AP source not who he claimed to be

[rikzilla]

A vague statement from the US military is the primary fact being relied upon by detractors of AP. However the military (as with all militaries) is not a trustworthy data source ("duh" being the appropriate response imo).

Courtesy of Stephen Colbert, this from the Iraq Study Group report, underlines added:

No sir.

The primary fact is that IP Capt. Jamil Hussein does not exist. All AP need do is produce him and this argument will be won. All that will be left for us grumpy old AP skeptics to do is apologize and hang our heads in shame So what's the hold up?.

-z

 

[Mycroft]

A vague statement from the US military is the primary fact being relied upon by detractors of AP. However the military (as with all militaries) is not a trustworthy data source ("duh" being the appropriate response imo).

Courtesy of Stephen Colbert, this from the Iraq Study Group report, underlines added:

Uhm, so?

How the US military records violence may well be an important issue worthy of discussion, but it has nothing to do with the identity of Captain Jamil Hussein. You seem to be trying to set up a dichotomy where either you root for the Associated Press or you root for the US military. What we should want is for both organizations to do their jobs well.

 

[rikzilla]

Well? Capt. Hussein popped up yet??



Retraction? Nope.
Evidence of Capt. Hussein? Nope.
Stone cold silence. Yup.

Could it be???



...just asking questions!

-z

 

[a_unique_person]

From Michelle Malkin.

[SIZE=-1]Who's the biggest terrorist propaganda tool?[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]
The Associated Press
[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]The New York Times[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]
CNN
[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]al Jazeera[/SIZE]

What the story is really about.

 

[Mycroft]

From Michelle Malkin.



What the story is really about.

Hmm, the point you're trying to make is too clever to be easily understood. Could you dumb it down some so us regular folk can understand it?

 

[varwoche]

They responded by poo-pooing thier critics.

AP not only poo-pooed their critics. They went back to the scene and interviewed corroborating witnesses.

What they have not done is produced Captain Jamil Hussein.

Bearing in mind that they interviewed Hussein in a police station, in uniform, on multiple occasions, and bearing in mind his legitimacy was never challenged on the prior occasions when Hussein was a cited source, and given that Hussein may not wish to be "produced" for reasons to do with personal safety, I don't see why AP should be expected to "produce" him any further than they already have.

 

[firecoins]

AP not only poo-pooed their critics. They went back to the scene and interviewed corroborating witnesses.

link to this if possible

Bearing in mind that they interviewed Hussein in a police station, in uniform, on multiple occasions, and bearing in mind his legitimacy was never challenged on the prior occasions when Hussein was a cited source, and given that Hussein may not wish to be "produced" for reasons to do with personal safety, I don't see why AP should be expected to "produce" him any further than they already have.

He was challanged after having used him several times. If the AP has met him in uniform in his office, interview him again and get a picture of him in uniform in his office.

Is this the same Iraqi police force where some police officers are also insurgents?

 

[a_unique_person]

Certainly is. If not insurgents, some are also acting as private armies for some warlord in the civil war.

Either way, AP has gone and checked the story. Michelle Malkin and others try to portray this issue as one of "[SIZE=-1]Who's the biggest terrorist propaganda tool?". The ISG has even said things are worse than people back home are being told.
[/SIZE]

 

[The Fool]

The primary fact is that IP Capt. Jamil Hussein does not exist.
-z

When did this become a "fact"? and what evidence did you use to conclude this was a "fact"?

I know you are not a conspiracy therorist rik...as you say...you are just "asking questions"

I see someone wants a picture of the guy in uniform...should we also publish his address? Maybe a timetable of his movements for anyone interested?

I guess thats the end of all the stories coming from " a source close to ....." such stories are all dead in the water.....funny thing is I can't remember this sudden desire for all sources to be paraded in the public domain when the stories are something the blog warriors want to hear...

I'll tell the blog warriors another thing that will make thier spider senses tingle... Nobody cares if they selectively dismiss what they don't want to hear, it simply demonstrates thier double standards. But hey, I may be wrong and little internet mud puddles like LGF may stop replaying stories that feed thier members what they crave unless the sources of the stories are "produced"....I look forward to seeing this happen.

 

[varwoche]

link to this if possible

Read the thread (if possible ). You will find more than one link, e.g. posts #3, 36, 129.

 

[varwoche]

I see someone wants a picture of the guy in uniform...should we also publish his address? Maybe a timetable of his movements for anyone interested?

Hey TF, why stop there? In the midst of a deteriorating sectarian conflict, AP could even paint targets onto the backs of Hussein's family members.

