen Carroll’s place and if I had a source who had proved reliable (note the caveat) and had other sources confirm what the source said, I would run the story. It’s news. I was also re-report the story (which the AP did). You’re quite right to continue to ask if Hussein’s reports were accurate. But here’s my current take: if he became a source in 2004 and had a good track record (which the AP claims he did) then it’s fair to use him as a source when a story breaks. I noted in that column that the AP stood by its story and that CENTCOM could be wrong. I wrote the column the afternoon the AP did its “recheck” and would have included more of the AP’s claims if they were available when I wrote it (they weren’t). The entire affair is extremely complicated– but heck, it’s a war zone. Hussein exists, so let’s proceed to find out if his reports are accurate. If they were accurate in the past were they accurate in the case of the “four burned mosques and six torched Sunnis?” We’ll now find out. However, Jamil Hussein has been produced. That must be acknowledged and recognized — and on this point Carroll is vindicated. But as the saying goes, stay tuned.
Comment by valerie — 1/5/2007 @ 6:49 am
Way to “man up”, Mr. Bay. It takes a man with integrity to admit he was wrong.
Comment by Pug — 1/5/2007 @ 7:31 am
Hussein may be a real person but the veracity of his reports must still be determined. Kathleen Carrol is only vindicated insofar as this dude is a real person but not if his reports are real events - thus what kind of a person he is may also be relevant. The fauxtography during the Israeli/Hamas battles in Lebanon were done by other “photojournalists” and those people really exist, but the photos were still doctored. The story here may be that Hussein is a person but his reporting may not be truthful. And, who is he really working for and what kind of person is he?
Comment by Michael Cadrecha — 1/5/2007 @ 8:49 am
Good for you that you can admit when you’re wrong. For real. Now if some of your posters would just admit the same and engage in some soul searching as to why they would take the Shiite dominated MOI’s version as gospel but be absolutely convinced that the AP was lying.
Comment by Lawnguylander — 1/5/2007 @ 8:59 am
Way to have some integrity–good post
Comment by Brave Captain of Industry — 1/5/2007 @ 9:05 am
Dumbass.
Comment by Mike — 1/5/2007 @ 9:19 am
First there is this, regarding the rights’ total and complete credulity when it comes to anything/everything the current administration has to say: “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.” Also, please consider that journalists working in Iraq may have a much better insight into the society they’re operating in. The journalists may have actually been trying to protect this source’s freedom (he’s about to be arrested for talking to the press) and life. And this whole controversy has been cooked up for what? To prove that the war in Iraq is going swimmingly? Or because you feel guilty about the 3,000+ soldiers who have died in this disastrous mistake. Good luck sleeping.
Comment by Doug — 1/5/2007 @ 11:26 am
Thanks for the honesty.
Comment by Lindata — 1/5/2007 @ 11:42 am
I was wrong in that belief. Bravo. It’s a rare person willing to own up to being wrong. This speaks well of you. Maybe you can teach Michelle Malkin a thing or two.
Comment by James F. Elliott — 1/5/2007 @ 11:51 am
From the left, good for you to admit you were wrong. And I agree, it doesn’t verify the burning story, continue to question its veracity if you like. That said, I believe there is something for you to learn from this edpisode. Think about it.
Comment by Spy DeMole — 1/5/2007 @ 1:14 pm
Kudos to you, sir. If we are to raise the level of debate in this country, and the relevancy of bloggers, it must be through integrity – on both sides of the spectrum. Plus it adds value to the moments when we question the status quo, and we turn out to be correct. I hope that others follow your fine example. ty
Comment by Ty Morton — 1/5/2007 @ 1:30 pm
Hey Doug, put the shoe on the other foot. The left is completely sold out on the assumption that the Bush administration is always lying, that the military has always lied and is full of losers, misfits & crazies, everyone of which is “at least” a potential war criminal. Your greatest wish is to see America and the attempt at democracy fail in Iraq. Your co-conspiritors (the main stream media) is in full attack mode and you morons are eating up every bite of the racid hash they’re dishing out. Everything they report is calculated for political effect without regard for truth or how it may destroy good and support evil or if it puts brave men and women in danger. The only value the left places on the lives and actions of our military is how their deaths can be parlayed into anti-war sentiment. You wouldn’t know courage, sacrifice, duty or honor if it slapped you in the face. My posit is every bit as valid as yours based, as it is, on mere assertion and personal opinion. You do realize don’t you when the left’s weakness allows the IslamoFacist takeover, you godless,immoral pinkos will be the first ones to meet the executioner.
