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March 29, 2006
Dishonesty? Incompetence? Ignorance?
I'm not sure which it is but Howard Kaloogian is running for Congress to replace Duke Cunningham. He has a picture (as of 11:45 AM PST. these things have a way of disappearing when exposed) on his (very slow) website that contains a photo with the following caption,
Downtown Baghdad
We took this photo of dowtown (sic) Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.
The only problem is that the picture seems to be a picture of a street in the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy. Check out the picture on Kaloogian's site and the comparative one on Talking Point Memo.
The funny thing is, I'm sure that Kaloogian could have found a picture of a calm and stable looking moment on some street in Baghdad, perhaps in the Green Zone. However, that picture would have likely had Arabic writing rather than a Latin like font on the signs and the women would likely not be wearing such tight fitting, bare armed tops.
A picture may be worth a thousand words but not always the thousand words that one wants heard.
Via Attytood
Update: Sometime before 12:25 PM PST the picture was taken down from Kaloogian's site but the caption was still there.
Further update: 7:45 PST
Kaloogian has replaced the picture of a street in Bakirkoy with a picture of some part of Bagdad that is taken from a prospective that it is unlike that either calm or stability can be discerned. A new caption has replaced the old one,
Downtown Baghdad
We originally posted a photograph not of Baghdad, Iraq but from Istanbul, Turkey where our delegation traveled on the way home to the United States. We apologize for this mistake. We have corrected it with a photograph we took from Baghdad. We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.
I'm not sure what to make of this. The most charitable understanding and perhaps the correct one is that the use of the old picture was the result of incompliance rather than outright dishonesty. But the perspective of the current picture sure needs a caption to make the point that Kaloogian campaign is trying to make. None-the-less, one picture from any perspective does not meaningfully support the point.
I do have to hand it to Kaloogian for admitting to the mistake. All too often these things just disappear without comment.
Posted by Duane Smith at March 29, 2006 11:52 AM | Read more on Current Events |
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