MidnightBlue

This being my first foray into guest blogging at Curt's site, I want to make sure that I put all the proper pieces in all the right places. And I am going to pick a subject that continues to cause me the most irritation. There appears to be slipping into the current lexicon of everyone commenting on the "Jamilgate" story, a certain lax attitude toward his "proven existence".

I think it's high time we get this straight once and for all...Jamil Hussein does not exist. The guy playing Jamil Hussein exists. There is a difference and it serves only the AP and their apologists and fellow travelers of distortion to keep referencing his existence as jamil.

Eason Jordan was the first out of the gate to my knowledge in attempting to carve half a loaf out for the AP's credibility and pass along the glossed over reality about Jamil's existence.
On January 5th, he posted a post that was titled:

"The Jamil Hussein Fuss: All Sullied Mistakes, Lessons Learned, Lingering Questions"

Except for my money, he points out the wrong mistakes, tries to get the usual moral equivalency argument into play, doesn't really learn the real lesson and asks the wrong questions.

Jordan starts out with the following:

"The Associated Press and the AP's supporters surely are breathing a sigh of relief now that the Iraqi Interior Ministry has confirmed to the AP that elusive Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein is genuine. This comes six weeks after Iraqi and U.S. officials insisted the frequent AP news source, Captain Hussein, was non-existent and that AP reporting attributed to him was baseless."

The problem is, of course...that Jamil Hussein is not genuine by any sane definition of the word, and the AP reporting attributed to him, in many respects is now proven baseless. "Jamil Hussein" did not exist on the rolls, the mosques in question were not destroyed, one of them was already abandoned at the time of alleged incident, no Sunni's were forcibly removed from the mosque, none were doused in kerosene, nor set on fire, nor shot in the head, nor watched by coalition forces, nor taken to a hospital morgue, or a cemetery. None of the civilians in the story, including women and children were murdered, and their houses were not burned to the ground. Virtually every gruesome aspect that made the story stand out...was false. Yet what does Jordan ask us to do? Why take OUR share of the blame, of course...because we simply didn't believe.

"All the key players in the Jamil Hussein controversy have been sullied in this process." "Iraqi officials and U.S. military spokesmen look foolish for making the mistake of flatly stating in late November that there was no Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein. Those clumsy, baseless statements were unfair to the AP. Those erroneous statements -- and their statements questioning the information the AP attributed to Captain Hussein -- triggered the six-week-long controversy that followed."

Oh, really? They were asked to search the records for "Jamil Hussein" a police captain in one of two districts. (neither of which, by the way....are within the confines of virtually EVERY SINGLE INCIDENT of the 61 in which he is used as the "source")

"Jamil Hussein made a mistake by waiting six weeks to speak out on this matter."

Please pardon me, I missed the part where "Jamil Hussein" spoke out on this matter. Some guy named JGXX spoke out and said he was NOT the AP's source. How exactly does that comport with the statement above? The statement above leads the unwitting reader to assume facts not only not in evidence, but facts that are utterly false and misleading.

"Another mistake: the AP took too long to provide irrefutable evidence of Captain Hussein's existence."

Again, please pardon me...when did this happen? I haven't heard a peep out of them when it was brought to light that JGXX is actually the guy's name. In fact, they insisted that Jamil Hussein is his real name and that he used his real name, when other lesser "sources" dared not. Either this guy is JGXX or he isn't.

"The AP's most strident critics were wrong to accept the word of U.S. and Iraqi officials as the absolute truth while dismissing the AP's sourcing, stories, and explanations as outright lies."

Ahhhhh. Don't you love the smell of moral equivalency in the morning? The AP's "sourcing" utilizing "Jamil Hussein" for events outside his district dozens of times...is still in question. And their explanations, such as they were...were intentionally misleading and by every reasonable deduction, the equivalent of painting a false picture and distorting the truth. To make it absolutely clear...Jamil Hussein is not his name, he had no knowledge of events outside his district that made him anywhere near a reliable source and by all appearances, he was simply the mouthpiece for subsources passing along whisper campaigns and urban legends.

"In the end, the AP did the right thing -- proving Jamil Hussein's existence -- but in the wrong time frame."

Let's get this straight. No such thing has ever happened. And it's high time we stop acting as if it did. Some people are wont to suggest that "a guy" existed and that's enough. Sorry. That's simply wrong. Once they began using him as the ubersource, for virtually every event in every district around Baghdad, who he was, how he knew what they were vouching that he knew as their "official" police source...then who he is and was, is in play.

When they upped the ante by suggesting that he used his real name, while other lesser sources dared not, they eliminated the defense that they were using a pseudonym for him to protect him. As it stands now, he is neither a viable or proper source, his name is not Jamil Hussein, the stories attributed to him are not worthy of belief on their face and the AP has failed TO PROVE OTHERWISE.

The AP has been found to have foisted a non-reliable person upon the reading public, who as it turns out is virtually 180 degrees opposite from what they intentionally misled the reading public to believe. He is not someone with the full force of "official knowledge" about events on the ground, he is NOT a person who was using his "real name" while others dared not, he is not someone upon whom we can rely to give us unbiased, unslanted, accounts of "facts" on the ground. He is not a "source" by any reasonable definition of the word. He is not even "Jamil Hussein".
All that the AP has "proven", is that it will use parsed language to disguise who their sources are and what they "know", how they come to their "information" and when caught, what they knew and when they knew it, when a "source" is found to be unreliable.

What they have "proven" is they will cover up, stonewall and obfuscate. And their fellow travelers have fallen strangely silent.

Let's not let their silence fool us. Their "message" is still making its way into our lexicon. And we, at least...should be vigilant with the truth. For us, the truth is more important than than the leftist message. Let's not make ourselves voluntary slaves to that leftist message.