More on the Associated (with terrorists) Press mess

From Michelle Malkin:

I've been following up with CENTCOM on the Associated Press/sketchy sources brouhaha. Just heard this morning from Michael B. Dean, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy MNC-I Joint Operations Center, Public Affairs Officer:

From CPATT PAO:

BG Abdul-Kareem, the Ministry of Interior Spokesman, went on the record today stating that Capt. Jamil Hussein is not a police officer. He explained the coordinations among MOI, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defense in attempting to track down these bodies and their joint conclusion was that this was unsubstantiated rumor.

He went on to name several other false sources that have been used recently and appealed to the media to document their news before reporting. He went into some detail about the impact of the press carrying propaganda for the enemies of Iraq and thanked "the friends" who have brought this to their attention.

AP did attend the press conference.

There is more, much more, including a link to this Neal Munro piece where in a paragraph he's titled "Choosing sides", he writes:

Clearly, terrorists and insurgents know the value of images [or stories... ed.]. In an undated letter from Osama bin Laden to the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, bin Laden wrote about how important the media was in Al Qaeda's war with the West. "It is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its share may reach 90 percent of the total preparation for battles." The translated letter was provided by the U.S. Army's Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point.

Baz said that, today, unlike in wars past, journalists are constantly pressured to choose sides, and that many combatants on either side don't believe that journalistic neutrality exists. This wartime pressure on photographers is "terrible," Baz said. "It is absolutely unbelievable that you are automatically branded East or West, Muslim or Christian, and you have [to] go on one side or the other." The Post's Elbert echoed the lament: "We're part of the story, and that's wrong."

Yes... and wrong is costing American lives and prolonging this war.

Beyond doubt.

MORE: And finally, the MSM is beginning to report on this issue in a big way:

Conservative bloggers — principally Flopping Aces — had already been questioning the AP’s story, and Mr. Hussein in particular, and with this, it was off to the races.

By Monday, Navy Lt. Michael B. Dean, a military spokesman for the joint operations in Iraq, had sent an e-mail to the Associated Press (which somehow made it onto the conservative blog circuit in a flash), essentially saying Mr. Hussein was neither a police officer nor an employee of the Iraq interior ministry (MOI), and therefore, not an approved source:

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.

The On Deadline blog at USA Today went to the AP with the concerns, and got this response from AP’s international editor, John Daniszewski, on Tuesday:

The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question.

Yesterday, the wire service moved a lengthy story in which they went back to the Hurriyah neighborhood in Baghdad where the immolation incident reportedly took place, and interviewed other witnesses, who corroborated the story.

(The piece also took a swipe at the military’s continuing dealings with message-massaging firms like the Lincoln Group.)

And so things stand today.

The one thing that remains unclear, though, is this: The Associated Press said in its story yesterday that Mr. Hussein “has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions.” The military, meanwhile, seems to suggest that Mr. Hussein is not a police officer, nor a civil servant in the employ of any Iraqi agency.

So who IS Mr. Hussein?

It's about time someone in the MSM asked the question.  I applaud the New York Times for doing so.