I don’t know what to make about this:
A source close to Pajamas Media has learned that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has apparently succumbed to the cancer that hospitalized him last month, as exclusively reported by Pajamas Media, at age 67. He has been Iran’s most powerful figure since replacing Ayatollah Khomeini in the role of Supreme Leader in 1989.
I do have to say that the phrase “A source close to Pajamas Media” does make me giggle, though. They better let us know who that source is pronto, or they will have to send Michelle looking for this source, too.
Dave
What do they think they are the NY Times or somethin’?
Git ’em Michelle!
Dungheap
Well, I hope the source doesn’t get found out. Otherwise, she may end up in jail, just like Cpt. Jamil Hussein.
I guess the wingnuts got what they wanted, silence from a source in Baghdad that can truthfully report the facts on the ground.
ThymeZone
How close is that source? Drawstring close? Or back flap close? Was that flap open, or closed?
The devil is in the details.
demimondian
Fixed
Jimmy Mack
Regardless of the source, this is good news if true. Khomeni has been a thorn in our side for nearly 25 years. His death may not make much difference in the end in our dealings with Iran, but they could hardly be worst. Maybe this will make it that much easier to dissuade Iran from its suicidal nuclear path.
Pooh
Uhm…huh?
Jimmy Mack
I guess I got Khomeni and Khameni mixed up. So sue me. Still, I think this is good news.
Jackmormon
This one is Khomeini. He’s dead.
This one is Khamenei. He was elected Supreme Leader in 1989, making him a “thorn in our side” for at most only 16 years, if I’ve got the math right.
Jackmormon
We’ll see if it’s good news–and of course whether it’s real news at all.
Pooh
I know, but why? (I’m not saying you are wrong, I’d just like to understand the mechanism for the goodness…)
Jimmy Mack
It’s good news, because it might help Iraq change course. Yes, I realize that he’ll likely be replaced by another like-minded mullah, but maybe his successor will be more reasonable. I’m just sayin….
Myrtle Parker
I’ll wait for confirmation, thanks. Bathrobe Media isn’t my idea of a good source.
I’m watching http://www.juancole.com a real expert on Iran… how about you?
Steve
But in fact, they’re both dead. See, you’re not so smart.
Joel
The source is likely someone connected to Michael Leeden who not too long ago reported the Osama Bin Laden had died in Iran. Some months later he relayed a report that he died of Typhoid fever in Pakistan. Of course this was never confirmed (though in the interim another Bin Laden tape came out though that’s not dispositive). Then there’s was Amir Taheri’s report that Iran was in the process of requiring Jews to wear a yellow star–we know the fate of that one. Then Bernard Lewis put forth the notion that Ahmadinejad might launch some sort of ill defined apocalyptic attack on Israel on August 22 in anticipation of the coming of the Hidden Imam. And if you looked I’m sure you could another dozen instances of farcical speculation when it comes to Iran.
Who knows, it may well be true and Khamenei may have passed, but when it comes to Iran, pretty much 50% of what is written these days is complete rubbish.
temple stark
there was also no “exlusively reported” about it unless PM bought Reuters and the BBC. The false grandstanding is offensive. I’ve still never visited the site because I’d rather just flit around the blogs that serve it. Well, some of them, well, OK, two, well, one often.
Jimmy Mack
uh, it’s mighty easy to call an attack ill defined when you’re not on the receiving end.
Tulkinghorn
Jimmy, nobody was on the receiving end.
That is the point.
p.lukasiak
speaking of Malkin and sources…
turns out that Jamil Hussein does exist (big shock) — and that the wingnut crusade against the AP for the last two weeks was just the typical idiocy one expects from half-wit right wingers.
demimondian
tstark…I just went cruising around. I’ve seen no other reports of Khameni’s death, and, more tellingly, neither has Google News. (Nor does Monopoly Search News, for that matter.)
So, I’m with Myrtle; I’m waiting for a real source to confirm the rumor.
Jimmy Mack
I can’t believe how many of you are making fun of Michelle Malkin for wanting to go to Iraq. Would any of you go to Iraq to chase down a source? She’s a bit of a zealot, for sure, but I would think she’d get credit and not scorn for doing something courageous like venturing outside the Green Zone.
demimondian
p.lukasiak…the *other* Paul L. has asked me about that one a couple of times. I guess I’ve got an answer now.
