Patterico's Pontifications

12/16/2006

Armed Liberal: There May Be an Iraqi Cop Named Jam(a)il Hussein After All

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:35 pm



Armed Liberal says that there may in fact be an Iraqi cop named Jamail Hussein at the Yarmouk police station in Iraq.

This would not be terribly surprising. Remember my post suggesting a “third way” on Jamil Hussein, as well as my concerns about the breadth of the working list of unverified sources that the military released.

But even if he is who he claims to be, there are a lot of unanswered questions.

This will be interesting. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: See Dubya says it’s “Jamil” and not “Jamail.” But actually, it’s an Iraqi name which could be either. For this reason, I’ve been a little suspicious about drawing firm conclusions about Iraqi names all along.

I altered the headline of the post to reflect See Dubya’s observation.

22 Responses to “Armed Liberal: There May Be an Iraqi Cop Named Jam(a)il Hussein After All”

  1. That’s very interesting indeed, as the AP says he now works at Al-Khadra instead of Yarmouk. (scroll down to the P.S.)

    And it’s Jamil, not Jamail.

    See-Dubya (f7706f)

  2. Has “Capt. Jamil Hussein” Surfaced?…

    Via Patterico, it seems Marc Danziger may have tracked down the AP’s mystery man after all at Yarmouk. My problem with that is that the AP says he’s been transferred from Yarmouk to al-Khadra (scroll down to the 11/28 entry)…….

    JunkYardBlog (621918)

  3. So does this mean Michelle Malkin can stay home?

    David Ehrenstein (af13fc)

  4. Has “Capt. Jamil Hussein” Surfaced? …

    … Color me skeptical. al-AP’s had plenty of time to create some very convincing paperwork in the time since the story broke and real or not he’s been reporting a lot of things no one else seems to be able to verify.

    Bill's Bites (3cc7e8)

  5. So does this mean Michelle Malkin can stay home?

    I hope not. I hope she goes and tells us of allthe good news.

    actus (10527e)

  6. It’s not the name of the man that should be the smoking gun. It should be the information, such as six people dragged outside and burned, that should be verified. I want to know where the bodies are. However the man’s name is spelled, the evidence should still back up the claims.

    Edward (d0723a)

  7. Truth is, we already knew tehre was a Jamail Hussein (of at least someone claiming to be). The AP didn’t make this up and I don’t think anyone accused them of doing so. The real potential problem was that the AP was relying on terrorist stringers who were making up false stories as propaganda agains thte United States and the AP was willing to publish them because of the AP’s political views which also are anti-US.

    Finding the stringer is, of course, not proof that there wasn’t one. We need to see Jamail’s evidence that this burning occured. We need to know how he’s always in the right place to see these disasters (he’s been published 61 times) and why he is acting as a spokesman. We just need to know more about one of the AP’s primary news finders in this important war.

    But yeah, of course there is a guy in Iraw somewhere feeding his line of bull to the AP. Maybe he’s even named Jamail.

    Dustin (ea244e)

  8. It’s not the name of the man that should be the smoking gun. It should be the information, such as six people dragged outside and burned, that should be verified. I want to know where the bodies are. However the man’s name is spelled, the evidence should still back up the claims.

    Just a week ago, you guys were all “we don’t care that the burning story was verified by all those other sources, we want Jamil Hussein”. Now that he turns out to exist, “it was never really about Jamil Hussein”.
    You just never give up.

    Nikolay (939eb6)

  9. Nikolay:

    Don’t be silly. The AP found other sources. No other news source found anyone, nor did the Iraqi government.

    Why, in an environment where the ratbags use every opportunity to show their handiwork on the internet, is there no visual evidence.

    davod (5fdaa2)

  10. This is along the lines of the 655,000 dead that Lancet claimed. Some of our friends on the left started using that figure, but, save for the real whackos, I’ve noticed that that claim has been quietly dropped, as the math was obviously wrong, and there was no outside verificatin.

    Now you see stories telling us how X was the bloodiest month ever, with 3,709 killings, and things like that, numbers that are supportable with outside evidence.

    The six men being burned alive is a story which requires additional confirmation. If six men wer burned alive, they ought to be identifiable people, with families. If they were taken to the hospital or morgue, there ought to be a paper trail.

