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Everything's Coming Up Kaloogian
The blood from Ben Domenech's scalp had hardly dried before the liberal blogosphere tomahawked another fact-juggling conservative. Today's victim: former California Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, a GOP candidate for former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham's open House seat.
Kaloogian had made a sort of comeback in 2004, co-founding a Bizzaro MoveOn.org wittily dubbed MoveAmericaForward. He visited Iraq as part of the group's "Voices of Soldiers" Truth Tour, and a photo of a bustling Baghdad street made its way from the frontlines to Kaloogian's campaign site. Forget the MSM—here was proof that "Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be."
On Tuesday afternoon Daily Kos blogger AnthonyLA questioned whether this vista of non-Arabic signs and scantily-clad women actually came from Baghdad. Eight hours later he got a response from jem6x, who'd found a picture of the same street from a different angle. (Compare the two angles here.) The street wasn't in Baghdad but in an Istanbul suburb called Bakirkoy. Turks have never felt the liberating winds of a US land invasion, but their city streets have generally turned out calm and stable.
After a pile-on that involved Joshua Micah Marshall and TPM Muckraker blogger Justin Rood, Kaloogian backtracked and replaced the pic with a Baghdad establishing shot that does a lot less to advertise the city's dynamism and white-hot excitement.
|3.29.06 @ 9:02PM|#
You know, a lot can be said for the death of blogs, but you just can't match the shear power of number of fact checkers.
|3.29.06 @ 9:04PM|#
I love the new replacement photo of "Baghdad". It looks like it
was shot from a helicopter or the 20 story of a very tall
building.
Somehow I get the suspicion that the photographer of this photo
didnt' particularly feel like strolling on the street level.
|3.29.06 @ 9:07PM|#
The most remarkable thing about this is that this idiot actually
thought no one would find out.
This is the same blogosphere that picked apart the flaws in a memo
based on the year make and model of the typewrite it was
supposed to have been composed on.
The second most remarkable thing about this is that there is a
whole culture of people that both (a) think it's important to show
a picture that dispells an alleged myth and (b) thinks it's no big
deal if it's a fake.
|3.29.06 @ 9:11PM|#
If you've been following the story, the gentleman's explanation
was that he and his group took thousands of pictures and the
Turkish photo (which really does look like a very nice place) just
got mixed in with the enormous photographic output by mistake.
Perfectly understandable, really.
But that being the case, why doesn't ANY of the thousands of other
photos show a pleasant, peaceful Baghdad neighborhood? He found
peace but, to his anguish, he forgot to remove the lens cap? I hate
it when that happens.
|3.29.06 @ 9:12PM|#
I'm glad to finally see a politician who isn't afraid to support our troops publicly, facing head on attacks from our nation's strong anti-troop lobby.
|3.29.06 @ 9:24PM|#
The new pic also presents some new questions.
Is that smog in the background, caused by the hustle and bustle of
daily economic activity, or merely gunpowder smoke?
|3.29.06 @ 9:33PM|#
The Roman script has to be a giveaway. Outside of company logos
and brandnames, Turkey is the only place in the Middle-East where
you would see it.
As for the new photo, it looks like it was taken from the heart of
the "calm and stable" Green zone. You can even see the concrete
Bremer
Walls along the roadside.
|3.29.06 @ 9:46PM|#
I love it;
"Your grades in geography are tellible, little Johnny, how can you
expect to land a good job like that?"
"I plan to become a GOP politician"
|3.29.06 @ 10:27PM|#
Looks like the photo was taken from about 33 degrees, 19 minutes
and .15 seconds North and 44 degrees, 23 minutes and 26.04 seconds
East.
Yeah, that's the Green Zone.
You can check my work using Google Earth, but I'm fairly
certain.
|3.29.06 @ 10:42PM|#
Where the hell did the Dailykos blogger find the other picture of the same corner?
David Weigel|3.29.06 @ 11:01PM|#
H Rose - In another post, jem6x says a friend in Istanbul emailed him about the identity of the street in the photo. Then jem6x googled around for more pics of the street.
|3.29.06 @ 11:05PM|#
I'm wondering, should I order anchovies or parma ham on my pizza tomorrow night?
|3.29.06 @ 11:11PM|#
Turks have never felt the liberating winds of a US land
invasion, but their city streets have generally turned out calm and
stable.
Except when they are running with the blood of Armenians, Kurds or
Greeks (not that the Greeks were any better in their campaign
against Turkey following WWI).
|3.29.06 @ 11:14PM|#
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.
Funny, each day the news media finds any violence in this
country and screams and shouts about it, too. In the face of
declining crime rates. They clearly oppose our tireless, freedom
fighting police forces.
|3.29.06 @ 11:32PM|#
If you look closely, you can see the news media killing soldiers
and civilians to jack up the death toll.
Those crazy journalists will stop at nothing to keep terrorism
alive!
Jim Henley|3.29.06 @ 11:39PM|#
Who said anything about being anti-troop?
Well I got the joke. Don't despair, Citizen Gnat. Deadpan humor is
still a viable internet genre.
I must say, I love Kaloogian's replacement shot. I think I
can speak for Johnny Cochrane when I say
If it doesn't look like St. Lo,
it's a copacetic status quo!
|3.29.06 @ 11:49PM|#
"If you look closely, you can see the news media killing
soldiers and civilians to jack up the death toll."