 

[Mycroft]

Hey TF, why stop there? In the midst of a deteriorating sectarian conflict, AP could even paint targets onto the backs of Hussein's family members.

Now you're just flat out fabricating reasons for AP not to check their sources.

 

[Mycroft]

AP not only poo-pooed their critics. They went back to the scene and interviewed corroborating witnesses.

Which is great, as far as that goes. Personally I'd be curious as to what happened to the bodies of the 10 militiamen that were killed, but that's a minor point next to the issue of Captain Hussein.

Bearing in mind that they interviewed Hussein in a police station, in uniform, on multiple occasions...

A reporter claimed he had been interviewed in a police station in the past. The claim was never made that he was interviewed in the police station for this story.

In my line of work I know that if I were doing some guy's mortgage and the underwriter and performed a verification of employment and the word came back that they were unable to verify employment where he said he worked, that me telling the underwriter, "But I saw him there! I met him in his office!" wouldn't count for squat. That underwriter would (rightly) demand that I clear up the issue to a 100% degree of certainty before he was willing to look at anything else in that file.

And how much more important is this?

...and bearing in mind his legitimacy was never challenged on the prior occasions when Hussein was a cited source, and given that Hussein may not wish to be "produced" for reasons to do with personal safety, I don't see why AP should be expected to "produce" him any further than they already have.

Clearly you're satisfied extending the benefit of the doubt with little evidence. That's fine for you, but some of the rest of us choose to be more skeptical than you are.

As it happens, more evidence will be forthcoming on the issue. Apparently Eason Jordan has offered to fly Michelle Malkin and Curt of flopping aces dot com to Iraq to personally look for Captain Hussein. If they find him or not, this should be interesting.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/12/eason_jordan_mi.html

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/ex-cnn chief to fly pro-war bloggers to iraq_1016715

 

[Nova Land]

Apologies for my longer-than-intended absence.

There are a number of points raised in posts a week old or older which I intend to address. I'm going to try to do that before responding much to newer posts.

Unfortunately this means I will be making about 20 posts over the next several days, and some of these are quite lengthy. In an attempt to try not to overload people with too much to read at once, I'm going to post them in bunches, about 5 or so at a time, trying to leave at least a half-day between posting.

The next set of posts will finish off my series of replies to rik (yes, there's more!) and address some points that NoZed raised. After that I'll get to some of Mycroft's and firecoins' posts. Thank you for your patience, and my apologies for the long delay.

Since I will in general be refraining from replying to new posts until I catch up a bit on old posts, I'd like to suggest that people not be in a rush to reply to what I am writing in this batch of posts. Relax. Take your time.

Some of you might also find it helpful helpful to wait and digest what's in the next set of posts before rushing to reply to this first set. the points I am trying to make in my replies to Rikzilla's posts 84, 94, and 106 are closely related, so something that is unclear in this batch of posts may become clearer if you take the time to read the next ones.

 

[Nova Land]

This isn't a shades of gray situation. Either Jamil Hussein is bona fide or he isn't.

Suppose I have a box filled with 100 pebbles, of which 95 are black and 5 are white. I reach in the container and pull out one pebble. However, the room is very dark and I am unable to see what color the pebble I have pulled out is.

This isn't a shades of gray situation. Either the pebble I have pulled out is black or it is white...

The problem is that I don't know which. It could be either black or white, and I won't know which until I can look at it in better light.

A person who wants to know for certain whether it is black or white will need to wait until it is possible to examine the pebble in better light. But often in life we don't have that luxury of waiting; we need to make actions now based on our best judgment of a situation. If that were the case -- if for some reason you needed to guess which color the pebble was before all the evidence could be brought out -- then you would be wise to realize that the pebble is more likely to be black. Same thing goes with regard to Jamil Hussein, although the calculation of probabilites is not as simple there.

It is understandable that those who think of this as a black-and-white case, rather than a matter of figuring out what is more likely, probably aren't as good at calculating the odds. Here is a quick walk-through.

Yes, the pebble is either black or white. Yes, Jamil Hussein is either genuine or he isn't. But that doesn't make it equally likely that the pebble is black or white, nor does it make it equally likely that Jamil Hussein is genuine or a phony.

Since there is more than one possibility, the sensible person examines each of these to see which is more likely to be the case. That's easy in the example of the pebble, because there are only two possibilities to choose from. There are 95 black pebbles and 5 white pebbles, so it is 19 times more likely that one has picked a black pebble than a white one.