Comment by Scott Sterling — 1/5/2007 @ 1:34 pm
The first step toward rational discourse is admitting that there are facts. However, what is missing from your mea culpa is a repudiateion of a generalized (but without any source) suspicion of anything that the AP reports from Iraq. And most importantly, does this not give absolute proof that trusting the words coming out of our military is the true folly. They spread an outright, undisputable lie. Is there any reason to trust them again?
Comment by eddie — 1/5/2007 @ 2:05 pm
Eddie has it right–this story isn’t just about how some bloggers got it wrong, it’s also about how the U.S. military and the Iraqi government lied in order to try to cover up an atrocity.
Comment by Dissenter — 1/5/2007 @ 2:58 pm
AP, by not answering questions forthrightly, transparently and by attacking those who questioned it violated its own code of ethics. By attacking the questioners and asking if their honesty was being questioned, AP changed from a story about Jamil Hussein to one about AP. And do note that sole source reporting of incidents is not something recommended at any J-school. So, when that slips through numerous times, the actual sole source gets called into question, the response is to investigate the process that allows sole source reporting to go on, ensure the source is reliable and accurate and to start backing up those accounts given with other sources. By note following its own code of ethics that outline these procedures, AP has now called into question all of their reporting. Because multiple reporters did this it is not just a point-source problem, but systemic. Unless they aren’t following their own code of ethics. In which case it is not the public they are serving any longer, but themselves.
Comment by ajacksonian — 1/5/2007 @ 3:10 pm
Not to sound paranoid, but the linked news story says the AP reports that the Ministry confirms that the AP was right all along. In other words, it’s still only the AP’s word. Has anybody else physically talked to this cop, to confirm that he exists? Jury still out, folks.  ED NOTE: My column didn’t question anyone’s honesty in the AP. It was rather impersonal in that respect. The column suggested the AP may have been snookered by stringers, and I wanted the truth. The column also suggested CENTCOM could be wrong. The column is linked in several previous posts, but can be found at strategypage.com in the ON POINT seciton, dated November 28, 2006. Several commenters have jumped to erroneous conclusions about that column. The retraction of the “six burned Sunnis” report by another named source (ie, named in the AP’s article) led me to question the veracity (and existence) of Jamil Hussein. When it re-examined the initial story, the AP did find three other witnesses. You have to be fair and consider what reporters do. They cover events — and must often rely on sources– and they must check them out. Could the new witnesses be lying? Yes, of course. However, the editors and bureau chief had multiple sources reporting the same event, and one of the sources had an ostensible track record for reliability. So they reported the story. This murky war zone mess is why I believe a news council would serve a very useful purpose – for getting at the truth. Accusations that CENTCOM lied as as ill-considered as accusations that the AP lied. There’s no evidence of that. MOI’s personnel office –at the moment– looks rather incompetent. At one time it claimed Hussein didn’t work for MOI. Based on what I’ve learned in the past four days, it looks like Jamil Hussein does exist and the AP’s editors knew he existed. We’ll learn more soon, I suspect.
Comment by nate bissonette — 1/5/2007 @ 3:26 pm
AP stands for allways pussies! You can’t trust these liers and defeetists to report on anything, so it’s no wunder decent people who support our graet president would dowt them. I say send them to some commy stinkhole and let them rott!
Comment by Vic Odin — 1/5/2007 @ 3:32 pm
Respect due for your apology, there is no way Michelle Malkin will apologize. After all last year she hounded a woman until she commited suicide and then claimed it had nothing to do with her!
Comment by Davis Jr. — 1/5/2007 @ 3:41 pm
Mr. Bay, I wish I could share your belief in the AP story reporting that Hussein is real and as previously advertised. (Not that his existence is anything like the whole story–it’s but a sideshow to the deeper questions about reporting out of Iraq.) But I can’t share your confidence in the story. The one person truly “on the hook” for the Burning Sunni story is the AP Green Zone journalist whose byline appeared on it, Steven Hurst. Go back and check the byline on the “Hussein found!” story. Uh huh. Steven Hurst. To say the least, I remain skeptical at this point that “Police Captain Jamil Hussein” is as advertised, or was a reliable source.
