| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| Fake Car Bombing In Iraq? |
| 2005-01-29 |
| From the weblog Obsidian Order, some interesting comments on a car bombing being reported from Iraq. I'm not going to try to repost the pictures here; the last time I tried to post images, it didn't work. ...Analysis: What do you see? A car on fire, apparently not close to anything flammable. We are told this is in front of a school, but we do not see the school. The fire looks like petrol, probably in cans in the back of the vehicle, set off with an incendiary WP shell (White Phosphorus - the white smoke and sparks). There are people running, but they are not leaning at the angle of people who're running in a hurry. There are some people standing around in the background at what would be danger-close distance for shrapnel even from a single 152mm HE shell. You can see a second photographer in one of the pictures. The stories are inconsistent: one says "flames engulf a car following a nearby car bomb blast in another vehicle", another says "a car just as it explodes". The key and blindingly obvious point: there are at least three photojournalists from different outfits there exactly at the time it goes off! This is not a lucky coincidence. The pictures are clearly taken less than a minute after the original explosion and less than a minute apart. Also: all of the photographers are stringers, not regular staff photographers. Interpretation: One, this was staged, the particulars of the bomb ensure it will be ineffective and safe from the distance from which it was photographed, but visually spectacular. The people running are most likely also staged. Two, the reporters were invited to see it. Three, they knew it was staged. My only question: who are these photographers - Ali Jasim, Ali Al-Saadi and Khalid Mohammed - really working for? |
| Posted by:Phil Fraering |
| #3 Somebody's been watching Jerry Bruckheimer movies. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-01-29 8:00:24 PM |
| #2 he's staking out the Baghdad Kinkos |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-01-29 5:45:58 PM |
| #1 Anybody seen Dan Rather? |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-01-29 5:41:06 PM |