But in the matter of Jamil Hussein, things are more complicated than your black/white framing of the problem would have led you to believe -- because there is more than one way for Jamil Hussein to be genuine, and more than one way for him to be a fake. For instance, you believe he is imaginary -- the invention of an AP reporter. That's one way he would be a fake. Others speculated he might be a con artist who fooled the AP reporter into thinking he was a police captain; that would be another way he would be a fake. And Wildcat speculated that Jamil Hussein exists and is a real policeman, but Jamil Hussein is not his real name. That would make him both a fake and real. Those are just a few of the possibilities.

A sensible person looks at the various general possibilities and estimate which ones are more likely to be true and which ones are less likely. Those who have a realistic perception of likelihoods are more likely to come up with the correct answers; those who refuse to look at the likelihood and unlikelihood of different events, or who have an unrealistic perception of the likelihoods of different events, are more likely to come up with incorrect answers.

Which means those of you who rely on hearsay sites such as Powerline, Michelle Malkin, Drudge Report, CNS news, etc, are at a distinct disadvantage over those of us who prefer to turn to primary sources.

Some people here were under the illusion that it is common for media outlets such as AP to lie about false stories. As firecoins has done a good job of showing, this is not the case. While reporters do get stories wrong, it is extremely rare for their media employers to then lie about these stories on the reporters' behalf. So far firecoins has provided numerous examples where the media did not lie when a story turned out to be wrong, but not a single one where the media did lie when a story turned out to be wrong.

Firecoins has also done a good job of demonstrating how unreliable the sources spreading the claim that Jamil Hussein is a phony are. Many of the sources that are claiming AP is lying about their reporter's meetings with Jamil Hussein are the same ones that suckered people with dishonest versions of the Food Lion and GM truck stories. Those of you who have let these sites shape your world view are looking at the world through distortion lenses.

So I'd like to ask you to take those lenses off and look at the actual record. If Jamil Hussein were non-existent, as you are guessing, then the reporter who claimed to have interviewed him was lying. That's certainly within the realm of reasonable possibilities; there are numerous instances of that happening. But how often has a media outlet in that type of situation then gone on record and lied in support of a lying reporter? So far, the answer seems to be: zero times. How often has a media outlet in this situation fired the reporter? So far, the answer seems to be: Every time. That makes your guess one of the unlikelier possibilities.

It is possible that this is the exceptional case. That's always possible -- just like pulling one of the 5 white pebble out of the box of 100 pebbles is always possible. But in the marble example the likelihood is that the pebble that got pulled out is black. In the AP example, the likelihood is that Jamil Hussein is genuine.

 

[Nova Land]

The only way to resolve this situation is for the AP to make Capt. Jamil Hussein available for interviews by the media in general. (read non-AP reporters).

No, you are wrong. That is one way; it is not the only way.

Another way would be for the MOI to permit the other police officers at the al-Yarmouk station to talk freely to the media about this matter. If the officers there deny any knowledge of Jamil Hussein working at their station, that is a good indication he's a fraud; if they confirm that he is one of their colleagues, that is a good indication that he's genuine. That is one of many simple, reasonable things which the MOI could do to help clear up this matter.

Until they do this simple thing reasonable people are going to wonder why they don't.

Yes. I agree with you -- both with regards to the AP and with regards to the MOI.

In this case, though, the MOI is the controlling authority. They have forbidden police officers -- except for their restricted, hand-picked list of authorized sources -- to talk to the media. They have threatened to take action against genuine but unauthorized police who talk to the media, and against media outlets which print stories from genuine but unauthorized sources.

The MOI are the ones putting a roadblock in the way of getting to the bottom of this. In the days since the story broke they have done nothing to help get the matter resolved. They have failed to clarify what records they consulted. They have failed to bring forward officers from al-Yarmouk to testify as to whether they know and recognize Jamil Hussein as a police captain there. They have failed to give the officers at al-Yarmouk permission to speak freely to the media -- which would be the best way I can think of to settle this matter.

Instead, they have threatened to fire police officers who talk to the media without permission, as well as to punish the media if it publishes such stories and MOI doesn't like what the stories say.

Instead of focusing all your attention on the AP, you should be focusing some of your attention on MOI. And yet, not only are you not examining what the MOI said to see if it holds up to scrutiny, you are actively arguing against doing so. That would appear to be a rather serious blind spot in your skepticism.

 

[Nova Land]

There is to date no evidence that Capt. Hussein exists.

Yes, there is. There is the testimony of a reporter who says he met with captain Hussein in his office at the al-Yarmouk police station on numerous occasions as well as having talked with him on the phone. There are also the numerous AP articles which appeared over the past year in which Jamil Hussein is identified and quoted. There is no record of anyone at the al-Yarmouk police station ever getting in touch with either the AP or the Iraqi authorities to say, Who is this guy? I work at al-Yarmouk and I've never heard of him!

