Save your apologies. It ain’t over yet. The Associated Press, indignant as usual on the subject, now claims to have found its Jamil Hussein, their stringer’s named source for sixty plus dispatches from Iraq. Not surprisingly, the industry’s mouthpiece E&P chimes in on AP’s side, and several bloggers, including Austin Bay, hastened to apologize for ever doubting the wire service. But now it turns out Hussein actually uses his middle name for a surname, i.e. Jamil Gulaim, explaining why it was hard to find him under the pseudonym the AP used. Moreover, he denies ever having spoken to the news media. Plus the AP story for which bloggers first picked up on Hussein/Gulaim–claiming that terrorists set six Iraqi men ablaze–remains disputed and unconfirmed. Not much of a resolution that I can see.
UPDATE The truth, it seems, is still out there, and AP’s new version is collapsing around its ears. It turns out they never had his name correct to begin with, and repeated the mistake sixty-plus times. Or did they phony it up for some reason other than sloppiness? Film at eleven.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 