an early Snow

via cbc/cbs news

from yesterday's Empire Notes:

Iraq’s Interior Ministry has formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and take legal action against journalists who report, in their words, "fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different."

Their first target is the Associated Press, for its story that Shiite militias, in revenge for the massive car bombings in Sadr City that killed over 200, took six Sunni worshippers at a mosque in the Hurriyah district, doused them in gasoline, and set them on fire. The Interior Ministry, run by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, claims that the source for the story, police Captain Jamil Hussein, does not exist – and the U.S. military has backed them up. The AP reporter who did the story claims two years of contact with Capt. Hussein, including numerous meetings with him in his office in the Yarmouk police station, where Hussein wore a police uniform – as well as corroborating claims from three different witnesses who live in the area where the killings took place.
[...]
First, under Saddam, Iraq has press spokesman Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who becomes known for his comical lies. Then we take over in Iraq and all of our spokespeople are reincarnated as Sahhaf – watch Tony Snow any time. Then, oddly, the Iraqis who come to the fore in new, democratic Iraq, with these two fine examples before them, bear a strong resemblance as well.

addendum, Wednesday, 12.6th: I've been trying to download the PDF for the Iraq study group(here), but I guess tons of people are trying to do so, as I keep getting timed out.