These are evidence of Hussein's existence. They are not proof, but they are evidence. What one does with evidence is gather it up, examine it, and evaluate it. It may be not be sufficient to settle a matter; most pieces of revidence, on their own, are not. It is generally an accumulation of evidence which is needed to settle a matter satisfactorily, and so far we do not have a good enough accumulation. But the fact we don't have enough evidence does not mean we have no evidence.

The things I listed above are evidence that Jamil Hussein exists. The allegation by Michael Dean that an MOI record search failed to turn up a listing for Jamil Hussein is evidence that he doesn't.

It's important to state these things correctly. That is the standard we expect others to abide by. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.

(PS: for more on the difference between evidence and proof, please refer to my response to NoZed -- which will appear tomorrow, considerably farther down this thread.)

 

[Nova Land]

... [Y]ou are implying that Hussein is an AP invention, and that they flat-out lied that he was interviewed multiple times in a police station. Is that what you meant?"

Yes...this is exactly what I've implied.

Please note that Mycroft stated that no one was making that claim. You are -- and you are not the only one who has, not by a long shot.

But I can see why some AP detractors would like to back away from the Jamil Hussein does not exist line. As you illustrate, the theory that Hussein is an invention leads to a conclusion that not only did the AP reporter flat-out lie in claiming to have met with Jamil Hussein at his office in the al-Yarmouk police station, but that AP must have flat-out lied as well when they said they had confirmed this.

For AP to be wrong in this story, that is the only simple explanation. Yes, there are explanations which would allow them to be wrong and not flat-out lying -- but but no simple ones. All those explanations require conspiracies of varying degrees of complexity. (See my reply to Wildcat on this point, in the next post.)

So if the assertion that AP is wrong depends on AP lying, then a reasonable question is: How likely is it that AP would lie in a situation like this?

(1) How often is it that, when a reporter has been caught reporting things that aren't so, the media outlet which employs them lies in support of the reporter?
(2) How often is it that, when a reporter has been caught reporting things that aren't so, the media outlet which employs them publicly fires the reporter?

A number of AP detractors in this thread thought that it was quite likely AP was lying in support of their reporter, because they were under the mistaken impression that this kind of thing had happened frequently in the past. That's the problem with paying too much attention to the hearsay sites; one comes away with a distorted view of reality.

Repeatedly the hearsay sites have gotten their facts and stories wrong -- and failed to retract or correct the stories. (I'll be glad to provide numerous examples in a separate thread if anyone seriously disputes that.) And yet most of the links provided early in this thread -- by people criticizing AP for not checking facts carefully enough -- were links to hearsay sites. Doesn't that seem a little contradictory?

Perhaps it is because the hearsay sites so often get their facts wrong, and revel in the errors rather than retracting them, that people who rely on the hearsay sites think that's also common practice among outlets such as AP. But as firecoins showed, that's not the case.

Firecoins turned up several good examples of the media responding to false stories by firing the reporters who wrote those false stories. That is the reaction I'd expect reputable media outlets to have to reporters who lie, and that is indeed the reaction they took. So the second possibility -- that AP would have reacted to a false story by firing the reporter -- is quite reasonable.

But as for that first possibility -- that AP would react to a false story by lying -- so far after a week of searching only one example has been offered that comes close.

Feel free to keep looking for examples of incidents in which reporters invented stories and their media outlets lied on their behalf. The longer and harder you look, the more it illustrates my point: that such incidents are so rare that it is highly unlikely for that to be what is happening in the present case.

If there were no likely explanation, then we would need to start looking at and choosing among unlikely ones. But there is an explanation which doesn't involve any extraordinary occurrences. It's this: AP is telling the truth. Their reporter did meet Jamil Hussein at the al-Yarmouk police station. Eyewitnesses did report seeing 6 Sunnis burned alive by Shiite militia. Hospital workers did report seeing the burned dead bodies. And the MOI, in their effort to control the news coming out of Iraq, is cracking down on police officers who talk to the media. They do not want police officers such as Jamil Hussein speaking with the media -- they want the media to get their stories only from state-approved sources. And Michael Dean, knowingly or unknowingly, is acting as a pawn of the MOI -- claiming that Jamil Hussein is not a police officer when what MOI really means is that Jamil Hussein is not a police officer who is authorized to speak with the media.

 

[Nova Land]

Here is Wildcat with a theory on how AP could be wrong about Jamil Hussein but not be lying:

... he could be a real police officer whose name is not Hussein. AP reporter comes by, on goes the Hussein name tag. Not real complicated.

No, it would need to be quite a bit more complicated than simply putting on a false name tag.

