Phoney abuse photos

Best of the Web reports that "sensational" pictures of "rape of innocent Iraqi women" trumpeted by the Boston Globe were in fact taken from two pornographic sites specializing in images of women brutalized by pr0n actors dressed up in army fatigues. (I regularly get spam advertising this sick stuff.) The newspaper had gotten the photographs from one "Akbar Muhammad, a representation for the Nation of Islam" [a US black supremacist and antisemitic group]. BotW rightly speculates on what would happen to a newspaper editor who published phony pictures as authentic on the authority of a Ku Klux Klan leader.

Meanwhile the BBC (via BotW) reports that the Daily Mirror (leftist British tabloid) sacked its editor after he too published phoney abuse pictures, this time slandering British soldiers.

This edition of BotW also brings the following heart-warming (NOT!) story about the level of commitment to objectivity displayed by certain members of the journalistic profession:

The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool [in Baghdad], fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.

She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now--there was no choice about this--going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I'll spare you most of the details because you know the script--no WMD, no "imminent threat" (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.

But then she came to the point. Not only had she 'known' the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the "evil" George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. "Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out." Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.

She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry's poll numbers. "Well, that's different--that would be Americans," she said, haltingly. "I guess I'm a bit of an isolationist." That's one way of putting it.

I cannot add anything to the comment by BotW's James Taranto:

And of course it's entirely legitimate to disagree with the current administration's strategy in the war on terror. But something is deeply wrong with Americans who oppose the president of the United States more strongly than they oppose the enemies of the United States.