Is the AP a responsible news organization?

The Associated Press just provided thoughtful people with another reason to ask whether it’s any longer a responsible news organization.

The AP is reporting:

A man once imprisoned with Iraq's most feared terror leader said Sunday that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was tortured regularly by Jordanian prison officials in the late 1990s and was held six months in solitary confinement.

Offering possible partial clues as to why the Jordanian-born al-Qaida leader chose Amman for triple hotel bombings earlier this month, the former cellmate, Yousef Rababaa, said: "He hated the intelligence services intensely, and the authorities didn't know how to deal with his new ideology."

In its report, the AP acknowledges Rababaa provided no evidence to back his claim.

The AP fails to say whether it asked Rababaa why he didn't make his claim years ago or why he's only making it now.

The AP doesn't even say whether it made at least a token effort to verify Rababaa's claim. Absent assurance that it did, the AP very likely didn't. In any case, the AP offers no independent verification of Rababaa's claim.

The AP knows its unverified torture story will engender, in many quarters, sympathy and support for a terrorist who daily kills innocents at prayer, weddings and schools. The AP knows its story will also make more difficult and deadly the work of all those protecting the innocent in Iraq and seeking to bring peace to that country.

Knowing all that, the AP rushed Rababaa's claim onto its wire.

Who is not asking whether the AP is any longer a responsible news organization?