Comment by Tully — 1/5/2007 @ 4:40 pm
Thank you for having the integrity and honor to correct your writings once found mistaken. You do a great credit to conservatives, and set a great example on all sides of this distressingly overheated atmosphere.
Comment by jim — 1/5/2007 @ 5:00 pm
Who cares if you were wrong on this ONE LITTLE THING? The MSM is losing this war! They only report the bad news, when there’s all that GREAT NEWS to be reported!!!! All we need to do is ban the press (prior to getting rid of it altogether!!!), send 100,000 more troops over (even if we have to reinstate forced conscription a la Vietnam), bomb Syria and Iran, and get rid of term limits for presidents! God forbid what the next liberal (just typing that word makes me vomit!) president will do to our Armed forces and the prospect of garrisoning the entire middle east and occupying Iraq in perpetuity!!! What happened to the “K Street Project”, Grover?
Comment by KC — 1/5/2007 @ 5:10 pm
Meanwhile, where are the alleged four scorched mosques and the alleged burning Sunnis? These are not exactly minor details. I cannot buy the AP’s spin that “right about one thing = right about everything”. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Does that mean that we should trust it? The burden of proof, in light of AP’s “re-reporting” is on the AP itself.
Comment by Mwalimu Daudi — 1/5/2007 @ 7:18 pm
To those of you still clinging to this story as proof that the MSM is trying to make sure we lose this war I suggest a compromise. The debunking of the AP story was going to discredit all reporting that paints Iraq as a hellhole of sectarian violence right? So let’s agree that everything is just fine and redeploy our troops to Philly where there is just as much violence according to the nutosphere. Then you members of the 82nd Chairborne can take credit for having won the war. Victory!!! USA! USA! USA! Let the Iraqis paint their own schools and let’s rely on the military and the Shiite dominated MOI to give us our news from now on because they are clearly interested in objective truth and nothing else.
Comment by Lawnguylander — 1/6/2007 @ 8:46 am
Kudos for having the kahonas to admit a mistake. Would only that our president had the same. I find it interesting here that many of those who yet don’t believe in the authenticity of the AP report are unable to take with a block of salt the ideologically biased inaccuracies of pseudo-journalists like Malkin. Instead, their responses are usually coupled with the dead red herring that Liberals want to see us defeated, and the MSM is their tool. Well, those readers are the ones being tooled and if they would only get their heads out of the sand or whatever crevice in which they remain, a true debate might result. Welcome to the light.
Comment by DoubtingThomas — 1/6/2007 @ 10:45 am
Curiouser and curiouser… Save your apologies. It ain’t over yet. The Associated Press, indignant as usual on the subject, now claims to have found its Jamil Hussein, their stringer’s named source for sixty plus dispatches from Iraq. Not surprisingly, the industry’s mouthpie…
Trackback by THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER — 1/6/2007 @ 9:36 pm
I disagree. It ain’t over until somebody other than AP and the industry mouthpiece E&P confirm this guy’s existence and the truth of what was reported in his, uh, name. See this fresh contradiction from Kuwait: http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/01/06/new-twists-in-the-jamil-hussei/
Comment by Dick Stanley — 1/6/2007 @ 9:41 pm
Appreciate the show of integrity here. It’s tough raising a kid in a world where so few seem willing to take responsibility for their words or actions.
Comment by Nan — 1/7/2007 @ 11:57 am
While it looks like the mysterious Capatin Hussein has been found, some serious issues still remain, primarily the veracity of what this guy has been feeding the AP. We all know that most of the “reporting” done from MSM types in Iraq is really based on material brought to the talking heads by Iraqi stringers. How are these people vetted, if at all? In his fine book, Triumph Forsaken, Mark Moyar notes that two of the major Vietnamese “sources” for David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan turned out to be North Vietnamese agents. These people helped propel these two gullible fools by playing on their own prejudices, leading them to write a number of articles that were very influential in turning the Kennedy Administration against Ngo Dinh Diem, helping to instigate the coup. How does a media vet its stringers?
Comment by Rich — 1/7/2007 @ 12:41 pm
The other thing is that he denies ever talking to AP: http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/01/06/new-twists-in-the-jamil-hussei/ ED NOTE: Now this is interesting, too. My initial column suggested a “news council” would serve as a very useful forum for vetting contentioius reports. Do you think that would work in this instance?
