AFP: KURDISH forces captured SADDAM FIRST!

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: Corn

Noting that he offers nothing to refute the claim.........

You must have missed the part about "British tabloid" then.............. And it's wasn't even the Sun, at least they've got something
interesting to look at on page 3.

Just an FYI; The term "Tabloid" simply means the size of the newsprint used (as opposed to "broadsheet"). It in no way describes or implies judgement regarding the editorial content of the publication. Just because in the U.S. some questionable journals use the "Tabloid" format, the format itself doesn't mean it is poor or questionable reporting. This is especially true in Britain, where many quite respectable newspapers use this format. I believe The Times is switching to this format as well.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Nothing has been asked at the daily press conferences at the White House about this.

No one wants to get thumped with a rifle butt. I imagine the WH mouthpiece will say the source of intelligence and operations which led to Hussein's capture MUST be kept secret to protect the soldiers involved and future operations dependent upon said information source/methods.

 

[Corn]

Sunday Express

I especially liked this part of the Sunday Express homepage: "Have you got a story? Click here to email us now!"

Hmmm, I wonder if that's how they scooped this story.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Corn

Noting that he offers nothing to refute the claim.........

You must have missed the part about "British tabloid" then.............. And it's wasn't even the Sun, at least they've got something interesting to look at on page 3.

Seems you missed Moonie's post of xx:23, about half an hour before yours. The site he links includes links to about a dozen different reports of the story, from media all over the globe. One of them was the Sydney Morning Herald, generally a reputable news source. I believe ABC is also linked, though they frame it as something reported elsewhere, not a story of their own. I don't remember the rest off the top of my head, it was quite a varied assortment IIRC.

This still doesn't mean the story is fully accurate, but you can't blindly dismiss it by discrediting one source. You'll have to work a little harder than that.



Edit: typo

 

[Corn]

I believe ABC is also linked, though they frame it as something reported elsewhere, not a story of their own.

See, now here's the ironic part: Unlike you, I clicked some of those "sources" from the article that Moonie had linked. Had you bothered to have done so, and also paid attention to what my post from half-an-hour after Moonie's *really* stated, you might have learned the following:

The source for the ABC News story was the Sunday Express. Yeah, it was also the original source quoted by [edit]every[/] news report listed in Moonie's link.

Thanks for playing.

 

[Moonbeam]

Link

 

[Corn]

Thanks Moonie, another article citing the Express. How quaint.

The Weekly World News has a story about extra-terresterial aliens living among us. You had better check it out, Scoop!

 

[Corn]

OMG!!! Is that you Moonie?

 

[DealMonkey]

Holy crap, Niblet -- is this you?

 

[Corn]

You flatter me Monkey!

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Corn

I believe ABC is also linked, though they frame it as something reported elsewhere, not a story of their own.

See, now here's the ironic part: Unlike you, I clicked some of those "sources" from the article that Moonie had linked. Had you bothered to have done so, and also paid attention to what my post from half-an-hour after Moonie's *really* stated, you might have learned the following:

The source for the ABC News story was the Sunday Express. Yeah, it was also the original source quoted by [edit]every[/] news report listed in Moonie's link.

Thanks for playing.

I'm not sure if you're illiterate or just a liar, but either way you're wrong. Aside from the fact that I already said the ABC story was not their own, if you actually clicked and read the links, you would know that the Sunday Express was NOT the source for all the other reports. For example:

From the Sydney Morning Herald: We got him: Kurds say they caught Saddam
By Paul McGeough, Herald Correspondent in Baghdad
December 22, 2003


Washington's claims that brilliant US intelligence work led to the capture of Saddam Hussein are being challenged by reports sourced in Iraq's Kurdish media claiming that its militia set the circumstances in which the US merely had to go to a farm identified by the Kurds to bag the fugitive former president.

The first media account of the December 13 arrest was aired by a Tehran-based news agency.

American forces took Saddam into custody around 8.30pm local time, but sat on the news until 3pm the next day.

However, in the early hours of Sunday, a Kurdish language wire service reported explicitly: "Saddam Hussein was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace.

[ ... ]

Note that I explicity pointed to the Sydney Morning Herald in the post you are attacking. Their only mention of the Sunday Express is near the bottom of the article, where they quoted one line. Don't read very well, do you?

In fact, none of the first four links, the links highlighted as having extra content, are based exclusively on the Sunday Express report. The Aljazeera article leads with the Sunday Express report, then goes on to add about twice as much content of its own. Sify, India's English-language publication, does much the same. Finally, the Glascow Sunday Herald article was also quite detailed and independently sourced:

Revealed: who really found Saddam?
Saddam?s capture was the best present George Bush could have hoped for, and then Gaddafi handed a propaganda gift to Blair. But nothing?s ever that simple
By Foreign Editor David Pratt

[ ... ]
Enter one Qusrat Rasul Ali, otherwise known as the lion of Kurdistan. A leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Rasul Ali was once tortured by Saddam?s henchmen, but today is chief of a special forces unit dedicated to hunting down former Ba?athist regime leaders.