    Dana (556f76)

  11. Hadn’t the AP identified Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein as a police spokesman? Even if there is a member of the Iraqi police named Jamil Hussein, if he had been a police spokesman, why didn’t the Iraqi police and our military now about him? If he’s not giving the official response or information, by what reason does the AP trust him?

    Dana (556f76)

  12. Indeed, spelled ‘Jamil’ Jamil Hussein seems to be an uncommon name. I have found reference to only three other Jamil Hussein.
    From usenet newsgroups:
    Two Palestinians :

    Oct. 2002
    1. They (the Israelis) destroyed a 90-square-meter house, in which 7
    persons lived, located in a several-story apartment
    building, owned by Salah Ahmed al-Asmar. Israeli
    forces claim that the owner’s son Ashraf carried out
    a bombing in Gudeira inside the Green Line on 22 October
    2002. as a result of such destruction, 6 houses in the
    same building were damaged:

    a. A 110-square-meter house, in which 5 persons live,
    owned by ‘Ali Fawzi Samara;
    b. A 120-square-meter house, in which 6 persons live,
    owned by Samer D’ib Marshoud;
    c. A 120-square-meter house, in which 7 persons live,
    owned by Ghazi Mahmoud Ekhash;
    d. A 220-square-meter house, in which 7 persons live,
    owned by Jamil Hussein Hardan;
    e. A 120-square-meter house, in which 3 persons live,
    owned by ‘Adnan Mohammed Jarrar; and
    f. A 90-square-meter house, in which 6 persons live,
    owned by ‘Omar Mohammed al-Jamal.

    Feb. 2003

    They (the Israelis) partially demolished a 180-square-meter, 2-storey house, in which two families
    counting 19 people live, owned by Jamil Hussein ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Zao’rob.

    And a boxer:

    http://www.boxing-monthly.co.uk/content/0611/two.htm

    But defeats in the European Seniors and 1998 ABA final (to Birmingham’s James Hegney, who stopped Hunter, as did Jamil Hussein and Henry Castle) suggested that he lacked core ruggedness.

    Bill (226c49)

  13. nor did the Iraqi government

    Do you take into account the fact that Iraqi Shia government is itself a party that is probably responsible for this event? Haven’t you seen enough evidence of them trying to spin facts? You know, Al-Hakim claimed that the level of violence on the Shia side is just negligible.

    Why, in an environment where the ratbags use every opportunity to show their handiwork on the internet, is there no visual evidence.

    Probably because there were no cameras around at this particular event. Most of the violence goes unreported anyway, don’t you know?

    Now you see stories telling us how X was the bloodiest month ever, with 3,709 killings, and things like that, numbers that are supportable with outside evidence.

    This is just the number of bodies reported at the morgues. You have to multiply it by about four to have an idea of the real number. The Lancet method (statistical approximation) is the only method that could work (official, verifiable numbers are inaccurate by definition), however, there were questions about particular details of the Lancet study which suggested that 655.000 is an overestimation. In reality it’s probably something like 400.000. A big difference?

    Nikolay (939eb6)

  14. Nikolay, the Lancet numbers aren’t anywhere close to reality, as I explained here and here. For the Lancet numbers to have been realistic, we’d have had to have killed (adjusted for population sizes) 3½ to 7 times as many Iraqis, per capita, as we did Germans and Japanese by our massive bombing campaigns in World War II. For the Lancet numbers to be realistic, there would have to be over 500 Iraqis killed, on average, every single day; I can’t think of even one day in which such numbers were reported.

    Where are the bodies? It’s one thing to say, well, we can’t find the graves of the six men who were supposedly burned alive, but in a society which does not use cremation, there needs to be 655,000 bodies and 655,000 graves; that’s the kind of thing which cannot be hidden, which does not go unnoticed.

    Dana (556f76)

  15. so much bullshit.
    so many dead.

    Fiddling while Baghdad burns.

    The AP stood by its story, though, calling CENTCOM’s allegations “ludicrous” and noting that Hussein had been providing AP reporters with reliable information for months. The AP also didn’t think much of CENTCOM’s suggestion that reporters only quote people found on the government’s approved list of sources.

