Wow, times never change. DeCapiGate has now come full circle with the Jamil Hussein story. Bob at Confederate Yankee finally received a response from the AP on their reporting of another false story attributed to Iraqi police officers (unnamed of course). Go to his blog to read the whole response but in a nutshell they say the same thing they did during Jamil. That they verified the story by talking to a few police officers but this time they make the claim that a US soldier saw bodies near the Tigris river.
Now that source could be easily verified. We shall see on that one.
Oh, and even better, the AP said the reason they didn’t report on Michael Yon’s story of a massacre in a village is because CentCom didn’t issue a press release.
Got that?
They print a story about 20 beheaded bodies based ONLY on the word of two far away Iraqi police officers but won’t print the Yon story because the military didn’t put out a press release.
Wow….
Here is Bob’s stinging response:
Mr. Colford,
Let’s be blunt about what you mean when you claim, "Iraqi police officers often will speak to reporters only if they are guaranteed anonymity, for security reasons."
The fact of the matter is that because so many Iraqi police officers were leaking false information to the media—the Associated Press being the single greatest offender—the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior earlier this year slapped a gag order upon all active duty Iraqi police officers not formally designated as press contacts in an attempt to cut down on inaccurate information and purposefully planted propaganda.
AP’s most infamous police source, Jamil XX-XXXXXXX [named redacted for blog publication], known to the world by the pseudonym Jamil Hussein, was one of many police officers told point-blank not to provide stories to the press. XX-XXXXXXX was cited in particular as an example of a particularly bad source, as 38 of 40 stories sourced to him by the Associated Press could not be verified by any other news agency or government source as having actually occurred, and the vast majority of those stories coming form outside of his precinct, where he would have no direct knowledge at all.
When you state that you keep their names hidden for security reasons, you mean nothing more or less than that you are trying to keep their named hidden so that they will not be arrested and thrown in jail for violating their orders and Iraqi law.
You claim that these two anonymous police sources have been reliable in the past.
Sir, I hope that the Associated Press is a little more worldly than to fall for one of the oldest propaganda/intelligence tricks in the books. Dime-store spy novels are full of stories of spies and secret agents that pass along little truths to establish trust, in order to deliver disinformation once they are trusted. Apparently, the Associated Press has not learned that lesson.
In this instance, your two distant sources were quite wrong, as was your source who told you that the decapitated bodies have been recovered.
Further, I’d like for you to provide me the name of the U.S. military source who you claim said bodies were found on the banks of the Tigris, so that I can ask him myself precisely what information he relayed.
Interestingly enough, you seem to be claiming that you need to have some sort of press release from the U.S. military to run with Yon’s story.
What an interesting double standard the Associated Press has incorporated.
You’ll run a false sectarian massacre based upon hearsay evidence from anonymous police officers that are violating their own orders, as absolute, unequivocal fact, without any official comment or support whatsoever,
-BUT-
When you are offered—free of charge—a story citing named U.S. and Iraq officers and named U.S. and Iraqi units, taking party in the discovery and recovery of bodies from an al Qaeda massacre by perhaps the most well-regarded and highly respected combat correspondent of the entire war, with copious photo evidence, you suddenly need an official military press release before even considering it?
Perhaps I’m not a professional journalist, but I do know that if a journalist hears something interesting–say, an account of a massacre just a little more than three miles way–than he shouldn’t wait on a press release before springing into action. He should immediately start asking questions. If he’s going to merely rely on press releases, he isn’t a journalist, he’s a transcriptionist.
Your reporter Sinan Salaheddin was merely a transcriptionist for a pair of anonymous sources that the U.S. military seems to regard as insurgent propagandists. I would like your assurances that these sources will never be used again, and that Salaheddin, who has used disreputable sources such as Jamil in the past, will have his work more thoroughly vetted before publication, and that AP’s Baghdad editor, Kim Gamel, who has also been know to publish stories from questionable sources, be more thoroughly supervised as well. Quite franky, I think their continued pattern of behavior in publishing poorly-sourced and ultimately false stories should warrant their termination, but I am not in the position to make that call.
I do know, Mr. Colford, that AP Special Correspondent Robert H. Reid is presently no more than a few miles for the site of the massacre that Yon reported.
Perhaps Reid will be viewed with more credibility than Yon and his multiple eyewitnesses and photographs, and perhaps as much as the insurgent propagandists with whom the Associated Press continues to place so much trust.
As always Bob can slap someone silly uses his gift of writing. Great job Bob.
We know what’s going to happen next however. The AP will ignore us, hoping it goes away. The sad part is it usually does. The liberals are more then happy to ignore news they don’t want to believe and its usually left to only a few conservative bloggers to keep it in the minds eye.

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Surely the AP reporter , knowing how the story would be taken, should have at least confirmed the story with some on the record official source or at a minimum a official source for background only without attribution.
The media also said that we should not be suprised, because they are an interest group, not a news reporting service. They flat out admitted that they are not in the business of reporting news, but in the business of pushing their agenda.
We have been saying this since (at least) 2003, but it is surprising to see it now finally admitted from the media themselves:
Smile, you’re on Digg! The AP (sort of) responds to DeCapiGate
Digg has a category for World News, but not one for “Move along, folks!” FTA: “Oh, and even better, the AP said the reason they didn’t report on Michael Yon’s story of a massacre in a village is because CentCom didn’t issue a press release.” IOW, if the government doesn’t tell AP that something is news, WE aren’t allowed to think it’s news either!
The old media is dead! Long live the blogosphere!