Comment by Harold C. Hutchison — 1/7/2007 @ 2:22 pm
The goalposts continue to move. First Jamil Hussein doesn’t exist. Now, it was more about what he reported. Be honest. His mere existence was challenged - that was the rub. Now, we hear that he is denying talking to the AP. Well, let’s see…the man is likely to be jailed for talking to the press, so I’m not surprised. The real travesty here is that right wing bloggers are akin to Holocaust deniers, a group they vilify at every turn. They claim there is no Iraqi civil war, there are no atrocities, that our media is manufacturing these horrific stories to justify an anti-Bush bias. Soory, there is no need to make these stories up. They are real, just as the Holocaust in WWII was. Â Â
Comment by AScanner — 1/7/2007 @ 5:56 pm
Austin, what benefits would a Iraq news council offer the readers? Vetted stringers? Professional ethics? Unbiased editors? I thought that’s what we were entitled to expect from Professional Journalists, already. It’s not like they’re scruffy bloggers. I still say: the only proof we have of the existence of a Jamil Hussein as a real cop who’s also the actual source of all those AP stories is . . . the AP reporter who first claimed he existed, and now claims the Ministry confirms it. The cop he’s fingered as the source has a similar name but has always denied being the source. Nobody from any other news organization has talked to him. No blogger or embed has talked to him. Do I charge the reporter with fabrication? Not yet, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. I remember Jayson Blair, Dateline’s exploding pickups, and most recently, Dan Rather’s “fake-but-true” memos. AP’s situation reminds me of the Irishman suspected of killing three bishops and a dog who vindicates himself by triumphantly producing, alive, the dog. Except the AP hasn’t even produced the dog, merely claimed that somebody else saw it. I remain unconvinced. ED NOTE: Good comment and thanks for adding it to the discussion. I didn’t accuse any organization of fabrication. The Washington Post editors got taken by one of their own writers (Janet Cooke) and ultimately owned up to it. THe organizaiton did what was right. I don’t think MOI lied– I don’t think it knows who’s working for it, which is arguably a worse case in a pragmatic sense. Every time one of these questionable reports crops up it further erodes general press credibility — which is grossly unfair to honest reporters and editors. A combat zone is a crazy, high pressure environment, and it’s a tough place to cover as a journalist. But god field journalists get out there and do it — John Burns, Mike Hedges, Rich Oppel Jr. (at one time Oppel embedded with the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion and US Special Forces). I’ve seen the combat zone as a soldier and a writer, which gives me direct experience on what both jobs require. The point is, the AP bureau relied on a source — a named source it provided — and the source had a track record. Has the entire report been verified (as in kerosene-torched bodies, four mosques, etc)? No. But I’ll tell you, if I had had two sources report an incident, and one was a cop with a track record, I’d have sent the report to the bureau. Remember, the AP later found three more witnesses. What is galling is how some members of the press don’t treat others fairly when they are grappling with chaotic, uncertain circumstances and make a less than perfect judgment call (as in the military and the police). I think a US-based news council would help restore credibility and a degree of mutual respect. A thorough post-mortem backed by research which also allows for the rational expression of opposing viewpoints is ultimately in the interest of everyone interested in determining the truth and maintaining integrity. Democracy requires the truth. The wire services have been the “backbone of the truth” — the first alerts. Do they make mistakes? Of course, some of them are painful and difficult to correct. Web logs rely on reporters. Reporting organizations still have the “killer application” that only a few new organizations have begun to acquire –that is, the extensive presence of reporters and stringers able to cover breaking events. Pajamasmedia is making strides in this direction. I’ll add this thought — as more ad revenue moves to the internet, and as print media retrenches, experienced reporters will migrate to internet organizations. Within two years we could see several “new media” oprganizations with regional bureaus staffed by one or two very experienced reporters. I suspect pay cuts will be involved for some of the reporters, but they’ll be in on the ground floor. One organization may have a strong LA and Dallas bureau, another may have a strong Miami and Caracas bureau. Wire services and blogs will “converge.” I know, you can argue that this is already happening and you’d be right.
Comment by nate bissonette — 1/8/2007 @ 8:15 am
I have no idea if it would work. It all depends on who is on that council - and whether they will be influenced by outside pressure. Will the members also be willing to say very clarly that a certain outlet failed?
Comment by Harold C. Hutchison — 1/9/2007 @ 2:07 pm