archy

Another Republican liar
Many other bloggers have covered this, including the heros of the story, but this kind of misbehavior needs to be exposed as widely as possible.

Howard Kaloogian is a conservative Republican currently polling third-place in the special election to replace convicted Republican felon Duke Cunningham and is unhappy with the news coverage of affairs in Iraq. On his campaign website, he posted a picture of a peaceful Middle Eastern street with the caption:

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.

Many of the bloggers who have been closely following the special election for Cunningham's seat noticed the picture and thought it didn't ring true. For one thing, none of the signs are in Arabic. Late last night, Will Bunch of Attytood, DailyKos diarist anthonyLA, and kpete at Democratic Underground all began to look into it. Commenters began to identify the many things wrong with the picture: the taxis are the wrong color; the young couple in western clothes and holding hands in public seems unlikely; all of those signs. Finally, someone identified the language on the signs as Turkish and the pieces began to fall together. By 9:30 this morning, Jem6X at Kos had identified the street and located another picture of it. It's a street in the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy. That's Istanbul, Turkey, mamy miles away from Baghdad.

The story has now moved out of the blogosphere and into the professional press with the trade journal Editor & Publisher covering it and giving full credit to the bloggers. Kaloogian shows that he understands responsibility and has manfully stepped forward to do what all Republicans do in a case like this:blame it on his staff.