http://allspinzone.com/wp/2007/01/04/the-media-and-iraq-you-fell-for-it-again-am.../

he Media and Iraq: You Fell For It Again, America

Part 1 of a 2 part series

This story is about a story that became the story.

Back around Thanksgiving, the Associated Press published a horrifying
account of Mahdi Army militiamen storming a Sunni mosque in Baghdad,
dragging six worshipers out of the mosque, dousing them with kerosene,
then setting them ablaze. The story was independently verified with
several sources, including quotes from Iraqi police Captain Jamil
Hussein. But almost as soon as the report broke, a funny thing
happened.

The U.S. military claimed it couldn't verify that the event even
occured. Iraqi government sources claimed that they had no record that
a Captain Jamil Hussein even existed. And right wing blogs smelled
another Dan Rather-style opportunity: maybe they could take down the AP
for reporting bad news out of Iraq. Apparently encouraged by the
response of warbloggers and conservative fruitcakes like Michelle
Malkin, the U.S. military responded to the AP:

We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story,
police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI
employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition
Police Assistance Training Team...

Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the
people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a
retraction, or a correction at a minimum, acknowledging that the source
named in the story is not who he claimed he was. MNC-I and MNF-I are
always available and willing to verify events and provide as much
information as possible when asked.

Very respectfully,

Michael Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer

In the weeks after Thanksgiving, the conservative blogosphere was in
full foam mode over the allegedly "fake" immolation report. They
demanded a retraction of the story. The story about the story became
the story on Fox News and other wingnutosphere outlets. And so,
Associated Press (who I've had no problem calling out in the past for
their apparent pro-Bush regime slant) became the latest media victim of
the howler monkey court of opinion. As recently as yesterday, the
wingnutosphere was all a-glow because former CNN exec Eason Jordon
could not find credible evidence that a "Jamil Hussein" existed in
the Iraq police force.

It gets better. But first, we need to take a short trip in the wayback
machine to understand why.

When the report of the Sunni Iraqis being burned alive first broke, and
questions arose about AP's credibility, USA Today ran an excellent
synopsis of the controversy. It's worth reading the entire article to
get the flavor of what was happening two short months ago, but here's
the money shot:

The dispute comes at a time when the military is taking a more
active role in dealing with the media.

The AP reported on Sept. 26 that a Washington-based firm, the
Lincoln Group, had won a two-year contract to monitor reporting on the
Iraq conflict in English-language and Arabic media outlets.

That contract succeeded one held by another Washington firm, The
Rendon Group. Controversy had arisen around the Lincoln Group in 2005
when it was disclosed that it was part of a U.S. military operation to
pay Iraqi newspapers to run positive stories about U.S. military
activities...

Ok. So, we have a horrific story from the civil war in Iraq - perhaps
one of the most disturbing portraits of the quagmire since four
contractors were killed, burned, and hung off of a bridge in Fallujah.
The AP finds out about it, and asks around. The AP reporter checks in
with a source (Capt. Jamil Hussein) who is credited with background
information on more than 25 past incidents reported by such venerable
news organizations such as foxnews.com, and gets the full and dirty
scoop. Hussein was there when it happened. AP writes the story. The
story is attacked from the moment it hits the wire. And (again), the
story about the story becomes the story. The unsettling and horrifying
manner of death of 6 Iraqis worshiping in a mosque becomes an
afterthought.

In other words, this event had the potential for being so craptacularly
negative that every possible bit of right wing discrediting effort had
to be poured into debunking the report - or at least, making (gawd,
I'm getting redundant) the story be about the story, and not
immolation of 6 Sunnis by the Shia Mahdi Army.

Stick with me, because here's the punch line:

BAGHDAD AP, Jan. 4 - The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday
that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the
Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force,
and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.

Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously
denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said
in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra
police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press.

The captain, whose full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, was one of
the sources for an AP story in late November about the burning and
shooting of six people during a sectarian attack at a Sunni mosque.

The U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry raised the doubts
about Hussein in questioning the veracity of the APs initial reporting
on the incident, and the Iraqi ministry suggested that many news
organization were giving a distorted, exaggerated picture of the
conflict in Iraq. Some Internet bloggers spread and amplified these
doubts, accusing the AP of having made up Husseins identity in order to
disseminate false news about the war...

This is an outrage on so many levels. It's not just that the right
wingers got the thing so damn wrong - they were willingly led down the
path and spun by a government that they still trust - a regime of
controllers that are hell bent on hiding the truth from a hellhole half
a planet away. The report of a horrifying incident in Iraq (like
there's any shortage of them) was completely stage-managed by the
U.S. government from the moment an intrepid AP reporter sniffed out the
story.

As of today, we can safely assume that the initial report was correct -
or at least correct from the standpoint of accepted journalistic
standards, in that the reporter obtained the information from a
previously known and trusted source, and that the report was
corroborated by multiple witnesses.

So, why was it so important to stage-manage this particular story?

Think about the timing. What was the really big story back when this
event happened? The Iraq Study Group, and their call for a phased
withdrawal. If the story of six Sunnis burned to death by a marauding
Shia militia had been allowed to blossom at the same time...well...you
do the math. Public reaction would have been overwhelming.

And most importantly: could it be that the upcoming escalation of the
conflict in Iraq was the only option that was ever being considered by
the regime? If that's the case, they obviously needed to get past the
election, regardless of the outcome, to make their move public. This
particular incident could have thown a significant PR kink into the
surge gambit, so the story of Jamil Hussein had to become the story.

They pretty much pulled it off, didn't they? And how about the timing
of the admission that Capt. Jamil Hussein does, indeed, exist? It's
buried by the clamor of reporting on the new congress being sworn in
today, essentially rendering it as a non-story.

You fell for it again, America. You get your reward next week.

Update: Need a smile? You just gotta read this.