Unless, of course, you also post as Paul L…
demimondian
Hey, Jimmy Mack — that’s a *fine* jackalope you’ve got there. But really, not that the -Christmas- Holiday season is over, you might ask it to take off the Santa hat.
Steve
The right wing has looked absolutely clownish, even by their standards, with their repeated claims that bin Laden is dead. (Are they THAT desperate to make excuses for Bush’s failure to chase him down? Answer: Yes.) This used to be a favorite claim of Stormy’s, as well.
On the other hand, there’s no real percentage in making false claims of Khamenei’s death, since he’s a public figure and all. So we’ll likely know the truth pretty soon. Maybe Pajamas Media will score a Pulitzer.
VidaLoca
First, let’s see if she actually goes outside the Green Zone.
Then, let’s see how long she lasts.
p.lukasiak
Unless, of course, you also post as Paul L…
sorry, but its not me. I’m not capable of Doug J’s brilliant spoofing of moronic wingnuts….
(and its really annoying that a wingnut is using my first name and last initial as their “name” here….)
Newport 9
Ah, Jimmy Mack, if only we could sue people for stupidity.
jake
But if it gets M.M. out of here and over there, I’m all for it.
Newport 9
Hey, maybe it’s an open source!
ba-doop bam
Paddy O'Shea
New CBS News poll puts Bush’s overall approval at 30%, approval for whatever it is he thinks he’s doing to Iraq @ 23%. And a whopping 68% feel optimistic about the new Democratic-controlled Congress.
Of course, with Bush in the White House, where else can optimism go?
Maybe Pajamas Media has a source on that one as well.
http://www.cbsnews.com/
Jimmy Mack
Thank goodness that president Bush doesn’t need to look at poll numbers to decide what to do. Unlike another certain president who shall remain nameless.
And don’t forget Truman was as low as the 20s near the end of his term.
Paddy O'Shea
Right you are, Jimmy! Bush doesn’t look at poll numbers AND he didn’t look at Saddam Hussein execution videos, either.
He has a live feed for that sort of thing.
Paddy O'Shea
Right you are, Jimmy! Bush doesn’t look at poll numbers AND he didn’t look at the Saddam Hussein execution videos, either.
He has a live feed for those sorts of things.
John Redworth
hopefully no one takes a picture of her eating dinner almost alone at the Embassy…
temple stark
In took the PM sentence quote to mean the cancer being reported as exclusive, not the death. Who knows on that, but PM is worse then wikipedia for reliability of information. – temple
temple stark
I looked. Their updates from “sources” give no further support for their idea. Their sources are other media outlets. Ahem. Just like Drudge 90 percent of the time. The other 10 percent of the time when he tries to add 2 and 2 ge gets it wrong.
Doug H.
So was Nixon.
bago
Freedom of information has always been the catalyst for an enlightenment movement.
At some point people will rather go with things that actually work than the simple platitudes that stroke their ego.
It’s evolution baby.
VidaLoca
Too late — somebody already did
cleek
and let’s see if she does anything without a military escort.
since things are going so well over there, she should be more than able to just stroll around all by her self with her little digicam and notepad, playing Brenda Starr, Star Reporter. right?
Justin
What I love most is Curt at Flopping Aces saying “the story will not go away” just because “Jamil Hussein has been found.” Wow, a (non)story about a person not existing will not go away just because, uhhh, the person exists? Things that make you go….wtf is wrong with these people????
Zombie Santa Claus
Set the flag at half mast.
Nixon?
No wonder Dewey won.
Zifnab
I think I speak for everyone here when I say “Horray for death!”
Of course Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of a Council which in turn is in charge of the chief sect of a major faction of a religion that dominates the country, so its kinda like hearing the President of China died and thinking that maybe this will end Chinese Communism.
Sam Hutcheson
Yes, I realize that he’ll likely be replaced by another like-minded mullah, but maybe his successor will be more reasonable.
The most rational and reasonable path for Iran to take is to acquire nuclear weapons. If a country has nuclear weapons, the US will not invade it (North Korea.) If a country does not have nuclear weapons, the US will invade it (Iraq.)
ThymeZone
He will need to look at the votes in Congress, though.
