August 07, 2006

More Lies From Reuters

Lazy journalists at AP quoting misleading journalists at Reuters:

AP: This photo released by the Reuters news agency Monday Aug. 7, 2006 showing an Israeli F-16 warplane firing missiles during an air strike on Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, August 2, 2006 has been withdrawn by the agency. Reuters said Monday it has cut its ties with a Beirut-based freelance photographer who it found had manipulated two photographs from the ongoing fighting in Lebanon. In this photo, Reuters found that the photographer Adnan Hajj changed the image to show three flares being dropped by the plane, instead of just one, the agency said. (AP Photo/Adnan Hajj, Reuters)

UPDATE: Hajj busted....again?

UPDATE II: Yahoo News has pulled the pic, but reader Jake e-mails me this photo. What's so disturbing about it is this is:

a) it's clearly staged
b) it's clearly meant to incite Muslims
c) it's by you-know-who

Jake also says:

Furthermore, I believe it was staged. Clearly, there was some amount of time between the attack and Adnan Hajj arriving on scene to photograph the results.

If the book was set ablaze by the blast of the bomb, the book would have long disappeared into ash before Hajj arrived with camera and Photoshop in tow.

The intact burnt pages on the right indicate this is a fast burning fire that rapidly consumed half the book prior to the photo being taken, so fast that the fragile ashen pages have not disintegrated.

If the book was not set on fire by the blast of the explosion (which is unlikely anyway... the force of the atmospheric overpressure would likely prevent any jetsam object like a book to ignite...I was an aircraft weapons specialist in the US Air Force, BTW), but kindled by residual fires, then there should be burning debris or smoke rising from the rubble around the Koran. There is none in the
photo.

The only flames or smoke sources in that photo are from the rapidly disappearing Koran. I would wager two minutes after this photo was taken the book would be fully engulfed, and reduced to ash not long afterwards.

The MSM needs to put a disclosure statement on all pictures coming from Southern Lebanon warning readers that the images were taken as part of an organized tour put on by Hezbollah.

Back in Russia, they had a name for things like this: Potemkin villages.

PS: As someone who has set Qurans on fire, I can tell you that my experience is that they do not burn this fast.

PPS: Just kidding. I've never burned any Korans before. I have burned phone books before. They don't burn well.

PPPS: Islamists, please don't kill me for the burning Koran crack!