    For the record, along with Hussein, the AP based its Burned Alive reporting on an account from Imad al-Hashimi, a Sunni elder who told Al-Arabiya television about the killings. (He later recanted his story after being visited by a representative of the defense minister.) The AP also spoke to three independent eyewitnesses (two shopkeepers and a physician) and confirmed the story with hospital and morgue workers. Nonetheless, CENTCOM raised doubts about Hussein, so warbloggers, hearing a reassuring narrative they loved, pronounced the AP guilty of manufacturing news and quickly referred to Hussein as a “fake policeman” and to the Burned Alive story as a “fairy tale.”

    By inflating the disputed incident into a monumentally important press story, warbloggers, who have excitedly pounded the story for weeks, convinced themselves that blame for the United States’ emerging defeat in Iraq lay squarely at the feet of the press. Specifically, warbloggers claim that American journalists, too cowardly to go get the news themselves, are relying on local Iraqi news stringers who have obvious sympathies for terrorists and who purposefully push propaganda into the news stream — the way Hussein did with the Burned Alive story — to create the illusion of turmoil. Warbloggers, who have virtually no serious journalism experience among them, announced that what’s coming out of Iraq today is not news at all, but simply terrorist press releases — “a pack of lies” — regurgitated by reporters (or “traitors”) who want to see the insurgents succeed.

    “[M]any in the American media … have a vested interest in exaggerating the violence as much as possible,” announced warblogger Michelle Malkin, whose reassuring analysis was echoed by warbloggers such as the Anchoress, Power Line, Little Green Footballs, Flopping Aces, Instapundit, Redstate, The Belmont Club, Wizbang, and Pajamas Media, among others. Fox News, the New York Post, The Examiner of the Washington, D.C., area, and National Review Online also gave the story attention.

    Should the AP be held responsible for its reporting, and should the global news agency be diligent about whom it hires inside Iraq? Of course. And there should be hell to pay if it’s proven any news events were manufactured. But warbloggers aren’t interested in an honest, factual debate about a single instance of journalistic accountability. And they’re not really interested in the specifics of the Burned Alive story. They’re interested in wide-ranging conspiracy theories and silencing skeptical voices.

    As American Prospect blogger Greg Sargent noted, “Malkin and her compadres are trying to accomplish one thing, and one thing only: They want to staunch the flow of images back to America of President Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq.” Indeed, censorship via intimidation — not authentic media criticism — has always been atop the warbloggers’ agenda. (Their main beef with the press is that it exists.)

    AF (8f7ccc)

  16. For the Lancet numbers to have been realistic, we’d have had to have killed (adjusted for population sizes) 3½ to 7 times as many Iraqis, per capita, as we did Germans and Japanese by our massive bombing campaigns in World War II

    What do you mean, “we”? Lancet didn’t claim that US killed those people, it was about people being killed as the result of the conflict. Thus, of course, including insurgents, victims of militia etc.

    For the Lancet numbers to be realistic, there would have to be over 500 Iraqis killed, on average, every single day; I can’t think of even one day in which such numbers were reported.

    Well, according to ISG the level of violence reported is about ten times lower than the actual number. Can you think of the day there were 50 death reported? I bet you can. Well, ISG wasn’t exactly talking about this, but, in general, it’s obvious that the reported numbers are lower than actual.
    And, again, 650.000 is probably too much, 400.000 would mean 300 death daily, and this doesn’t seem like unrealistic number.

    there needs to be 655,000 bodies and 655,000 graves; that’s the kind of thing which cannot be hidden, which does not go unnoticed.

    What do you mean, “go unnoticed”? Every particular grave is noticed by someone, they just don’t have enough spare time to count them all.
    Anyway, the death toll given by Iraqi Minister of Health is 150.000. And he was only talking about civilians. Adding combatants it would make some 200.000 — will you settle with this number?

    Nikolay (939eb6)

  17. Nikolay (#16): Please explain to this old, senile ex-math major how something can be “10 times less”? I understand a number that is 1/10th the size of “X”; but, “10-times less” completely escapes me. Does “10 times less” mean that instead of killing 500 people/day, we actually created 4500 (or 5000: Are we talking about gross, or net, numbers?)? The bastardization of the English language has just gone too far.

