WASHINGTON, Aug 2: The Pentagon has banned the use of anonymous quotes in press releases, calling the recent use of nearly identical quotes attributed to unnamed Iraqis an ‘egregious error’. Lawrence DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the incident involving press releases issued by the army’s Third Infantry Division in Iraq was under investigation.

“This is an egregious error that reflects a lack of rigor in the development of these press statements,” he said in a July 29 memo to the service secretaries and military chiefs. The memo, which was made public on Tuesday, said: “The use of anonymous quotations in a Department of Defence press statement is prohibited.”

Any statements that included comments by third parties must identify them and have their permission to use them, it said. Two Third Infantry Division statements about 10 days apart quoted an unnamed Iraqi official as criticizing a suicide bombing in nearly identical terms as ‘enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics’.

“They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,” the quote continued.

The only variation in the quotes was that one said the terrorists were attacking ‘the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq’, while the other said they were attacking ‘the infrastructure, the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces), and all of Iraq’. —AFP