Verifying the Facts

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change appears to have discovered one Jamail Hussein, who is working at the Yarmouk police station in Baghdad. Junkyard Blog points out the problem with that latter statement- the AP itself says that the guy was transferred from Yarmouk to another Baghdad police station.

Here's a couple of problems, and it has nothing to do with the transliteration of the name. If it was so easy to discover the guy, why couldn't AP produce the guy sooner.

Also, the evidence being sought is not solely the existence of Hussein, but the underlying facts of the stories for which he was the sole named source. Where are the burned mosques and more importantly, the bodies that were claimed to have been torched. These are the facts for which the veracity needs to be addressed. This is a credibility issue for AP. They asserted their reporting as true and accurate, but have since engaged in stonewalling and a slow backtracking on key details - the number of mosques torched were reduced, where the bodies were taken and who saw them in that state, and corroborating details remain lacking.

If the AP is correct in its reporting, it should not have trouble providing the key details - where the bodies are buried, where these mosques that are torched are located, and the hospitals where the bodies were taken. Thus, one can see a chain of evidence - hospital records showing the receipt of badly burned victims who were deceased, where the bodies were buried, and who else saw them. It is highly unlikely that no one would have noticed these events other than Hussein, yet that remains the precarious situation we face.

Others blogging: , Patterico, Charles at LGF.