A picture tells a thousand lies.
From the Howard Kaloogian for Congress website:
Downtown 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.
According to Kaloogian’s website, the above is a picture of downtown Baghdad. Sadly, the picture was likely taken in Turkey and not Baghdad. As you probably already guessed, Howard Kaloogian is a Republican running for congress. Old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I’m certain Howard Kaloogian can’t say.
To make matters all the more touching, Kaloogian is running in a special election to replace convicted felon Duke Cunningham in congress. San Diego seems to produce a very fine breed of Republican politician
More seriously, 2325 American soldiers and marines have died in Iraq, while another 16653 have been wounded, and this bastard dares to run this type of bullshit on his campaign website. God only knows how many Iraqi civilians are wounded or dead, and this bastard even thinks his weird ass fabrications are okay. When real people are really getting killed in a very real war, and you really want to be a part of the government, then you better be able to really talk about what’s really happening in that war in a very realistic way. Let’s get real. Fake photos ain’t going to cut it babe.
You want to run on the war Howard? Then why don’t you run on the fucking war? Not some candy land fantasy bullshit, featuring pictures of happy twenty somethings in Turkey. Take pride in the clusterfuck your party has created in Iraq. Run on that shit babe. Please, run on that shit.
Quit with the pretty talk and the pretty pictures. Real men don’t need pretty talk any damn way. If you like this war — if you think it’s a winner, show us the charred husks of corpses in the real Baghdad. Show us the aftemath of an IED explosion. Show us some video of American soldiers who suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. Show us some Iraqi war orphans. Show us some American war orphans. Show us the work of the death squads, the suicide bombers and the beheaders. Tell us why the hell we’re there again. Talk to us about the weapons. We all want to hear about the weapons and the connections just one more time. You can trust me on that. We love that shit
Take pride in this shit war babe. Relish in the smoldering ruin our nation stands astride. No need for fake photos. No need at all. Claim this war as your own you nasty little pigfucker, but don’t you ever dare pretend that everything is even close to okay. More than just a few of us know better.
extra points for “pigfucker”.
I wasted a bunch of time this pm on the orange place as that picture was debunked.
I think your most important point, that I completely agree with, is that we must make all Republican candidates run on the war. Despite the fact that so many Democrats are also still for it.
Thanks for the extra points. It’s a phrase I use far too often for my own good, but it really does fit in more cases than any of us would like.
Great. Now I have that song stuck in my head.
But, seriously, excellent post, Chris. And you’re right about San Diego. We really should do a case study. It’s like a Republican petre-dish. Every batshit crazy economic plan they’ve dreamed up has been implemented there to disastrous results. A rich city, bankrupt how often?
Sorry to veer off topic. I don’t even know what to say about the rest. I’m sickened.
What interests me most about Kaloogian’s posting this photo on his site are the assumptions he is making about his constituency.
Having never been to Turkey, I at first saw the photo and thought it was Germany. It has the European bathroom prominently displayed on the sidewalk, but the signs make it clear it is not.
Still, no one could look at that photo with its signs all in Romanized script and think Baghdad.
Kaloogian assumes his constituency is 1. Ignorant about what the Middle East and Europe look like and 2. Somewhat racist in that they would easily assume that all Arab and Turkish peoples must dress and look the same.
Eventually the press in San Diego will make note of this, and Kaloogian’s attempt to fool his constituency will backfire when they realize how naive the Republican candidate believes they are.
“European bathroom”?? At a guess I think you might be referringto the white structure on the left behind the couple holding hands. If you have a closer look you will see that it is a hut associated with a yellow mechanism with a vertical element. There is also a planter that is reflected on the other side of the road. I think what you are looking at is a shelter for a security officer or minor official so they can lower a barrier (vertical in this picture) to pedestrianise the street. In the photo it is raised to allow deliveries. This idea is further borne out by there being no obvious sidewalk in the cobbled area.
A web search came up with one Turkish city that has pedestrianised shopping areas with cobbled streets. That is Bodrum although being a tourist resort it may be better covered on the web than other Turkish cities with such areas. On the other hand, there are hills in the area similar to those seen in the far distance. Isn’t Baghdad on a flood plain with few of these features and even fewer of that shape?
As of way too late at night (or way too early in the morning) Kaloogan’s web site is slow to respond (as in the active server pages are timing out). I have this feeling by morning not only will that picture not be there, but in its place will be a signed and notarized statement explaining that there never was any picture there.
ha ha
ha ha ha
ha ha ha HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA BRAWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
* snort *
excuse me, but I just think it’s funny how stupid some of these people think we are.
a very serious and sickening situation all around, but I’ve got to say you cracked me up with that one.
According to this article in Dissident Voices, he is apparently the current honcho behind Move America Forward, a GOP astroturf organization.
The GOP is worse than kudzu. You find their roots and branches tangled up with each other everywhere.
Apparently he stepped aside to run for Congress. Want to bet he’s still heavily involved? I don’t think anyone would cover that bet.
Yes, the picture is almost certainly a place in Turkey. The yellow and red sign on the right side seems to read ‘carsi’ (c and s with a cedilla), which means market or bazaar in Turkish. It’s frightening how the Repugnants keep finding ways to keep going lower and lower.
Now I see that anthonyLA and the comment by Daristani at Daily Kos explain why it is Turkey better than I can. I’m beginning to wonder how many so-called good-news news pictures from Iraq are bogus?
Boo woke me up early today.
But check out the photo in Kaloogian’s wiki:
Exactly. I came up with two of the points of difference on that list, and I don’t know any Turkish… The non-Arabic signs and the way the women are dressed alone, both on the street and in that billboard tells me this is not Baghdad. (I remember Riverbend writing how she was given a hard time for wearing slacks and a long-sleeved blouse but no headscarf — and that was well over a year ago.)
::head shaky::
I’m officially a converted wiki-fan. One of the forums I lurked through suggested finding someone in the area to photograph the same scene. It should be easy enough to find by locating the #2 Notary.
The first thing I noticed in the picture was the woman at the far left in the photo. I could be wrong but it would seem that dressing like that in Baghdad could get her killed.
Because of the internets, even assuming that his constituency’s knowledge of other areas of the world is less extensive, it would have been better to present it as representative of the secure happy conditions in Baghdad today, as opposed to being a photo taken exactly in the geographical location of Baghdad.
I’m not sure but I think Senators Kyl, Graham and Brownback swore to the authenticity of that photo, if that helps.
😀
looks so much like a special Turkish festival area of the Green Zone that they were fooled. And stress that Baghdad is happy and secure, and we know this because Bush himself has said so many times, and in this very different kind of war, if you don’t understand that the word of your Commander in Chief is more accurate proof than a photo, then you are coming very close to aiding the enemy, because 3000 innocent people died in the World Trade Center.
I’m not one to aid the enemy in any way. I’ll leave that to the professionals, like the fbi, cia, faa, tsa and other wtf agencies, as seen in trial testimony.
I often wonder exactly how many people are active in the left blogosphere. It’s something over 20,000, I think. However many participants there may be, it’s still a marvel that one of them just happens to go to a Repub candidate’s web site, gets a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture sensation and then takes the time to throw it up on DU or dKos or whereever it first appeared. Then at least a hundred people are idle enough to analyze it.
Then, in a matter of hours there are enough people with keen eyes, enough people who speak Turkish, enough people to google “Edo” ice cream, enough people who have actually been to Turkey…
Later today I expect someone in Turkey will go out with their digital camera and provide a picture of the actual street corner from the same angle to prove beyond all doubt that it’s Istanbul or a similar city.
By tomorrow, Kaloogian or a spokeperson for his campaign will issue a statement blaming their web master. They’ll say he or she was a Democratic mole who set out to sabotage his campaign. I mean, Kaloogian couldn’t be that stupid, could he? Because he really did go to Iraq, didn’t he? Or were those other photos taken in San Diego?
It’s all gotten so damned surreal I think aliens are mind-fucking Planet Earth, laughing their heads off and placing bets on how many humans know what’s real.
Lies, lies and utter lies then run for Congress. This world has turned into one surrealist theatre with no concept of what’s right or wrong, reality or fiction.
It is under these circumstances that Winston Churchill’s famous quotation seems at first glance so befitting; In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Winston Churchill
The sad thing though, is that this is by no means a wartime situation, that is the one bodyguards of lies amongst many presented by the Bush administration, in fact so many that the precious truth is no where to be found.