Wikipedia on Kaloogian : Baghdad photo incident (with pics)

Baghdad photo incident

Kaloogian's campaign website as it appeared on March 28th 2006On March 28, 2006, Howard Kaloogian's campaign website displayed a photograph which was claimed to have been recently taken in downtown Baghdad. (See screenshot). The photograph was offered as evidence that the security situation in Baghdad was better than is being reported in the press<1>

Commenters at various blogs determined this photo actually was most likely taken in Istanbul, Turkey.<2> <3><4> Various indicators in the image reveal the location of the intersection: Many signs are written in Turkish, but none in Arabic, women are seen wearing revealing (western) clothes, taxi cabs are similar to those seen in Istanbul, European traffic signs are visible, as are signs of businesses based solely in Turkey. Once the truth about the photo was revealed, Kaloogian's campaign blamed the error on an unidentified "webmaster."<5>


Notes and references
↑ Caption reads as follows
Downtown Baghdad
We took this photo of dowtown 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.

↑ *DailyKos
↑ Democratic Underground
↑ DailyKos member jem6x posted a diary the following day confirming the location as the Istanbul suburb of Bakırköy with an image taken at the same intersection.
↑ According to Joshua Micah Marshall, Kaloogian himself said the following during a phone call on March 29, 2006: "n the way back from Baghdad some of the crew stopped in Istanbul as a layover. We turned all the photographs over to the webmaster, and it appears he took one from the stopover and not from Baghdad." For the record, the original file name of the photo as it appeared on Kaloogian's website was "sm_DowntownBaghdad.JPG."

External links

Move America Forward
Kaloogian's Campaign Web Site
Kaloogian's Defend Reagan Committee
Recall Gray Davis Committee - led by Kaloogian

Baghdad photo links

Confirmation of the real location of the photo

Democratic Underground forum where fake photo was discovered
DailyKos diary crossposted from DU to DKos by AnthonyLA
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Kaloogian"

Good mention.

:kick: