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.So, apparently our boys in Baghdad are now throwing immaculately shiny bullets, shells and all, at old ladies' houses. Did they lose their guns? Or are they, perhaps, +2 Throwing Bullets of Anti-terrorism? Alas, the answer is probably classified.
Of course I'm being silly. But so is the press. Only a fool or a propagandist would run this photo seriously, and neither is a good quality in the people who bring us the news. This reminds me of a similar incident last summer, that time with mysteriously replicating plumes of smoke: Where there's smoke... Hopefully the AFP will do the right thing and correct their error, as Reuters did last year. But, lest the page be removed or edited without such notification, I got a screen capture to preserve the golden moment for posterity.
UPDATE: While Yahoo still shows the same caption, Getty Images (another online cache for images of the news wires) indicates that the AFP has issued a correction: CORRECTS BULLETS TO UNSPENT. A screen capture is below:
One problem remains: not only are they "unspent" bullets, but the woman also claimed that they'd been shot into her house during a raid. This is not merely a mistake, but an obvious lie. Why is the old Iraqi woman still being held up as a sympathetic and reliable witness of the events in question?
2 comments:
Well, one of those things could have caused a nasty bruise if it was thrown hard enough. Besides, cut the woman some slack. Have you ever had a bullet thrown at you by coalition troops. It is absolutely terrifying, I tell you.
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