Shilling for the Enemy

Journalists who manage to appear miraculously at the same time whenever a terrorist attack occurs and getting the shots that no one else can do? Photographers who catch the terrorists in action in a way that suggests that they were tipped off by the insurgents to not only where and how the attacks would occur, but when they would happen?

It was those circumstances that got the US military interested in AP photographer Bilal Hussein. Well, that and being apprehended by the US military while Hussein was with insurgents who had launched other terrorist attacks.

Now, it appears that he's going to be tried in the Iraqi criminal justice system.

Hussein's links with the insurgency are substantial, and Hussein always had the knack for being in the right place at the right time for taking photographs of insurgent and terrorist attacks. That happens when you're actively assisting the insurgency with your photographs - using the media for your own personal propaganda purposes.

The AP is doing its best to spin the Bilal Hussein situation into one that paints the US military as unjustly holding one of its photographers for months on end.

AP chief executive officer and president Tom Curley said the agency has "grave concerns" that Hussein's rights are being "ignored and even abused" and called on the United States to release the photographer.

"The steps the U.S. military is now taking continue to deny Bilal his right to due process and, in turn, may deny him a chance at a fair trial," Curley said. "The treatment of Bilal represents a miscarriage of the very justice and rule of law that the United States is claiming to help Iraq achieve."

Hussein won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for one of his photos, which happened to be the one that got people looking closely at whether he was in cahoots with the insurgency.

His actions and presence have never been fully explained to this day, and the AP continues to stonewall on its own actions.

Michelle, Hot Air and Rusty have been all over this from the outset.

Others blogging: Snapped Shot, Flopping Aces, and Don Surber who provides a history lesson for the AP (not that they're listening as they instead dig holes furiously).

UPDATE:
Seems that Rusty and the Jawas played a big role in Hussein's detention. If they hadn't been asking questions about Hussein's coverage and knack for being in the right place at the right time, one of his readers in Iraq wouldn't have realized who they had when the US military picked him up in the course of capturing an al Qaeda thug. Once they realized who they had, they kicked Hussein up the chain. Heh.

UPDATE:
Jules Crittenden, among others, notes that the AP has been calling for a legalistic resolution to Hussein's case, but now that he's going to face the music in an Iraqi court, they're having an about face. Figures. When you're dealing with weasels, what do you expect. They've got news sources to protect and all that, even if the sources are terrorist propagandists. After all, they bring the AP Pulitzer Prizes, and isn't that what journalism is about?