Patterico's Pontifications

12/18/2006

Marc Danziger’s Jam(a)il Hussein Post is Up

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:46 pm



As you probably already know, Marc Danziger has his post up on Jamil Hussein. As he says, it’s not quite what he’d expected to post. Go to this link to read it. I’ll offer commentary in an update when I get time.

UPDATE: If you’re looking for analysis now — and frankly, better analysis than I’ll likely be able to give — go to Allah at Hot Air. Allah tells you what’s important about Marc’s post in the light of what we already knew. This is the sort of thing Allah does better than anyone.

I agree with him that “Armed Liberal did yeoman’s work but the results, alas, didn’t match the hype.” In my own update, I’ll explain a little more of what I expected to see, and why I thought it would be important.

Some of that, by the way, may be yet to come.

UPDATE x2: Here’s what got me excited. When I spoke to him by phone, Marc told me that it looked like Jam(a)il Hussein was indeed at the Yarmouk station, but 1) wasn’t even a Captain; 2) was a Baathist holdover (much as Maj. Jeff Pool had predicted in my “third way” post); and 3) had a poor reputation for honesty. I’m not talking out of school here — Marc says this in today’s post:

[A]fter some calls, IMs, and e-mail we get a call back by Sat night (California time)/Sunday morning (Baghdad time); there is no Capt. Jamil Hussein at Yarmouk, but there is a Sergeant by that name, with a somewhat dubious reputation (worked directly under Uday, Baathist remnant, etc.).

This, to me, seemed like potentially important information. However, further investigation complicated the picture, as you can see from Marc’s post.

Also, Marc said he was working on getting pictures of all four mosques alleged to have been burned. Again, he mentions this in his post:

[T]wo different sources in Hurriyah confirm that at least two of the mosques in question are just fine, are standing strong, a couple of bullet marks on them, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. We also hear that they are closed for worship from fear of retaliatory attacks. There are two other mosques there that were claimed to have been attacked (the claim was later reduced to one) and we’ll see if we can get some pictures of them all, at which point we’ll have some facts to report.

So as of when I hyped his post, it was looking like: 1) Jam(a)il Hussein had been located and determined to be a noncredible Saddam holdover; and 2) we might have the first real photographic proof I’ve seen that four mosques were not burned, despite the AP‘s original claim that they were.

That seemed hypeworthy to me — although I loaded my post with caveats like:

If everything comes together the way he hopes it will . . .

and

If he’s able to put together what he told me about on the phone . . .

and

. . . if this comes together . . .

I think we’re still waiting to see, frankly. Marc’s post doesn’t tell us everything about “Who is Jam(a)il Hussein” — but it tells us something. What that is, exactly, is not clear. We need more time and information to see what the significance of his work really is.

And we may never know for sure.

To some extent, as Marc says, “I think we discovered something, but it turns out probably not to have been useful.” Except that more information is always useful, to the extent it leads us closer to the truth. The worry is that the truth will remain ever elusive, but that’s not a reason to fail to seek it.

Me, I’m still interested to see those pictures . . . and Marc says they may be coming.

UPDATE x3: After further reflection and another conversation with Marc, I think he’s found a lot. Rather than explain it in a new update, I’m going to do a new post.

8 Responses to “Marc Danziger’s Jam(a)il Hussein Post is Up”

  1. Somehow I think this is more Important

    “American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

    The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

    Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

    The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

    But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.”

    AF (8f7ccc) — 12/18/2006 @ 6:08 pm

  2. Or perhaps this:

    WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 — There were an average of 959 insurgent and sectarian attacks against American and Iraqi targets every week in Iraq over the last three months, the highest level ever recorded, according to a Pentagon report on security trends in Iraq issued today.

    Overall, the report, which covers the period from early August to early November, described a worsening security environment in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.

    The rise in attacks was a jump of nearly 160 a week compared to the weekly average in the previous three months. Civilian casualties reached an all-time high of more than 90 a day, the report said. While the majority of attacks were directed at American forces, most of the casualties were suffered by the Iraqi military and civilians.

    AF (8f7ccc) — 12/18/2006 @ 6:12 pm

  3. Whether there is really a God is more important than that.

    So why talk about anything else?

    Patterico (de0616) — 12/18/2006 @ 6:16 pm

  4. Well, if you can’t answer an argument, I guess you have to change the subject.

    I think AP did a masterful job of turning the controversy over the report into a controversy over the source, BTW. You don’t often see reverse psychology at that level.

    Merovign (feee99) — 12/18/2006 @ 6:40 pm

  5. Answer what argument?

    “I think AP did a masterful job of turning the controversy over the report into a controversy over the source”

    There’ve been so many similar confirmed and documented reports what the hell else is this about? Not the war, certainly
    As someone else has said already, your’re main beef with the press is that it exists.

    On the war, how’s this?

    “The president has a lonely obligation,” Card said. “The obligation is to protect us.”

    I gotta laugh, What a bunch of fucking idiots.

    AF (8f7ccc) — 12/18/2006 @ 7:31 pm

  6. 1. It’s of zero use. You thought you had found the source and you haven’t and are no closer. Can’t even say that you have done a thorough search as the investigation was by telephoning around a bit.

    2. The key thing to me is that AP is unable to produce the source. The onus is on them. At this point, I think they are full of shit. (And that has nothing to do with Iraq, I think Iraq is fucked and we should get out and shouldn’t have gone in.) But AP has shown their ass. Their lack of ethics or even care for ethics.

    TCO (9b393b) — 12/18/2006 @ 7:50 pm

  7. Oh, I forgot that when changing the subject doesn’t work, drop into profanity and insults.

    And then storm off in a huff.

    Merovign (feee99) — 12/19/2006 @ 2:21 am

  8. The Jamil Hussein Saga Continues…

    Curt at Flopping Aces has a definitive posting on where we are with the hunt for Jamil Hussein. He notes recent developments, including Confederate Yankee’s demands for AP to take major corrective actions, along with a tantalizing possibility that Hu….

    A Blog For All (59ce3a) — 12/19/2006 @ 8:53 am


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