There must be a rational explanation that fits all the facts. Either that, or we’re living in a movie with glaring continuity problems.
For those who came in late, Jamil Hussein is(?) a police captain in Baghdad who has been a named source for 61 Associated Press stories, many of them recounting Shi’ite militia atrocities against the city’s Sunni population. His 61st story was particularly horrifying: six Sunnis doused in kerosene and burned to death. After that report appeared, several strange things happened:
Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which controls the police force, denied that “Captain Jamil Hussein” existed. The U.S. Armed Forces issued the same denial.
The AP responded that he was, too, real but produced not a scintilla of corroborative evidence: not Captain Hussein himself nor statements from people who knew him nor anything else. It also ran no more stories quoting him.
Other news organizations, none of which ever seems to have heard of Captain Hussein, could find no witnesses to the alleged Sunni conflagration. The people who saw it were apparently AP exclusivists, just like the captain.
Attempts by third parties to locate Captain Hussein or anyone who knew of him were fruitless.
By this time, it was hard to avoid suspecting that the AP had either lied outrageously or, more likely, been duped. That it stonewalled all inquiries, adopting a progressively nastier tone toward skeptics, didn’t ease suspicions.
Then, after six weeks, Jamil Hussein suddenly turned up, as confirmed by the Interior Minister himself. The minister vaguely attributed the prior misinformation to poor record checking. He also issued a warrant for the captain’s arrest, then announced farcically that there would be no prosecution unless the AP identified him in a lineup as its source. He added helpfully that it would not be punished for noncooperation.
All this is less coherent than the plot of Il Trovatore. Where has Captain Hussein been for the past six weeks? Why is he seemingly unknown anywhere outside the AP newsroom? How has he been able to home in again and again on incidents all around Baghdad, many far away from his beat? Why did the AP ignore prima facie reasonable questions about his reality?
Bloggers who have gnawed on this episode will doubtless draw many jeers from the usual bevy of leftoids. It’s hard to see, though, how they can be faulted, unless it is a fault not to trust the Associated Press blindly. With so many peculiar circumstances, one would have to be devoid of rational curiosity not to suspect that something was wrong. Moreover, rather than just rant, folks like Armed Liberal, Eason Jordan (no conservative he) and others with local contacts tried to find the missing policeman; that is, they did the AP’s work for it. I don’t see how anybody writing in good faith can fault them, even if they turn out to have been wrong.
Will we ever learn what really happened here? If the Associated Press is interested in honest reporting, it will track down the true explanations of the anomalies. If it prefers to sneer at bloggers, that will tell us something as well.
Addendum: Michelle Malkin, who followed this saga so intensely that she has gone to Iraq to follow up, has a roundup of reactions from fellow Jamil doubters.
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