Bilal Hussein Pulitzer Prize Winning Terrorist

Back in October of 2005, to I referred to a post at Sir Humphrey’s noting that this photographer was colluding with terrorists and AP was paying him blood money for the photographs.

Now even more information has come to the fore; Michelle Malkin received information from Iraq that Bilal Hussein has been detained. And guess what for?

Hussein was captured by American forces in a building in Ramadi, Iraq, with a cache of weapons.

The AP’s response to Michelle’s inquiry about Bilal Hussein is somewhat vague:

We are looking into reports that Mr. Hussein was detained by the U.S. military in Iraq but have no further details at this time.

Jack Stokes
The Associated Press
Corporate Communications

And one has to wonder if they’ll ever come out and admit the truth, as ‘truth telling’ seems to be a rarity as far as al-Reuters and the AP, but there is one thing I find irritating about this entire story:

Do you recall this picture from around the time of the elections in Iraq? It is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by an unidentified “AP stringer”. This image depicts the supposed “execution” of Iraqi election workers, in broad daylight, on Haifa Street in Baghdad in November of 2005.

It is one thing to honor the work of Michael Yon, a Green Beret and retired soldier serving as a citizen journalist in Iraq under his own steam. Yon reports what he sees and takes his own pictures, and at considerable personal risk. More and more stories are emerging of Green Berets who are retired former soldiers like Jack Idema and Michael Yon who are courageously fighting this war on terror and anti-American propaganda, but it is entirely another ball of wax to think that anyone anywhere in the world would award a Pulitzer Prize to a terrorist pumping out pictorial propaganda.

And the AP has purchased all kinds of photographs from this terrorist propagandist, dutifully disseminating it for them, just like Al Jazeera, the ‘voice of al qaeda’.

At The Weekly Standard, D. Gorton, who happens to be a former Whitehouse photographer for the New York Times covering the Carter and Reagan administrations provides a summary there of the controversy around the photo. Gorton concluded:

So this is where the story stands now: A photo “stringer” who is identified as an Iraqi national, who remains anonymous, makes an exclusive picture that is not corroborated by any other photographic news source. The image fits into a press meta narrative about the situation in Iraq prior to crucial national elections. The published photo sets up an immediate outcry in the blogosphere and is met by an institutional defense by the AP. That is followed by a series of misstatements by the AP on the distance the photographer was from the scene, culminating in a piece by AP’s director of photography, who avoids addressing that very issue of proximity.

Whatever the truth is, it may eventually come out. The terrorists know whether or not they were complicit with the photographer. As the insurgency winds down they may broker their way into an amnesty in which, no doubt, many tales will emerge–tales that could confirm the worst suspicions of complicity in murder.

In the meantime the AP is left with almost no reasonable defense of the photographer’s actions, uncorroborated as they are. They can release all of the photographer’s pictures of that day. They can even produce the photographer. But it’s difficult to see what they could do to assure their integrity in this matter.

mheh. “Integrity” in the lamestream media? You’ve got to be kidding.

John Hinderaker at Power Line on Dec. 25 sums up the outrage:

(Ap’s director of media relations:) Insurgents want their stories told as much as other people and some are willing to let Iraqi photographers take their pictures. It’s important to note, though, that the photographers are not “embedded” with the insurgents. They do not have to swear allegiance or otherwise join up philosophically with them just to take their pictures.

That makes the admission pretty well complete, I think. The AP is using photographers who have relationships with the terrorists; this is for the purpose of helping to tell the terrorists’ “stories.” The photographers don’t have to swear allegiance to the terrorists–gosh, that’s reassuring–but they have “family and tribal relations” with them. And they aren’t embedded–I’m not sure I believe that–but they don’t need to be either, since the terrorists tip them off when they are about to commit an act that they want filmed.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if the real story comes out about what Bilal Hussein was doing when American forces found it necessary to pick him up.