I’d wager that he is about to impale himself on his bottomless ineptitude and thick-headedness. It’s my guess that the Dems are setting him up for it right now, with their smiles and open-minded talk about working with him.
He’ll propose his surge, Congress will say no, and the game is on. A game Bush cannot win.
Zifnab
Oh, I don’t think the Democrats will say “no” per say. They’ll say, “So what’s your plan?” and “Do you have a timetable?” and “How do you want to pay for it?” Then they’ll give a few token suggestions – cutting oil subsidies, dropping no-bid contracts, raising soldier pay, criminalizing war-profiteering with stiff fines attached, cutting off “new weapons” research – which will make all of Bush’s backers squirm. The call for a “surge” will keep America focused on the war, so that when Dems start their investigations everyone will still be paying attention. And they can start asking even more questions regarding Abu Garab and troop mismanagement.
Asking for a surge will be like marching into a tar-pit for Bush.
ThymeZone
I agree, Zif. I think what we’ll do here is play rope-a-dope with the damned fool. For every non-answer or every stupidity, new questions will be raised ….
I am looking forward to an interesting time.
cleek
He’ll propose his surge, Congress will say no,
or, he’ll do his ‘surge’ and then dare Congress to not fund it. since the surge is likely to be a matter of fiddling with deployment schedules, Congress can’t really stop it from happening.
RSA
I think this is the key issue for Malkin’s visit. If she goes outside the Green Zone on her own, I hope she stays safe. If she’s embedded, watching what the soldiers do as part of their regular mission, she’s not going to have much flexibiliy in chasing down sources. If she gets a military escort to keep her safe while she goes and does whatever she plans to do, doesn’t that take the soldiers away from their regular duties? I mean, we’re talking about a clash of civilizations here; every little bit counts.
ThymeZone
We’ll see. Time is on our side. The public sees no urgent rush to do a surge. In fact I’d guess that the public generally is very skeptical of the idea at best.
We hang Bush up on simple questions, such as, what the exact objectives are for the surge, how we measure those. Make the assholes be clear instead of spinning webs of vague bullshit. Make ’em wait. I think Bush caves when the going gets rough. He has no public support outside his base and I don’t see him getting any unless he turns into a much better salesman than he has ever been in the past, or unless the Dems blow it.
I think this is our game to win or lose, not his.
Zifnab
Oh please, you say this like Malkin is going to Bagdad to report. She’s going to get the company line, the Republican/Iraqi talking points, a few dozen flirty patriotic photo-ops for her blog, and get the hell back home. If she even hears gunfire, I’ll be surprised.
The Other Steve
I hope she brought clean underpants.
KCinDC
I don’t understand why anyone is expecting Malkin’s Iraq trip to change anything. It’s just her own personal version of the so-called Truth Tour, in which the Pentagon sponsored a bunch of right-wing talk show hosts to go to Iraq and report how good things were there.
Jimmy Mack
Yeah, I agree. Curt’s usually all right, so I don’t know what’s going on with this. If they found the guy, they found the guy…what the hey?
dreggas
If that dumb bitch gets a military escort it will be a waste of tax payers money to do so. Quite honestly I hope the military says she’s on her own after all she’s only a blogger not some head of state or senator.
She can go and see just how wonderful her butt buddy peznit is doing in Iraq and probably get an AK-47 up her ass while doing so.
Imagine her blogging from an undisclosed location in Iraq because she is held captive.
I am usually a nice guy, really I am, but it’s twits like Malkin that give aid and comfort to the enmy by seeking to further divide this country and incite violence and hatred against all who do not agree with her.
Devil's Advocate
“I can’t believe how many of you are making fun of Michelle Malkin for wanting to go to Iraq. Would any of you go to Iraq to chase down a source? She’s a bit of a zealot, for sure, but I would think she’d get credit and not scorn for doing something courageous like venturing outside the Green Zone.”
Let’s see if she actually goes to Iraq. She is a chickenhawk, remember?
Zifnab
It’s basically support by omission. Malkin lies about the media, tacitly supporting the murderers and zealots whom the media reports on. She cries foul when soldiers get busted for rape or murder in Iraq, tacitly supporting a US soldier’s unconsconable actions in places like Hadetha. She poo-poos talk of Shia death squads and blames anti-war protestors for encouraging the insurgency, effectively giving Al-Sadr’s militia and Sunni bomb-layers a free pass on their actions (the former are simply ignored and the latter are only acting out because ‘the liberals’ back home are encouraging them).