Rasul Ali?s unit had an impressive track record. It was they who last August, working alone, arrested Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan in Mosul, northern Iraq. Barely a month earlier in the al-Falah district of the same town, the PUK is believed to have played a crucial role in the pinpointing and storming of a villa that culminated in the deaths of Saddam?s sons Uday and Qusay.

In that mixed district of Mosul where Arabs, Kurds and Turkemen live side by side, PUK informers went running to their leader Jalal Talabani?s nearest military headquarters to bring him news on the exact location of the villa where both Uday and Qusay had taken shelter.

Armed with the information, Talabani made a beeline for US administration offices in Baghdad, where deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz was based for a week?s stay in Iraq at the time.

The Kurdish leader and US military chiefs conferred and decided that PUK intelligence would go ahead and secretly surround the Zeidan villa and install sensors and eavesdropping devices. The Kurdish agents were instructed to prepare the site for the US special forces operation to storm the building on July 22.

American officials later said they expected that the $30m bounty promised by their government for the capture or death of the Hussein sons would be paid. Given their direct involvement in providing the exact location and intelligence necessary, no doubt Talabani?s PUK operatives could lay claim to the sum, but no confirmation of any delivery or receipt of the cash has ever been made.

[ ... ]

By early Sunday ? way before Saddam?s capture was being reported by the mainstream Western press ? the Kurdish media ran the following news wire:

?Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace. Qusrat?s team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!?

By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the emphasis had changed, and the ousted Iraqi president had been ?captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters.?

Rasul Ali himself, meanwhile, had already been on air at the Iranian satellite station al-Alam insisting that his ?PUK fighters sealed the area off before the arrival of the US forces?.

By late Sunday as the story went global, the Kurdish role was reduced to a supportive one in what was described by the Pentagon and US military officials as a ?joint operation?. The Americans now somewhat reluctantly were admitting that PUK fighters were on the ground alongside them , while PUK sources were making more considered statements and playing down their precise role.

[ ... ]

Interesting stuff. It's the first I heard of the roles of the Kurds in capturing Husseins sons, but I may have missed it. Oh yeah, and they didn't source their story from the Sunday Express either.

 

[Corn]

if you actually clicked and read the links, you would know that the Sunday Express was NOT the source for all the other reports.

I'm sure you'll forgive my "edited" quote. Originally it had stated that several of those links used the Sunday Express as their original source, which was a completely accurate statement. I should have, however, removed "original" from that sentence after I decided to see just how many of those links used S.E. as a source and made my "edit". No, I did not read every sentence in every link. I originally read 3 or 4 at random, then just searched what I thought I hadn't already read after your previous reply.

Congratulations on finding a single article that didn't list the Express as a source. Remarkable work!

Would I be suprised that the Kurds had a hand in the capture of Saddam? Nope. I'm sure that their intelligence network is highly developed. I'm also sure that a significant portion of our "intelligence" was their intelligence. Do I believe that the Kurds captured Saddam, drugged him, and then put him in a hole for us to find? Not in the least bit.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Corn

if you actually clicked and read the links, you would know that the Sunday Express was NOT the source for all the other reports.

I'm sure you'll forgive my "edited" quote. Originally it had stated that several of those links used the Sunday Express as their original source, which was a completely accurate statement. I should have, however, removed "original" from that sentence after I decided to see just how many of those links used S.E. as a source and made my "edit". No, I did not read every sentence in every link. I originally read 3 or 4 at random, then just searched what I thought I hadn't already read after your previous reply.

Congratulations on finding a single article that didn't list the Express as a source. Remarkable work!

Would I be suprised that the Kurds had a hand in the capture of Saddam? Nope. I'm sure that their intelligence network is highly developed. I'm also sure that a significant portion of our "intelligence" was their intelligence. Do I believe that the Kurds captured Saddam, drugged him, and then put him in a hole for us to find? Not in the least bit.

A couple of nits and I'll let the horse RIP. First, the stories I quoted were the first four stories, the ones highlighted as having additional information. Many of the rest were already identified as reprints of the AFP release, so you should not have been surprised to confirm this. You were too eager to attack; you should have done a little more homework first.

Second, you said the Express was the original source, not an original source. "The" is singular. All four top links used multiple sources. Finally, had you not replied with so much attitude, I wouldn't have been equally harsh in my reply. It's generally best not to jump on someone else unless you're certain your position is unassailable.

That's enough. Even though there are multiple sources supporting the Kurd story, I regard it as an open question. I'm not completely dismissing it like you, but I'm not convinced it's true either. It will be interesting to see if it has legs or fades away.

Cheers,

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

It will be interesting to see if it has legs or fades away.

Kinda like the "who in the West Wing ratted out the NOC" story.

 

[Moonbeam]

And was a CIA agent outed or was that just a dream?

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: jjsole
Reuters carried the story first with reports from the Kurds that he was captured. Saddams daughter feels 100% that he was drugged as well.

This is interesting imo and worth keeping an eye on.

that is pure BS.
We all know that Saddam has a longer history of surrendering (even before he was dictator).
He's a chicken!