In US police stations one does not just walk in off the street and proceed to walk anywhere in the building one wishes. There is a front desk one must check in at, where one states why one is there. Access to the rest of the building is restricted. I have not been inside an Iraqi police station, but am assuming the security arrangement there is similar.

In order for the desk person to allow the reporter to go to Captain Jamil Hussein's office, there either needs to be a genuine Captain Jamil Hussein or the desk person needs to be in on the conspiracy. That's possible -- but it's no longer a simple matter of a genuine police officer flipping his name tag over and giving a false name to the reporter the way you suggested.

I have a simpler explanation for you to consider. Jamil Hussein is (or was, prior to this flap) a genuine Iraqi police captain. As such he was permitted to speak to the media under the old policy (which was, if I read correctly, that no one under the rank of police captain was permitted to do so). But the US and Iraqi governments are not happy about the picture of Iraq which is emerging in news stories. They would prefer the media to hold back on negative stories and print more positive ones.

To this end, the US government has hired MNC-I to pay for the printing of positive stories; and the MOI has begun taking measures to crack down on the printing of negative ones. As part of this, it sounds to me as if the MOI has changed the rules. It is no longer permitted for police captains to talk to the media, unless they are on the approved-to-speak-to-the-media list. I suspect this is the list which MOI consulted in relation to Jamil Hussein. Whether Michael Dean was aware of this when he issued his statement, and deliberately worded his statement to make it sound as if it was a list of all police officers in Iraq when it was actually a list of all police officers who are part of the MOI public relations team, or whether he was unaware of this and a victim of MOI deception, I do not know; but from a careful reading of Dean's statement, I suspect the former.

The MOI has threatened punitive action against media outlets which print stories they don't like. It therefore is reasonable to suspect they also plan to take punitive action against anyone who leaks these stories to the media. That is why the AP has not followed up on the story: because if they do, the MOI will take strong punitive measures against the people who served as sources to AP. As NoZed showed, there is a precedent for a news outlet holding back on negative stories about the Iraqi government (under Saddam Hussein) when they knew it would put their reporters and sources at risk.

 

[Nova Land]

Back in post # 100 I wrote:

It's equally possible to read this as indicating that what MOI is talking about is not fake police, it is genuine police officers who are not on their list of people approved for talking to the media.

To which Wildcat replied:

Evidence?

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are asking.

You put forward a theory about how the contradiction between AP's story and Michael Dean's could have happened. Your proposed explanation was that Jamil Hussein is a Sunni insurgent who enlisted in the Iraqi police, and who invented the name "Jamil Hussein" when meeting at the al-Yarmouk police station with the AP reporter, to protect his real name. You didn't provide any evidence for this because it is simply a speculation. But it is a speculation which you believe to be a plausible theory.

I also put forth a theory about how this contradiction could have happened. My proposed explanation is that the MOI, which has recently started cracking down on media outlets which print stories they don't like, and which has a list of people who are approved to speak to the media, was actually saying that they had checked their list of police officers who are authorized to speak to the media, and Jamil Hussein is not on that list. I didn't provide evidence that this is actually what happened, because this too is simply a speculation. But it is a speculation which I believe to be a more likely explanation of the facts we know so far than your explanation is.

You asked for evidence. Evidence of what? Evidence to support the various elements which make up my speculation, or evidence to support my belief that my speculation is more likely to be true than yours?

Since it's not clear which you're asking for, I'll give you both.

(A) Evidence to support the various elements of my speculation:

1. The MOI has recently started cracking down on media outlets which print stories they don't like. This is a fact.

2. The MOI has a list of people who are approved to speak to the media. This is a fact.

3. The MOI records check which Dean refers to could be a check of the list of people who are approved to speak to the media. This is a speculation -- as is your theory that Jamil Hussein is a Sunni insurgent who infiltrated the Iraqi police. It is based on the fact that every time Dean or the MOI speak about Jamil Hussein not being an Iraqi police officer, they also talk about how the media must only talk to people who are on the MOI approved list. I can easily imagine miscommunication between the MOI and Dean about exactly what they had checked. I can also easily imagine Dean being deliberately deceptive about what MOI had checked.

(B) Evidence to support my belief that my speculation is more likely to be true than yours:

For your speculation to be true, there needs to be a conspiracy among the police officers at al-Yarmouk police station to deceive the AP into believing that a genuine Iraqi police officer is actually a genuine Iraqi police officer. That's possible, but I think it's unlikely. For my speculation to be true, all that is required is for Michael Dean to be a deceptive weasel. That's possible, and sadly I don't find it at all unlikely.