    Another Drew (8018ee)

  18. What do you mean, “go unnoticed”? Every particular grave is noticed by someone, they just don’t have enough spare time to count them all.

    But the Lancet study didn’t count graves, bodies, or anything else: they sampled an admittedly small number of households and asked about numbers of fatalities. The study then extrapolated that data nationwide. That reality alone should raise red flags.

    Anyway, the death toll given by Iraqi Minister of Health is 150.000. And he was only talking about civilians. Adding combatants it would make some 200.000 — will you settle with this number?

    So you’ve conceded your original figure was wildly wrong and now you’ve come up with another.
    So let’s look at your new number…oh, wait, it was actually a rough estimate:

    Iraq’s health ministry said on Friday that between 100,000 and 150,000 people had died since early 2004, in the latest of a series of controversial estimates of the country’s death toll.

    And the health minister is obviously non-partisan, isn’t he?

    The health ministry has given out figures several times since the summer, but it is controlled by the radical Shia Sadrist movement and some US officers have questioned its reliability.

    Since this figure’s provably questionable, let me guess…you have yet another number instead, right?

    socratesabroad (3ab745)

  19. The bastardization of the English language has just gone too far.

    I’m sorry, I’m not a native English-speaker, nor do I live in the English-speaking country. Should I just shut up because of this? I think you understood pretty well what I meant.

    The study then extrapolated that data nationwide. That reality alone should raise red flags.

    Why? This in fact is the only method likely to give real number. You can argue with the way they extrapolated (i.e. what weight did they give to particular provinces, how did they sample data etc.), but this is the only method likely to work. What you say is like saying “polls don’t make any sense because they don’t question everyone”.

    So you’ve conceded your original figure was wildly wrong and now you’ve come up with another.
    So let’s look at your new number…oh, wait, it was actually a rough estimate:

    655.000 is also a rough estimate.

    And the health minister is obviously non-partisan, isn’t he?

    It’s funny you say this, since this thread started with the story about spokesperson from MOI (heavily infiltrated by militias) claiming that certain guy doesn’t exist.

    Since this figure’s provably questionable, let me guess…you have yet another number instead, right?

    There’s not a single source here that is not provably partisan and questionable. The number that US administration gives is pure nonsense, and the way people try to discredit Lance report shows scientific ignorance.
    To see Lancet’s number as a final truth is wrong, but to dismiss it for no good reasons is also wrong.

    Nikolay (939eb6)

  20. Nikolay (#16): Please explain to this old, senile ex-math major how something can be “10 times less”? I understand a number that is 1/10th the size of “X”; but, “10-times less” completely escapes me.

    I think he means 1/10th. So ten times more is multiply by ten. Ten times less means divide by ten. I don’t see the bastardization.

    actus (10527e)

  21. Re comment 18. The Lancet study is supported by death certificates iun 95% of cases. The Lancet study also clarifies the death counts provided by the ministry of health – which only counts deaths for patients that are taken to hospital facilities. Consequently, this estimate understates the actual count. Its not at all clear that commentors on this site have actually read the study they are commenting about. Now I understand what’s meant by pontification…

    sachmo (bba134)

  22. “This is along the lines of the 655,000 dead that Lancet claimed. Some of our friends on the left started using that figure, but, save for the real whackos, I’ve noticed that that claim has been quietly dropped, as the math was obviously wrong, and there was no outside verificatin.(sic)”

    Gosh, Dana, here are folks who’ve used standard epidemioligical sampling techniques, told us exactly how they went about it, have had the procedure verified by other researchers who use these techniques – but you are able to discern that the math was “obviously wrong.” I wish you would give us a complete analysis of the faulty math, rather than the unsubstantiated allegation.
    And the 650,000 figure is just the middle of the range. Perhaps as low as 400,000, or as high as 900,000.
    I think it’s been dropped by MSM as they don’t like to remind us just how terrible a whirlwind the Iraqis are reaping from the wind we have sown – I guess the MSM prefers to collude with the US information officers in under reporting. At least the ISG gave an example of what honest reporting would tell us – over a 1,000 deaths on a day when 93 were officially reported. Let’s see – 1,000 a day for a year and a half to two years…….. Can you do the math, Dana?

    John Q (91a55b)


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