Speaking of Josh Marshall - and the Saddam show

After having just given the thumbs' up to Josh Marshall, I have a further post involving him. For the most part, I trust what Josh has to say, and I believe that he is always sincere and trustworthy. That doesn't mean that I agree with or buy everything he has to say. For even trustworthy people can be mistaken or incorrectly advised. Having said that...

Josh doesn't think the story about the Kurds having captured and handed over Saddam is reliable.

Nor is the story only in obscure publications or conspiracy sites. It's been picked up by Agence France Presse and Bloomberg. It's even linked now on Drudge's site.

So, I've had a slew of readers write in to ask, Is there something to this story?

In a word? No.

Obviously a single word seldom covers things adequately. So permit me a few more.

I've been far too busy to do any reporting on this. But I have looked at the published stories. And I've seen nothing that makes me think this is true.

...Among other problems, it reads as based on shaky sources, and it includes this passage ...

The Sunday Express was told: "There was no question of the tribe claiming the GBP 16million reward from the US.

Apparently it was a question of honour. The Kurdish Patriotic Front held him while they thrashed out their own deal. It didn't just involve the reward but it involved gaining some sort of political advantage in the region."

What's this group, the Kurdish Patriotic Front? Good question. As far as I know, there is no such group.

It sounds a lot like the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main Kurdish political factions. And later on in the article it refers the 'Front's' leader as Jalal Talabani. He is the head of the PUK. So the author of the piece, Yvonne Ridley (reporting from Qatar), on the face of it seems not to know what is literally the first thing about Kurdish politics. And that, shall we say, doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in her reporting.

Yvonne Ridley is currently being interviewed by Democracy Now! on the matter. There should be some more information coming out at least about her position.

Since she has been over there, and Josh hasn't, I suppose it's possible that the PUK is known by another name in some circles, and Josh isn't aware of it.

Josh also has a link to this posting on another site, which he feels backs up his opinion about Ms. Ridley....

On Talking Points Memo this evening, Josh Marshall described Yvonne Ridley, the source of the story currently making the rounds that the Kurds caught, drugged, and abandoned Saddam Hussein for the Americans to find, as "an inexperienced reporter". The name rang a bell. There's a profile of Ms. Ridley on the BBC web site that describes the then-43 year old reporter as U.K. paper The Daily Express ' "chief reporter and a highly experienced journalist who had covered several conflicts in many countries around the world." The profile comes from September, 2001, a time when Ms. Ridley was being held by the Taliban for sneaking into Afghanistan. She wound up converting to Islam as a result of reading the Koran while in captivity there. The newly-converted Ridley went on to become the editor of al-Jazeera's English-language service until she was fired last month.

In short, it sounds to me like she's got plenty of experience. Perhaps the word Josh was looking for is "gullible".

I think that is an unfair statement to make, particularly after just citing information that makes Ms. Ridley sound like a decent journalist. She may be unwittingly reporting false information. She wouldn't be the first reporter to do so. Heaven knows there are plenty of American news reporters who have looked pretty silly for repeating some of the bogus Turkey Day caper and Jessica Lynch information they were fed, to name just two instances. But simply because she converted to the Islamic religion is not reason enough to suspect her of being less objective in her reporting. That's pretty bigoted, and I'm surprised Josh accepts it.

Josh continues...

So, I think this all adds up to no reason to believe there's anything to do this story, at least not based on what I've seen in published accounts. What I think we've got here is a rumor which got picked up by an inexperienced reporter and then made its way on to some mainstream newswires.

Now, of course, it is possibly quite true that Ms. Ridley's information is not correct. But why he calls her an "inexperienced reporter" after the information in the link he provides, I cannot say. It specifically speaks of her as a "chief reporter and a highly experienced journalist who had covered several conflicts in many countries around the world." And, if he had read the links in that article about her being fired from Al Jazeera (a news source I check daily), he would have found out that she had been a senior reporter for the organization until she began organizing their reporters for better conditions, at which time she was canned.

I cannot vouch for Ms. Ridley, as of course I know nothing about her, but I think the comments of Josh and the other website author about her are hasty and unfair at least on their face.

Whichever way you look at it, there are some problems with the American story of "the capture", and I still say Saddam was already a prisoner at the time he was taken, and that he was indeed drugged when taken. Whether the PUK had him or not, I don't know. I originally felt it was CIA, and I still think that is a very likely probability.

Josh also has this comment about Debkafile, a site which ran one of the first accounts of doubt about the U.S. "capture" being as claimed:

Debkafile is about as reliable as raw intelligence and should be treated with the same skepticism. Actually, it's not just that it should be treated like raw intelligence, it ... well, that's for another day.

You may recall that I originally posted the story from Debkafile back in the beginning. And there was this later comment from the British Sunday Herald:

Of the numerous and more exotic theories surrounding events leading to Saddam’s arrest, one originates on a website many believe edited by former Israeli intelligence agents [Debkafile], but which often turns up inside information about the Middle East that proves to be accurate.

The implication from both the Herald and Josh Marshall is that Debkafile is essentially an intelligence source. If you visit the site, you will see that it is definitely hard line Israeli in tone, which may have implications about the information, as well. Who knows with these things. Lots of intrigue in the world of intelligence. To borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, "It's too many for me."

In the end, I take all information and file it in a possibility/probability pot - some times a piece of information will move from top to bottom or vice versa in that pot as further information comes in. Josh apparently looks at it a little differently...

Let me be clear: I'm not saying there's nothing to this. I haven't had time to make any calls. Anything could be true. And it's entirely possible that there are dimensions to the intel leading to Saddam's capture, which haven't yet been revealed. But none of the publish accounts I've seen strike me as credible or even close to substantiated. So until I see more I assume there's nothing to it.

What I also realize, after blogging for a couple of months, is that when you are posting lots of information and commenting on it every day, you don't have a lot of time to get it all out. Often enough you may not think something through as thoroughly as you might need to in order to give the best analysis.

Anyway, stay tuned for more on this story about the capture. It's going to pick up now that American reporters have noticed it.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.