Update: Really Bad Journalism, Part 52,384 or so

Centcom is demanding a retraction from the AP on that Sunnis burned alive story. Hot Air has the scoop. Read the whole thing, and click on the links, too.

It's almost as if they want the war to go badly.

Update: Gateway Pundit has more. Looks like the original source for the story is very bogus indeed. Centcom's letter makes it sound as if they've been warning the AP about this for quite some time.

This all reminds me of Green Helmet Guy.

I think we should shun the AP. Fat chance, I know, but still...

Still more: Hot Air keeps the ball rolling. (Don't you just love bowling metaphors?)

The AP is standing by its man. But they stood by Green Helmet Guy too.

Another Update: The New York Times weighs in, in a stunningly even-handed way. Seriously. Look:

For its part, The New York Times took note of the incident on Saturday, in a larger story about the mosque burnings, this way: “In the evening, a resident named Imad al-Hashemi said in a telephone interview on Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, that gunmen had doused some people with gasoline and set them on fire. Other residents contacted by telephone denied this."

And this:

The one thing that remains unclear, though, is this: The Associated Press said in its story yesterday that Mr. Hussein “has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions.” The military, meanwhile, seems to suggest that Mr. Hussein is not a police officer, nor a civil servant in the employ of any Iraqi agency.

So who IS Mr. Hussein?

Good for them.

Yes, I know, it's just the blog, but still...