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Wednesday, March 29, 2006

CA-50: Kaloogian is a Liar

Posted by DavidNYC

Oh man. This is WAY more fun than polls. Just a day ago, Kossack AnthonyLA saw a photo on Howard Kaloogian's website. This was the photo:

And this was the smug caption, worthy of the trashiest right-wing blogs:

We took this photo of dowtown 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.

A whole lot of people agreed with Anthony that Kaloogian's photo of "downtown Baghdad" actually looked rather Turkish. There was a lot of evidence to support this belief, but the final, incontrovertible proof wound up looking like this:

Another Kossack, jem6x, found this photo (with the help of a friend) on the website of a Turkish photographer, Faruk. Faruk's photo does indeed capture a slice of Turkey - the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy. As this montage shows, there's no question that Faruk's and Kaloogian's photos describe the same place:

Or, as Josh Marshall waggishly puts it, it's at least a four-point match. So much for that "calm and stable" Iraq, huh? I'm hardly surprised that conservatives would go to such lengths to lie about the state of affairs in Iraq. But you'd think they'd try a little harder, no? Anyhow, serious props to all these enterprising citizens of the blogosphere - and just add this to the list of things which prove that Howard Kaloogian is a liar.

Posted at 03:20 PM in 2006 Elections - House, California | Technorati

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Comments

This is a great thing for Busby. It's been my belief for a while that this race hasn't been as publicized as it could've been because there's no clear cut Republican villain in this campaign (other than the ghost of Duke Cunningham, I guess). So now, we've got a good formula to catch broader attention:

A) A Republican prick makes a spectacular blunder
B) A whip-smart Democratic challenger running a flawless campaign is right there to capitalize from the fallout

I've already seen Busby get a bump from this on Actblue.

This one is hysterical! Just think... maybe there are dozens of other Republican website blunders that have yet to be exposed...

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at March 29, 2006 04:46 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Pretending that suburban Istanbul is actually Baghdad is galling and hilarious in equal parts, but it isn't the real problem here. Sure, it's lazy and dishonest and reflects a certain cavalier attitude towards evidence, but all Kaloogian (or his scapegoated webmaster) needed to do was find a picture of a peaceful Baghdad street (of which I'm sure there are two or three) and run it with the same commentary.

The really disturbing part is the attempt to discredit *any* media reporting on the situation in Iraq. Just look at the caption: "[E]ach day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism." The points are (1) media companies are only sensationally interested in covering blood and violence, so their reporting can't be trusted as representative of the whole truth; and (2) the reporters are in bed with the terrorists. For further evidence, check out Hugh Hewitt's interview with Time's Michael Ware (http://radioblogger.com/#001505). He repeats (2) by referring to Ware's reporting on the insurgents as "crossing over" and "consorting with the enemy" (and compares it to interviewing Nazis). He then adds (3), that reporters are comprimised by the violence of the insurgents, who would presumably attack the journalists if they printed something bad about the insurgency (as Hewitt puts it, Ware might be "a hostage of the insurgents at this point"). Of course (3) conflicts with (1) -- how can they be afraid of violence that isn't really all that pervasive anyway? -- but that's not the point.

The point is to undermine any news coming out of Baghdad (where the reporters are all Network-esque sensationalists, Tokyo Rose-style terrorist sympathizers, or hostages of the insurgency) and thus discredit the only sources of information about Iraq other than the administration. The inaccurate photograph is certainly absurd, but the real danger is the message in the caption.

Posted by: properottoman at March 29, 2006 04:48 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment