Thursday, January 04, 2007

Jamil Hussein surfaces in hot water

The Iraqi Interior Ministry has located Captain Jamil Hussein, the subject of many questions here and elsewhere in the blogosphere. It appears their first attempt to locate his name on a list of employees met with failure:
Khalaf offered no explanation Thursday for why the ministry had initially denied Hussein's existence, other than to state that its first search of records failed to turn up his full name. He also declined to say how long the ministry had known of its error and why it had made no attempt in the past six weeks to correct the public record.
But the good captain may be in a bit of trouble:
Khalaf told the AP that an arrest warrant had been issued for the captain for having contacts with the media in violation of the ministry's regulations.
Hussein was the sole source for 61 AP stories highlighting Shi'a-on-Sunni violence. The veracity of his reports remains in question.

Update: 4 Jan. 2007 @ 20:15
Allahpundit over at Hot Air still has some very good questions:
How is it that Hussein was able to comment on attacks all over Baghdad, including some far away from his precinct? How come the AP dropped the detail about four mosques being burned when it was challenged after their first report? Why couldn’t Bob Owens find corroborating stories from other media outlets on so many incidents sourced to Hussein? And why weren’t Armed Liberal’s sources, Eason Jordan’s sources, and Michelle [Malkin]’s sources collectively able to find this guy?

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