One person′ s captivity is another person′s opportunism

THE freeing of Douglas Wood has embarrassed two fierce critics of our liberation of Iraq.

Monday brought yet more revelations that exposed not only the deceit of Australia's Mufti, Sheik Taj el-Din el-Hilaly, but the naivete of Australia's Journalist of the Year, Fairfax reporter Paul McGeough.

We are learning that much of what one man said and the other reported during Wood's 47-day captivity in Iraq was a fantasy.

Remember how Hilaly claimed to have actually spoken to Wood during his captivity after a stranger handed him a phone?

Here is the May 19 report of that call by McGeough, the influential chief correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald:

Hopes for the release of Douglas Wood soared yesterday after the hostage was allowed to make a phone call in which he assured the Australian cleric Sheik Taj el-Din el-Hilaly he was alive and well.

"I'm all right," said the hostage of 20 days, before repeating the Arabic term for thank you: "Shukran, shukran."

Nor was Hilaly -- who'd told Wood's captors "I value your jihad" -- the first anti-American sheik McGeough found who claimed to have seen the Australian, or at least his jailers.

McGeough last month repeatedly insisted Australian negotiators deal with his contact, Hassan Zadaan, a corrupt general in Saddam Hussein's army and now backer of the "resistance".

Said McGeough on May 6: "I believe that he did meet with the insurgents who have Douglas Wood yesterday. I think it's highly probable that he laid eyes on Douglas Wood.

"I understand from him that Douglas Wood is being held about 30km from Baghdad which puts him in that southwest arc from the city, if you like, from the triangle of death towns of Latifiyah, Yusufiyah, and Nadahan, right around out to the west to Fallujah."

Aah, the triangle of death. Nice touch.

But it was horsefeathers, as it turns out, just like Hilaly's claim that the Americans should stop hunting terrorists in Iraq's west, because Wood was there -- in Ramadi, 110km from Baghdad -- and would not be released until the assault was called off.

Just run the tape of Wood's press conference in Melbourne on Monday.

First, he confirmed a crucial fact I noted last Friday -- that his captivity had been spent first in one Baghdad house and then, for the last 35 days or so, in another in the same city. He was never in any "triangle of death". Never in Ramadi.

And we got this exchange:

Journalist: Were you at any stage aware that there were moves to have you released by Sheik Hilaly or any other people?

Wood: Never heard of him.

Journalist: His name was never mentioned by your captors?

Wood: No.

No? But what about their chat on the phone? Forget it. Never happened.

Who'd think Hilaly could possibly tell an untruth? Who, but those of us who have dared to condemn the bigotry of this cleric, who was caught preaching jihad against Israel and praising the September 11 attacks, only to claim he'd been badly translated?

Who, but those of us who noted the absurd claims of Hilaly and his spokesman this past month. I'm talking about claims like this one -- false in every detail -- relayed by his translator after Wood's rescue in a random raid by Iraqi troops:

"(Hilaly) said to me that this had been a prearranged pickup, that the location had been communicated to him where Mr Wood could be picked up and that location was communicated to the Australian taskforce."

And the Mufti's untruths continue. On Monday he gave up claiming the credit for Wood's freedom and instead attacked the rescue raid as a "stupid action".

He said it had foiled the deal he'd almost reached for the kidnappers to also free Wood's Iraqi driver and a engineer, captured with him. Waving photographs of what he said were the families of the two Iraqis, Hilaly claimed: "There's a 90 per cent chance that they will not be released alive now."

That's truer than he knows. Australian officials say the two were actually found murdered weeks ago, and their bodies identified by their families on June 17.

But let's turn to McGeough, who has reported Iraq's liberation with such a savage eye that he wrote at least 12 articles last year warning of a "civil war" that still hasn't broken out.

He also fell for the famous beat-up of the "looting" of the Baghdad Museum, and jeered at Iraq's "puppet regime". Before last year's election, he predicted Iraqis were "unlikely to vote in the right numbers to legitimise this process" -- and when, in fact, more than eight million voters defied the terrorists' demand that they stay home, he bizarrely insisted some voted "only because of the gun at their backs".

And now two shady sheiks have sold him the Sahara.

It turns out I'm not alone in doubting Sheik Zadaan, who was raided by Iraqi troops within days of McGeough endorsing him and had more than $200,000 in cash seized from his house. Interrogations confirmed this crook knew zilch about Wood.

I mention McGeough because this insight into his work casts yet more doubt on his biggest "scoop" -- his claim last year that the interim prime minister of free Iraq, Iyad Allawi, personally shot dead six captured insurgents.

This damaging allegation -- inviting readers to believe Allawi was little better than Saddam -- was hotly denied by the Iraqi Government, and dismissed by American investigators, who put Allawi's bodyguards and aides through lie detector tests.

INDEED, McGeough conceded his report was based on nothing more the testimony of two anonymous eyewitnesses, who couldn't agree on key details like the date of the shootings.

Even the jury of this year's Graham Perkin Award, headed by the ABC's Kerry O'Brien, said it could make "no informed assessment" on the truth of McGeough's story, although it still named him our Journalist of the Year for his "wide body of work" in Iraq -- work which persuaded many Australians Iraq was a hell-hole.

But how could it trust the reports of a Leftist war critic so quick to heckle Americans and to believe mendacious sheiks and nameless big-talking "eyewitnesses"?

Of course, it's easy to criticise from my ergonomic chair. Let's not forget: McGeough is in Iraq and I am not. Then again, Wood knows what happened to him, and McGeough's sheiks sure didn't.