Yes, I know that direct links to posts and comments don’t work.

I’m seeking help with the problem.

UPDATE: The problem has been fixed.

So a press conference was held to announce that Jamil Hussein is not an employee of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.

The press conference was given by Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who is the spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior.

And whose name had been on a CENTCOM working blacklist of “unverified sources.” (The military has since verified his status; his inclusion on the working list was a mistake.)

If CENTCOM had the name of the official spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior on its working blacklist — and, as Allah points out, garbled his name in e-mails about the press conference — what does that say about the military’s claims regarding Jamil Hussein?

This does not inspire confidence.

My 6-year-old daughter just asked me what day she was born.

Not what date. What day — of the week.

I didn’t know. And I didn’t know for myself. (Or my wife or son.)

Do you?

P.S. Turns out she was born on a Tuesday.

UPDATE: Commenter sharon notes that she knew the day of the week she was born, from the poem:

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

Now that sharon has mentioned it, I remember the fact that I was a Wednesday’s child. Which is about right: I’m pretty cranky.

Michelle Malkin featured my post on the Ramadi airstrike in her “Vent” today at Hot Air. I thought her “Vent” account was well done, and refrained from overstating the conclusions of my post.

I am still looking into certain matters noted in updates to that post, including one tidbit that bolsters the charge that the paper repeated insurgent propaganda, and another that has caused some commenters to question whether military press officers split hairs in answering my questions. I’m also working on developing and building relationships with reliable contacts on the ground there. I’m told that the L.A. Times is still actively looking into the events of Nov. 13.

The blog topped 3,000,000 visits today.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that 3,000,000 separate people have seen it. As I understand it, a “unique visitor” is a metric that measures each visit from an IP address that hasn’t been used to access the page in the last 30 minutes. So if, over the course of eight hours, you visit every hour for 10 minutes, looking at five pages each time, that’s 8 unique visits, 40 page views . . . and one person.

So how many different people are represented in that 3,000,000? I have no idea. Do any of you have a guess?

I’m thinking 3,000,000 visitors is probably like 20 of you, coming back here time and time again to yell at each other in the comments. (I’m exaggerating, of course, but you get the idea.)

Well, whatever it means, thanks for reading.

The military says it has no evidence that Jamil Hussein is a policeman or member of the Ministry of the Interior.

AP says: you bet he is!

Someone’s right and someone’s wrong, wouldn’t you say?

Not necessarily. Like Bill Clinton, I come to offer a third way.

I was discussing the issue of fake Iraqi cops recently with a military press guy who is (I believe) not involved with the Hussein controversy. He offered me a theory about what may be going on with some of these folks who aren’t showing up on police rosters, but who are being quoted as police sources by the press. I asked him if I could quote him and he sent me this:

After the Iraqi Army was disbanded in 2003 the police force was kept intact; however they refused to show up to work which is why Coalition forces had to recruit and train the new police force from scratch. So I am suspect of press reports that claim to have a source within the Iraqi Police, because there is a high probability that the source is most likely a Saddam era leftover who hasn’t walked a beat in years. Those individuals are not employed by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. The Iraqi MOI keeps accurate listings of verified police officers, for pay purposes.

— Maj. Jeff Pool, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Force) PAO.

So it’s possible that, in a sense, some of these folks are technically Iraqi police — but don’t represent the government, as readers would assume they do when they read a quote from an alleged Iraqi “policeman.”

Just tossing that out there for your consideration.