First we had the TNR’s breathless publication of STB’s “square backed Glock” rounds. Now we’ve got Agence France Presse sponsoring transparent fantabulisms (and yeah, I made that word up – it seems to fit).
According to Blackfive and The Autonomist, the original caption for the photo read (the link has, mysteriously, gone dead):
An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. At least 175 people were slaughtered on Tuesday and more than 200 wounded when four suicide truck bombs targeted people from an ancient religious sect in northern Iraq, officials said.(AFP/Wissam al-Okaili)
Well, maybe. If rather than running out of bullets someone ran out of rifles and decided to throw their ammunition that could‘ve happened. But it’s pretty darned unlikely. Because, as anyone whose actually handled a weapon before (rather than merely editorialize about how inherently evil they are) would realize, those are unspent rounds. The bullets being the little tippy things atop the casing containing the powder and primer.
Uncle Jimbo has more over at Blackfive’s – the tattooed lady apparently is some Mesopotamian Green Helmet, while AFP’s al-Okaili stringer has a rather narrow focus.
It’s reassuring to see that those Tribunes of the People over at the NYT would never stoop to such low propagandizing, preferring instead to cover themselves in juvenalia by spamming the Wikipedia pages of those whose views they find “uncongenial.”
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night,
– Allen Ginsburg, in a fragment from “Howl”
I think those guys ended up working in journalism.
Fantabulisms?
Oooh, good word, Lex!
The picture cracked me up — just think of all the damage those two bullets could have caused. Perhaps poked an eye out or something?
Sheesh. How dumb do they think we are?
Probably lots of folks will believe “US troops are firing indiscriminately into buildings.” Any lie told often enough gets some traction…hopefully the facts get some traction too and not just with friendly partisans.
Propaganda is propaganda… and that’s ALL it is! When Israel ran over the Arabs in the 1967 war, the Arabs held a summit to fix the blame on the United States for helping Israel. That was just one more lie promulgated as the truth in the Middle East, adding to their jihad hate of everything U.S. The hate has accumulated to what we see in our world today.
There are no rules of right and wrong in propaganda, just a question of how far the truth can be bent, twisted, stamped or mutilated. Obviously they don’t even recognize outright stupid when they say it either. Our real problem is that the truth has become so blurred many of their lies are now published as fact, taken for value in our own publications.
Isn’t the re-writing of history and it’s record just one more step in the process of their war against us? Why must we have so many enablers in the MSM as the post in “Suitability” shows?
It’s true… a picture is worth a thousand words,isn’t it… in the case for the truth! Gump said it: “Stupid is, as stupid does.”
It’s all about appearances. Seeing those deadly bullets in the hands of that loving mother… Oh!, the eeeevil imperialist, militarist American psychopathic hordes inflicted on the poor Iraqi people by the eeeevil Rove & Bush!. It occurred to me that the current camouflage military uniforms, dating from WWI, has to take into account the new reality of appearance as being the thing that really matters.
I recommend that all male soldiers wear uniforms of chino trousers, collared shirts without neckties and corduroy jackets with suede elbow patches – make ‘em look like kindly college professors. Female soldiers should look like housewives, school teachers or nurses. Soldiers should greet one another with raised V – fingers and a hearty (and loving!) “Peace!”
Whatever loss in military functionality will be more than compensated by the good will engendered in the media and the positive press that will undoubtedly follow. Appearances trump enemy body count, Iraq civilian casualties or the MSM beloved US military daily death count.
It’s all appearances. Camo as we know it it as dead as the scarlet tunics and blue trousers that were superceded by Feld Grau.
Since Lebanon and Israel haven’t started to duke it out yet this summer, the feautography buffs have moved east to Iraq.
Isn’t that the same teary burka clad grandma from last summer’s Lebanon feautography fest? Maybe she’s a stringer…
[...] I was reading my daily dose of Neptunus Lex when I found this story. [...]
AAAAARGHHHH, MAN HANDS!!
N
Yes, Nose, it’s true fauxtography — man hands holding unfired bullets with an ugly woman in the background pretending to hold the bullets …
It’s a vicious cycle of fauxness, that’s what it is!
LOL Nose…never noted those – noticed the kryptonite ring though…
Media Lies and gets BUSTED again…
Our media has been caught in lies before, quite often in fact, but since the surge in Iraq has started showing very visible progress it seems that the creation of “news” the reporting of “rumor” as fact with absolutely no fact checking being done ….
Now that’s just plain funny!
[...] Mirrors, Protein Wisdom, Captain's Quarters, Little Green Footballs, The Jawa Report, Neptunus Lex, A Blog For All, The Autonomist, AND Captain's Quarters again with a new AFP scoop! [...]
Heh. My mother, who has never held a firearm of any kind in her hands (and as far as I know, never had one in her house), gave the pic only a moment’s thought after I said, “What’s wrong with this pic?” After about 1.5 seconds she blurted with a guffaw, “The bullets still have shells on them.”
I’m still trying to figure out how this pic got past AFP’s vigorous fact-checking process.
The gun nerds over at The High Road are already all over this. I left a coupla comments there, m’self, mentioning the perfect *shinyness* of the cartridges. And the disembodied hand, too.
Dang, all the cartridges I have were bought so long ago that they seem to have acquired a rather dull demeanor sitting in those boxes.
I must get out more, and shoot more, and get fresh ammo to replace the old, which fresh ammo will be shiny and stimulating to gaze upon though horrifically godawfully f-ing costly these days
P.s. Late one night, with nothing better to do, I did try to improve the mood of some .45ACP ball cartridges (Winchester White Box) by drawing smily faces on the front of their bullets with a Sharpie. It later dawned on me that some people might not understand, and that if I had to launch those boys in earnest, I could be made to look like an evil bad person in court.
I _think_ I’ve gotten rid of all of those.
I still think it was funny, though, or at least silly.
Nose – I had the same thought as well – the dreaded “man hands” as noted by Seinfeld! But when you really examine the face (for the strong of stomach only, please) you see that perhaps it’s not a woman at all, but a man masquerading as a woman.
They wouldn’t do that…or would they…
Somewhere in Iraq there’s a soldier saying “So that’s what happened to the mag I accidentally knocked out the door of the helo.”.