Bloggers have caught Republican Congressional candidate Howard Kaloogian falsifying evidence of the success of the war in Iraq. Kaloogian posted a photo from “downtown Baghdad” showing how peaceful and calm things were there; bloggers investigated the photo and it was recognized as coming from a suburb of Istanbul — something that could be proved by comparing it to web-based photo-albums showing the intersection and the surrounding area.
In less than a day, it was over. “Jem6X” at the popular DailyKos blog confirmed the street scene was in Bakirkoy, a suburb of Istanbul, not Baghdad.
Tipped off by someone who recognized the actual intersection in Turkey, Jem went through online photo galleries and in a matter of minutes today found a snap taken by a “Faruk” that lined up with the “Baghdad” photo in numerous conclusive ways. Game, set, and match to the blogosphere.
Later Wednesday, Kaloogian admitted the photo was from Turkey but denied he had anything personally to do with posting it on his site. He replaced that Turkey photo with a photo of what he said was Baghdad–taken from a distant hill.
Link
(Thanks, Owlswan!)
Update: The Jesus’ General site has a great parody of the fake Kaloogian photo — thanks, Ian!
Update 2: David Roth sez,
Regarding the bogus photo which Mr. Kaloogian posted on his website, or rather its replacement:
The new photo which claims to show downtown Baghdad looks like was taken in July of last year. If you use the Unix/Linux command “strings” to strip out all of the text information contained in that photo, here are the first few lines:
Update 2: David Roth sez,
Regarding the bogus photo which Mr. Kaloogian posted on his website, or rather its replacement:
The new photo which claims to show downtown Baghdad looks like was taken in July of last year. If you use the Unix/Linux command “strings” to strip out all of the text information contained in that photo, here are the first few lines:
JFIF!7ExifMinolta Co., Ltd.DiMAGE 7iAdobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Windows2006:03:29 13:00:10Picasa 2.0PrintIM0250022001002005:07:13 19:50:272005:07:13 19:50:270100JFIFApplications which process images can embed helpful information in the files. As you can see, this picture was probably taken with a Minolta camera and cropped using Adobe Photoshop Elements. It’s the two timestamps near the bottom that are telling.
Either Mr. Kaloogian has a computer somewhere whose clock is almost a year off, or this picture was taken (or processed) on July 13, 2005 at about 7:50 PM.
Update 2: Eric sez, ” The EXIF date is, according to Kallogian’s trip itinerary, the day after they arrived in Iraq. So we’ll give him that much. But, damn, what a difference in photos, eh? Kinda think you would have REMEMBERED WHERE THE HELL you were while in Baghdad, right?”