Salon: Lcpl Boudreaux Iraq photo fake or not?

[democracyindanger]

Actual hed: A picture is no longer worth a thousand words

but I didn't think that would be descriptive of the content, so I leave it up to the mods.

Excerpt:



In early April, Ibrahim Hooper, the communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), received a mysterious photograph in his e-mail in box. The picture shows a white man dressed in military uniform standing with two dark-skinned boys in what appears to be a desert setting. Behind them is a ramshackle structure, perhaps a cabin or a makeshift bunker. The man and the boys are under this structure's lean-to roof, posing, happily, for the camera. The man grins, the boys smile shyly, and all flash a thumbs-up sign. Despite their apparent mirth, however, something is amiss with the scene. One of the boys is holding up a piece of cardboard on which, in black marker, is scrawled a chilling message: "Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad. then he knocked up my sister!"

<snip>

But the anti-Boudreaux fulmination appears to be have been, at the very least, premature, because nobody can determine whether the picture CAIR received is authentic. Boudreaux has told the Marines that the photo is not real. And, indeed, just as the military's investigation got underway, several other versions of the picture began popping up online. Some were obviously doctored -- one version, posted on a Usenet newsgroup, has the boys holding a sign that reads, "We wanna see Jessca Simpson!" But at least one other picture found online appears just as real as the image CAIR received -- and this one has the boys holding a sign with a decidedly friendlier message: "Lcpl Boudreaux saved my dad. then he rescued my sister!"

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/04/22/doctored_photos/index.html

[MSgt213]

1. Damn another court-martial gone bad

[rooboy]

2. Can we go back to the village and ask the boy??? n/t

[wtmusic]

3. 'Saved my Dad and rescued my Sister' is forced syntax

and all the letters in 'rescued' are cut-and-pasted from other parts of the sign. The vulgar one is real.

Can we leave this alone now? :eyes: