The Magic Bullet Theory

The War on Islamic Terrorism has seen more than its share of propaganda. The problem is that much of this propaganda has either been passed on by, or created by western news agencies such as Reuters or Associated Press. This phenomenon has been dubbed "fauxtography" by the right-wing blogosphere. Before we go to the most recent fauxtography scandal, let us recap some of the greatest hits from the last year, shall we?

There was the photoshopped smoke from the war in Lebanon last summer:

There was Green Helmet - a ubiquitous Lebanese civil defense worker with a propensity for managing to be at the scene of the aftermath of every Israeli bombing run and for holding up the corpses of dead children for maximum exploitation. By the way, these destroyed buildings were coincidentally located right where Hezbollah thugs had set up their missile launchers. Hezbollah was using these civilians for cover. That way, if the Israelis struck back, the result could be photos like this:

There was the tough-looking Hezbollah terrorist in the foreground with a "downed Israeli aircraft" in the background that turned out to be a tire fire:

There was the old rusted Lebanese ambulance that was supposedly destroyed by an Israeli missile:

There was Pieta Man, a Lebanese "bombing victim" who was supposedly injured in an Israeli bombing strike, yet was somehow a healthy rescue worker who had been photographed a few minutes before this photo was taken:

There was one of my favorites - Flat Fatima, the unluckiest woman on earth, who apparently had her Beirut home destroyed by Israeli bombs on July 22, 2006:

And then again on August 5, 2006:

The photos were taken by two different photographers - one from Reuters and one from AP... natch. Oh the Humanity!

Now, we have the newest member of the Fauxtography crew: Magic Bullet Lady. Take a look at the following news wire photo, then read the caption that accompanied it all over the news wires and the Internet:

" 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."

See anything wrong with the bullets that... ahem... hit her house? They have never been fired! They are still in their casings! As one blogger humorously asked, "They're throwing bullets over there now?" What kind of a jackass news/photo editor didn't notice the fact that not only did these bullets - supposedly fired in combat - look pristine, but they hadn't even departed their brass casings. This is what happens when you have so many men who have never been in the military. The editor or editors whose job it was to authenticate that photo were either truly that ignorant about firearms, or they set out to intentionally deceive. I will vote for ignorant, because if they truly knew that the bullets had never been fired, but ran the caption anyway, they had to have known that the blogosphere would have instantly ripped the credibility of the photo to shreds.

I am actually behind the curve on this story. Michelle Malkin and other conservative bloggers have been hammering this thing for about a week now. But a week later, the story and photo still astound me, and I just had to put in my two bits.

There is an old quote that says, "The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie." This truth has been exposed time and time again as the latest fabricated photo or false caption come off the left-wing news wires. If the so-called atrocities of Israel and the United States were truly that bad, then obviously it wouldn't be necessary to have to make stuff up. Instead we have deceitful and sometimes just downright ignorant enablers who have infested the mainstream media, and pass off this garbage as truth to the American people. Even worse, it is passed off as truth to the Muslim world, and they are even more ready to devour every fabricated morsel.

Good Day to You, Sir