In that sense, Malkin is one of the biggest terrorist supports on American soil.
cleek
it looks like she’ll be embedded (see the linked story, she talks about getting her embed application approved, etc). and, thusly, her mission is now:
both of which she can do while safely embedded.
not that i blame her for not wanting to strike out on her own and cover the actual situation the Iraqis themselves have to live through every day – i certainly wouldn’t volunteer to do that. i don’t want my precious little head full of drill holes either!
Sam Hutcheson
Let’s see if she actually goes to Iraq. She is a chickenhawk, remember?
She can go to blog from the Green Zone and still be a chickenhawk. Michelle Malkin is of age for service in any of the Armed Forces. All four branches accept female recruits.
Zombie Santa Claus
She doesn’t need to enlist, she’s already a frontline soldier. She fights the terrorists here, on the streets of the Internet, so we don’t have to fight them there, on the streets of American cities.
John S.
She’ll go to the green zone and stray no further than four blocks from her hotel.
She’s a real hero.
Jimmy Mack
What makes you so sure she won’t leave the Green Zone? And, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you all saying Lara Logan and David Gregory were “heros” for reporting from the Green Zone just a few months ago? Just because you don’t like Malkin’s politics, doesn’t mean she’s not courageous. I don’t like Gregory’s or Logan’s but I still respect that they’re over there.
Zifnab
Time will tell, I suppose.
No, I don’t think we were.
Her politics get Iraqi police officers arrested for speaking to AP reporters about masacres. When Gregory or Logan get a guy thrown in jail for dispelling a nasty puff-piece rumor that tries to cover up six people burned alive in a mosque, we can talk.
Jimmy Mack
Two points here: (1) it still isn’t clear that there was a a massacre at all and (2) if his job prevented him from talking to reporters, he shouldn’t have talked to reporters. I have no sympathy for someone who doesn’t do his job. He’s getting what he deserved for trying to get himself into the spotlight with dangerous lies.
Veeshir
I come back here once in a while to see if things have changed. They haven’t.
I’ll give you people a little hint, the problem with Jamil Hussein wasn’t just that it was hard to prove he exists. It was the fact, yes fact, that the stories for which he was the source were not reported anywhere else and were refuted by people on the ground. The story about the burning mosques has changed repeatedly without any sort of correction. First, it was multiple mosques burned to the ground with many people killed. Then, it was maybe one or two mosques, and now? Down the memory hole. No pics of burned mosques, none. Nobody can even find where the mosques were burned. Also, Capt Hussein was used as a source for stories all over Baghdad. That would be like using a police captain from the Bronx as a source on a story in Staten Island and another in Brooklyn and another in Yonkers and another in Queens and another on Long Island and another…
Also, he was used repeatedly as a source before the “wingers” started trying to find him and not so many since. Go ahead, google his name for the AP website and see for yourselves. If he’s so reliable, why stop using him? They can’t say there were afraid for his life as they’ve used him as a source, including his name and where he works, in many stories.
The Other Andrew
Uh, when exactly did we determine that he’s a dangerous liar?
HyperIon
i’m thinking Jimmy Mack is a close relative of scs.
i detect that same breezy affect while mouthing crapola like:
TenguPhule
Because there’s now an arrest warrant out on him for talking to the media. The Iraqis learned well from the Bush ‘kill the messengers’ team.
TenguPhule
Shorter Jimmy: If it’s against the official propaganda, it’s lies! Lies, damnit! Shoot the messengers until they get that.
Punchy
Bra and Panties Publishing strikes again. I’m guessing this source is Darrell.
The Other Steve
Ahh, you seem to have missed the point.
It’s a pointless argument. This belief of yours that Iraq really isn’t all that violent, and this tale of violence as hyperbole is evidence of that. The argument denies reality and strikes most people as just fucking insane.
It’s amazing how much time and energy wingers put into something which simply doesn’t matter.
The Other Steve
BTW, I love how wingers like Veeshir still think they’re more intelligent than the people who not wrong all the time.
Zifnab
You know what? Screw it. Let’s just have two news medias seperated entirely. We can have the “Liberal media” and the “Conservative media” and you have to designate which one you’re referencing in, because it’ll invalidate all sources from the other.
