AP Chief Distorts The Record In Defense Of Insurgent-Chronicler Bilal Hussein

Associated Press chief executiveTom Curley writes a laughable defense of Bilal Hussein, the AP photographer being held by military authorities in Iraq after being nabbed with an alleged al Qaeda operative and an arms cache. The rigor of this column is indicated thus:

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who helped the Associated Press win a Pulitzer Prize last year, is now in his sixth month in a U.S. Army prison in Iraq. He doesn't understand why he's there, and neither do his AP colleagues.

This from one of the pinnacles of American journalism. Curley then adds that the The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. Oh that's an honest assessement. Eventually he manages to discover a sliver of the information that seconds ago he was wholly ignorant of:

He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with the connivance of insurgents. So Bilal himself must be one, too, or at least a sympathizer.

But if you rely only on this Op-Ed, or publications including the Washington Post, you'd never know about Hussein's allged al Qaeda connection and the little matter of being nabbed alongside an arms cache. Neither this Op-Ed nor this squib in the Post on Sept. 18 say anything about the circumstances surrounding his capture.

Michelle Malkin has been writing about Hussein for months as a photographer suspected of colluding with the enemy. You don't have to believe every charge against Hussein, but his advocates should at least try to contend with them. Instead, Curley ignores the accusations in high-dudgeon mode, accusing the military of trying to discredit or silence news they don't like. This is rich, I must quote it in full:

Both official and unofficial parties on every side of a conflict try to discredit or silence news they don't like.

U.S. military. Al Qaeda terrorists and other assorted murderers, You know, parties on every side of a conflict.

Malkin will run this farce through a blender, and I'll leave the fisking to her, but I hope she doesn't injure herself from laughter after reading Curley's assertion that After more than five months of trying to bring Bilal's case into the daylight, AP is now convinced the Army doesn't care whether Bilal is or isn't an insurgent. Five months, ay? Too bad you don't run one of the world's largest newsire services distributed to thousands of newspapers and virtually every broadcast network on earth. That way you could have somehow informed the public when Hussein was arrested. And I would have put up flyers, just to be sure.

Oh well, you can always start a blog. Just don't forget about al Qaeda and the arms he was captured with--people might question your credibility.

Cross-posted at PostWatch