March 29, 2006
So Kaloogian needs a picture of smiling, happy people in Baghdad to
prove his point that all's peachy over there. He tries to slip by a
picture of smiling, happy people in a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey, but
he was stymied by those meddling kids at dKos.
But he was there! He has thousands of pictures to choose from! So which one does he choose to replace the hoax picture?
So, um, are we supposed to be impressed that there are no plumes of
smoke rising from burnt out buildings? Because this looks like it was
taken from the window of the plane as it was about to land. Not exactly
the sort of thing that cries "evidence of happy Iraqis!"
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Also, Newsweek and the NY Times covered the story. I know the SF Chronicle is working on a piece as well.
Update: The picture was taken
from the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone. All safe and cozy. Too bad
Kaloogian couldn't get out to where real people lived to snap his
pictures of happy and safe Iraqis.
This picture was apparently taken last year, and one of the buildings in that picture has been bombed to pieces.
I have found the exact location of the picture
that Kaloogian has used to replace the picture of peaceful downtown old
Baghdad< Istanbul. After posting it on Kos, others
have now found that the view includes a police station that was bombed
a year before the "Truth Visit".
I believe the picture was taken from an
upper floor of the Rashid Hotel, the hotel used to house VIP vistors to
Iraq and which is withing the Green Zone. More specifically the camera
was pointing East-North East.
This BBC graphic of the Green Zone shows the location of the hotel. It
is in the upper part of the zone and is indicated by the top tag in the
image.
This a GoogleEarth image of the wider site shopwingthe intersection.
The hotel is at the bottom of the picture and I suggest the photo was
taken looking towards the top of this image:
I think the clincher is this closer shot of the grounds of the hotel
which is again at the bottom of the picture. Note the larger store like
buildings set among the trees. The three nearest the hotel are, I
believe, the ones most prominent in the new Kaloogian photo. Note that
there is a tree to the left of the group and another between the
leftmost and the other two. In addition there are buildings at right
angles to these which also appear in both images.
The Kaloogian picture.
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To make the co-incidences clearer I have merged two of these and linked those elements that seem to correspond with red lines.
As this is rather too small to make out properly, the lines from left to right link
- A round feature that appears more yellow in the satellite shot
- The rear one of two store-like buildings surrounded by trees on the three sides away from the camera.
- The front store of these two.
- A large tree that is prominant in the hotel view
- Two further "stores" with one set slightly back
- Another building with a roof that appears to be damaged.
- A set of buildings which seem to be in line with the hotel, staff quarters perhaps?
The blue building in the centre of the Kaloogian picture has been
identified by AA in a comment at Eschaton as a police station hit by a
bomb on 12 April 2005. A set of pictures from agencies is
here.
This rather makes a nonsense of even the revised caption on his web site which now reads:
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.