It’s like two completely different fucking worlds.
Justin
Zifneb, don’t you know? If you call something a fact multiple times, its true no matter what. And if you call something a “Known Fact” in a snarky way, its false no matter how much evidence is of the truth of the matter.
Veeshir
This belief of yours that Iraq really isn’t all that violent, and this tale of violence as hyperbole is evidence of that. The argument denies reality and strikes most people as just fucking insane.
I would agree if I had said anything like that. What I said was that the stories using Jamil Hussein are of suspect accuracy.
That’s why I left this place. I make a perfectly reasonable post with the only even close to rude thing being “I come back here once in a while to see if things have changed. They haven’t.” and I’m called names and attacked for things I’ve never said. Thereby proving that things haven’t changed here.
Here’s another perfect example
BTW, I love how wingers like Veeshir still think they’re more intelligent than the people who not wrong all the time.
Don’t blame your complexes on me. Knowledge and intelligence are not directly related. For instance, I think many of you are intelligent, I just think you’re willfully ignorant. I think you avoid things that shake up your world view.
One person did actually address one point. I’m impressed and surprised. I’ll respond.
They stopped using Jamil as a source before the arrest warrant was issued. Long before that. Google is your friend. Go to their home page and do a search for “Jamil Hussein” on only the AP’s page to weed out the chaff of people who are only talking about him. It would be fairly enlightening.
Yes Iraq is violent, then why make up stories about how bad it is? How about just report the truth? That’s the whole freaking point about the Jamil Hussein deal. The stories he contributed to are nowhere corroborated by anybody else and are directly refuted by the available evidence.
Fake but accurate might make it at CBS and here, but it’s not actually a good standard for a news service.
ThymeZone
It’s the Darrell Effect. We’re so used to being whipsawed by the Texas Terror that we tend to shoot first and ask questions later.
Not an excuse, just a bit of an explanation. I do the SFAAQL thing all the time. Hey, it keeps my quick-draw skills nice and sharp.
Zifnab
Listen, I’m not going to pull the “prove a negative” and claim that since we’ve got the Captain now its your job to unprove the mosque fire. However, the entire premise of doubt on the AP story was “you can’t produce your witness, I don’t think he even exists” which was in turn backed up by the Iraqi Ministries, who in turn were reveal as wrong or lying.
Now, upon providing the Captain – at peril to his life – we’ve been required to further validate the story by producing additional journalistic accounts, photographic evidence, and/or multiple witnesses (there were six in the original AP story, some who recanted and others who disappeared). This is taintamount to finding nukes in Bagdad and having us tell you “but they might not have been Saddam’s nukes, and they might not have shown up until after the invasion, and how can we even trust US Military weapons inspectors anyway?” It is rhetorically exhausting when the opponent just chooses not to believe anything you say. You might as well just call the AP auto-liars, cover your ears, and forget the news source even exists, which is the entire purpose of the Malkin discreditation process.
That’s (one reason) why we’re giving you a hard time. Darrell is certainly another. It’s been a while since we’ve had intelligent conservative adversaries on these boards.
TenguPhule
Did they? I believe only AP could confirm or deny that if the question were directed to them. Just because a source is not quoted recently doesn’t necessarily mean he’s been dropped.
Steve
I’m reminded of the Schiavo memo, which the right-wing blogs called a fake for days and days. Upon learning it was actually genuine, suddenly the story wasn’t whether it was fake, it was that the original story said two Republicans passed it out when it was really only one, or something of that sort. I’m sensing the same sort of goalpost-shifting here.
ThymeZone
That’s a 100% error. Typical liberal media peformance.
You extremists will fall for anything.
/ Darrell
cleek
nor does it mean they haven’t used him anonymously, or under a pseudonym.
or, maybe the guy’s afraid of attracting more attention, after he learned the US military and MOI were getting inquiries about him.
cleek
Khamenei not dead
Davebo
Looks like Michael Leeden and BathRobe Media are wrong, again.
Who’d have thunk it?
Zifnab
I guess it just comes down to credibility…
Of which neither Mormon-Underpants Media nor Iran have any.
Davebo
Pictures of the Mustafa mosque where the incident occurred show that it is badly damaged by explosives and shows signs of scorching from fire.
Scrawled in what appears to be spray paint on the mosque compound wall is the phrase “blood wanted,” which Iraqis say has appeared on many structures in areas of heavy Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict throughout Baghdad.
See above.
Davebo
Seriously John, those PJM’ers must be tossing out some serious scratch for affiliates.
chriskoz
Opps.
Well… let’s give the Jammies Media source a chance to redeem himself/herself. You think they got the goods to prove Jamil Hussein’s “dangerous lies”.
Oh wait, that’s right… no proof needed. Jimmy Mack says Hussein is spreading lies… so that MUST be the “truth”.
Steve
From the PJM link:
I assume no comment is required.
RSA
Veeshir wrote:
Actually, I kind of liked this part of the introduction:
I’ll give you a pat on the head for that. And a piece of pie.
ThymeZone
Fixed.
scarshapedstar
I think “a source close to Pajamas Media” means that it came, literally, out of that little buttoned hatch in the back of somebody’s pajamas.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
GOP4Me et al
Set the flag at half mast.
Does this mean that things in Iraq are going just fine? I’m confused by how Jamil Hussein’s story, if debunked, would fundamentally alter my views on the progress of the Iraq war (or rather, the nation’s continued lurching into civil war). I just don’t see how anything to do with this story could possibly result in an earth-shattering revelation that causes me to change my views on Iraq and George Bush. Are you contending that the AP is habitually lying to us, and things in Iraq are really going just fine if we peek behind the media filter?
Veeshir
Well mostly unchanged. Zifnab is new and a pleasant addition.
GOP, you might want to look at my second comment where I address your….. question.
Seriously GOP, where, in anything I wrote, did you see anything that might have led you to believe that I believe that things in Iraq are not violent? C’mon, where? And where did I say that the Jamil story had anything to do with how you feel about Iraq? The AP has been fabricating stories, that’s the whole point. It has nothing to do with anything about how the conflict is going. It only has to do with the credibility of one of the largest and most widely used news services in the world.
Get it? It doesn’t have anything to do with Bush, the military, Haliburton, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Cindy Sheehan, Trent Lott, Cheney or Sandy Berger and it’s only tangentially associated with the conflict in Iraq in that it is misreporting on that conflict. It has to do with the AP using questionable sources and offering no retraction for a seriously provocative story about people being burned alive in multiple mosques. They changed the story occasionally but never offered a correction, retraction or any proof that those mosques were burned down. That’s all. It has nothing to do with whether I think you’re idiots, nitwits, ignorant or fools. It only has to do with a world-wide news service offering a story that has never been proven to be true, altering the details once in a while yet never offering a retraction or correction.
Zifnab, no, I’m not asking you to prove a negative. I’m asking you to prove a positive, were there multiple mosques burned with Muslims burned alive inside? If not, then the AP has a problem as they have never issued a retraction on the first story. And that AP story was reiterated (using AP as a source) all over the networks too.
That’s the whole freaking point. Iraq is violent. We get it. Just report the truth. That’s shouldn’t be too much to ask.
GOP4Me et al
You’re quite a hostile-toned fellow, aren’t you? Personally, I couldn’t care less about Hussein and his story. I don’t think the AP fabricated the names of the dead servicemen, so I’ll retain my conclusion about the war being an ongoing clusterfuck. Beyond that, if the AP is fabricating (anti-war) stories, why isn’t the Bush administration doing anything about it? Isn’t this what the FCC is for? And to whom shall we all turn for accurate news headlines? The Drudge Report? Fox News? High Times? The Weekly World News? What is your proposed alternative?
In other words, it’s boring, trivial, and irrelevant. If you want to talk about media fuck-ups, why not discuss Judith Miller? Plenty of fodder there for ya. Or, we can discuss how this nation is engaged in two major wars costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives, yet it’s easier for me to find news articles about the drunken carousings of Britney Spears than it is to unearth substantive reporting on the successes and failures of the G-SAVE/GWOT/WWIII/whatever the fuck Bush’s pollsters have told him to call it this week.
My point is, if this wasn’t an effort to make the press look bad in its reporting on Iraq, I doubt you’d care so much about it. But I could be wrong. Let me see you devote 1/10th of the passion you’ve just spent in attacking the AP on this Hussein story into something like the fact that America’s media marketing potentates have decided that the goings-on of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are the most important topic of discussion in current events.
As far as I can tell, the truth right about now is that pretty much anyone who ventures forth from the Green Zone to report the news, and who isn’t embedded with a US military escort, is at serious risk of getting abducted and decapitated. Given that rosy situation, I’m surprised we get any news out of Iraq at all, other than what the embeds pump out.
Veeshir
Here is the original story. I’ll quote the point.
Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers and burned them alive with kerosene
In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said.
See? That’s the whole point. Nobody but the AP has ever reported these events. Although they do get a corroborating quote from the Association of Muslim Scholars. Nice group. Go to Memri and do a search on who they are. It will be enlightening.
Jimmy Mack
One curious thing that no one has touched on yet is that there’s really no way for the AP to know, even if this happened, that the perpetrators were intent on revenge. When a school shooting or drive by or the like happens here, it is described as an isolated event perpetrated by a mad man. Why is that every murder in Iraq is described as sectarian? And if we’re going to do that, why not describe all the gang killings in Detroit or LA as “sectarian”? The Bloods and the Crips are not so different from the Sunnis and Shiites in terms of their aims and methods.
cleek
it’s funny to see war supporters get all excited about accuracy in media, now that they’re not the beneficiaries of that inaccuracy… where are the WMDs ? how about them yellow stars the Jews had to wear ? (and don’t even get me started on the years and years of breathless speculation about Clinton…
surely, given the fog of war, US and Iraqi casualty figures must some days be overreported, and other days must be underreported; has any war-blog ever spent any time at all, tracking down the accurate casualty figures on days when the numbers were underreported ?
or, are they just cynically focussing on this one insignificant matter because it’s an easy thing to pick at using Google, from the safety of their own cubicles, and it just happens to fit the storyline that they prefer – “see, Iraq’s not so bad… that eviiiil MSM’s just trying to make it look that way! clap harder!”
tell ya what, i’ll take your J.Hussein-realted “accuracy in media” fever seriously then second you guys show any concern at all for accuracy in reporting concerning things that don’t compliment your delusions.
Jimmy Mack
Do you have any evidence that there ever was a day when casualties were underreported? Even one day? We have lots of examples of over reporting — such as Amensty’s ridiculous claim of 600,000 dead — but no hard examples of under reporting. Those are the facts. Facts are tricky things, even for those who claim to be “reality-based.”
Steve
Wait a minute. If the AP quotes a Bush administration official as making some claim, and the claim turns out to be a lie, does that makes the AP a liar? Because this scenario happens all the time, you know.
It’s entirely possible that Captain Jamil Hussein likes to exaggerate details. Indeed, you could reasonably infer that the AP has drawn the same conclusion, if they’ve stopped using him as a source since this incident.
Should they publish a correction, for something a source claimed which turned out to be maybe-possibly exaggerated? I’m not an expert on journalistic practices, but I’ve never seen a correction like this:
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe every time the press reports Scott McClellan or Tony Snow saying something that just isn’t true, they’ve run a correction afterwards. I don’t think that’s the case.
The worst you can say about the AP is that maybe, in the middle of a war zone, one of their sources exaggerated a detail and they didn’t manage to fact-check it sufficiently. That’s hardly the end of the world. The bullshit about the AP “fabricating stories” is just typical media-hating crap from the right wing and they’ve ended up with egg on their face yet again.
cleek
i don’t.
but, are you willing to assert that 100% of all deaths in Iraq are reported these days ? if not… there’s your underreporting.
Jimmy Mack
Depends on what you mean by deaths (all deaths, or just casualties, I mean) and what you mean by reported? I realizet that the AP doesn’t have some long, embellished story from a fictitious police captain about every single death that occurs, if that’s what you mean.
cleek
i prefer the standard definitions.
The Other Steve
That’s about 0 for 3 isn’t it?
John Kerry picture story embarassment
Jamil Hussein embarassment
Now this
Can the right wing mainstream media get anything right?
TenguPhule
Bullshit.
600,000 estimate based on the same statistical analysis they used for Darfur (or are you going to claim that those numbers are off as well?).
And for underreporting we need look no further then the Pentagon deliberately under reporting deaths caused by the civil war by *not* *counting* shooting/execution victims as part of the official toll.
Jimmy, you’re a poor imitation of Darrell. Clap louder!
TenguPhule
No, they can’t.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.