Immediately after the Nov. 24 incidents, an Associated Press story quoted an Iraqi police captain saying the four mosques had been attacked and six men doused with fuel and burned alive at one of them. In some early versions of the AP story, which was updated several times as more information became available, the police officer referred to the mosques being burned or blown up.

The AP still insists that they received a report from “an Iraqi police captain” who they now do not name, yet the Baghdad police received no report of men being dragged out and doused with kerosene as stated by the now unnamed source. So just who is the ‘new’ Iraqi police captain that the AP now quotes and why is this quote different from the Baghdad police reports of the incident in question? Looks like the AP is still standing by it’s story and is continuing to issue unsubstantiated statements by unreliable sources.

The AP needs to retract the story and tell the truth. The damage to the mosques was minimal at best and most of the damage occurred during the gun battle, what is referred to as collateral damage, and not as part of a deliberate attack on the mosques. The fire bombing of one, and possible two mosques occurred after the battle, but that damage as very limited as it appears that a Molotov cocktail was used and the damage was limited to the entrance of ONE mosque. At no point were the mosques under deliberate attack and at no point were six men dragged out and killed. The AP owes the Iraqi people and the rest of the world the truth.

You guys need to ALWAYS put the name “Jamil Hussein” in scare quotes, because there STILL isn’t any Jamil Hussein in the Iraqi Police. There is only the “Jamil Hussein” pseudonymous source. We still have no way of cross-examining him or otherwise evaluating his credibility.

The levosphere thinks we were wrong on this. We weren’t. There is no Capt. Jamil Hussein in the Iraqi Police. None. There is only a “Capt. Jamil Hussein”, or Capt. Jamil X.

Only then is there a chance the AP will attempt a face-saving, half-hearted, non-retraction. Then and only then will the MSM even consider reporting a heavily spun version of the quasi-truth.

Buck Turgidson on January 21, 2007 at 4:37 PM

I must have special powers.

I received an email from Linda Wagner of the Associated Press late this afternoon, alerting me that AP has posted a pair of new news reports by Sally Buzbee about Hurriyah, and that Wagner herself has issued forth a new……

Instead, we get a situation where the AP has its cake and is eating it as well. They protect his anonymity while declaring that nothing was wrong, ignoring that the whole thing was an exaggeration and potentially induced by Hussein’s loyalties that m….

The AP has issued a new report in which they detail….wait for it….damage to the four mosques that they initially claimed to have been burnt to the ground: Four Sunni mosques attacked in late November in the embattled Hurriyah neighborhood……

An Associated Press reporter who lives in the neighborhood, and whose name has been withheld from this story for security reasons, visited the mosques Friday.
WTF DOES THAT MEAN?

I think it means they recently paid, hired, found someone that would perjure themselves for cash the AP.

[Note: I merely offered another instance of Leftist media (AP vs. Kos) "correcting the record". I hardly see how that example is "off topic."]

F&^k Sparling!

NEIDEMEYER- DEAD!

I’m sorry, I spotted this one so far away it makes me want cry…they’re so obvious and transparent I don’t know why we keep falling for this shit…

Is that a Kos fatwa?

Anybody got popcorn?

Credibility gAP.

mymanpotsandpans on January 31, 2007 at 5:02 PM

That was good … real good!

An Associated Press reporter who lives in the neighborhood, and whose name has been withheld from this story for security reasons, visited the mosques Friday.

WTF DOES THAT MEAN? You had a frigging reporter who lived in the neighborhood, but it took him how many months to investigate the local mosques? What sort of reporter is he anyway? What are his credentials and affilitions? How long has he been writing for AP? Is he just some schmuck off the street or what? Can I call myself an AP Reporter? Hey I just saw something newsworthy, can AP ‘promote’ me to ‘Reporter’ and give me instant absolute truthiness authority?

no longer is it quoting specific police offers but going to the generic “police said” phantom quoting.

Its the same type of garbage that Rueters has been doing for years and I sent to hot air months ago.

how big a deal is this ? go to Iraqi body count to see how this propaganda is being used to back their death numbers

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/

And please note all the APNEWS and RUETERS stories quotes.

And you go to these stories and you will see the generic “police said’ type quotes

Keep the pressure on and don’t let them off the hook.

Wow. Just wow. The Associated Press puts its advocacy spin and institutional arrogance on naked display in a story hot off the wires. You know those four mosques that AP reporter Qais Al Bashir and AP source Capt. Jamil Hussein……