The smoke in the distance is an auto-da-fe of National Guard troops
hosted by Daryn Kagan and Brian Williams.
|3.30.06 @ 12:13AM|#
If you've been following the story, the gentleman's
explanation was that he and his group took thousands of pictures
and the Turkish photo (which really does look like a very nice
place) just got mixed in with the enormous photographic output by
mistake. Perfectly understandable, really.
If it was a legitimate (and it probably was), I think that it shows
either him or his staff the carelessness that needs to be
scrutinized by the voters before he is elected, especially since he
is running for the U.S. Congress.
dhex|3.30.06 @ 12:51AM|#
if that was a legitimate mistake, then that fucker deserves to
lose anyway. no one that *unlucky* is good for this country.
jackass just got slapped by something called the "blogosphere" for
zog's sake. "betcha 5000-to-1 you can't draw the one photo which
sinks your nascent new career!" going over his resume you can now
see "real name doubles as assumed name for motel registries" and
"got slapped in face by 'blogosphere'" under "Experience."
it would be helpful as well if his name was easily turned into a
verb. such as:
"man, did you hear tom accidentally served his fiancee the one kind
of wheatgrass that she's allergic to? now i have to return that tux
because he pulled a kaloogian."
|3.30.06 @ 12:52AM|#
The sad thing is that this was such an empty gesture to start with. If this guy found one street in all of Baghdad that looked calm and busy for one split second of one day, that does absolutely nothing to prove that Iraq, or Baghdad, or even that one street, is generally peaceful and prosperous. The fact that he couldn't actually come up with even one real picture speaks volumes.
|3.30.06 @ 1:23AM|#
"If it was a legitimate (and it probably was), I think that it
shows either him or his staff the carelessness that needs to be
scrutinized by the voters before he is elected, especially since he
is running for the U.S. Congress."
Come on, that can't be legitimate. They can't possibly have
accidentally posted a picture that doesn't look like *anything*
they saw in Iraq - nobody on his trip saw anything *like* that in
Iraq. It'd be like if I took a trip to Roswell, NM, and then posted
a photo of Roswell which depicted the Eiffel Tower, and blamed it
on a mixup.
All I can say is, he's lucky he didn't post a picture of the
progress of Iraqi reconstruction which was actually a recent
picture of Ground Zero.
|3.30.06 @ 8:33AM|#
Citizen Gnat,
I also admire his steadfast refusal to back down in the face of
apple pie haters.
But hey, if the guy can confuse the war in Iraq with the war on
terror, it's perfectly plausible that he could confuse Turkey with
Iraq.
|3.30.06 @ 9:09AM|#
As to whether or not a picture of a bustling street proves
anything at all, Kos also had a post or two yesterday in which he
described the surreal conditions in El Salvador during the civil
war there, when life would go on as usual in the midst of all the
violence. It was a pretty good post for anyone who wants to read
it.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/29/112744/728
|3.30.06 @ 9:35AM|#
But hey, if the guy can confuse the war in Iraq with the war
on terror, it's perfectly plausible that he could confuse Turkey
with Iraq.
ooooooh, diss. the score is now joe 7, kaloogia 0.
|3.30.06 @ 9:42AM|#
"you just can't match the shear power of number of fact
checkers."
Yes, but chatboards have more torque.
|3.30.06 @ 9:51AM|#
I haven't been able to verify this (mainly because I lack the time), but I've read elsewhere that the large building in the center of the picture showing how peaceful Baghdad is when viewed from 20 stories up has since been blown up in a bombing.
Viking Moose|3.30.06 @ 10:01AM|#
"it would be helpful as well if his name was easily turned into
a verb. such as:
"man, did you hear tom accidentally served his fiancee the one kind
of wheatgrass that she's allergic to? now i have to return that tux
because he pulled a kaloogian.""
wonderful! fantastic!
it's like pulling a "Fraser" or doing a "Homer" :)
|3.30.06 @ 10:48AM|#
Deus ex Machina: here in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, almost all signage is in English and Arabic. That includes store signs and "official" signs like street signs and signage on government buildings. And licence plates. English is the lingua franca of this part of the world - it's the only tongue common to the Arabs, westerners, subcontinentals, east asians and FSUers. Some of my Arab friends and students are upset by the fact that a person who has lived here for 20 years need not learn a word of Arabic to get by.
|3.30.06 @ 11:10AM|#
Bahgdad is the size of Los Angelas. There are lots of peaceful crowded streets in Bahgdad. Millions of people live there. Do you dopes really think they all spend their days cowering in basements dodging debris from suicide bombers? People have to live, work, shop, eat ect.. It wouldn't have been hard to come up with a good picture of Bahgdad, had this guy bothered to look. I can see where it maybe was an honest mistake. Take a few hundred pictures on a trip and you start to forget where each one was taken. That said, you would think that he would have been a little more careful about the one he posted on the internet.
|3.30.06 @ 11:16AM|#
The second most remarkable thing about this is that there is
a whole culture of people that both (a) think it's important to
show a picture that dispells an alleged myth and (b) thinks it's no
big deal if it's a fake.
I often wonder about the disconnect between believing something to
be true, and manufacturing the evidence to prove it.
|3.30.06 @ 11:35AM|#
John: our point is that he apparently doesn't have one. His
replacement picture looks like it was taken from a satellite. I,
too, believe it was a mistake. I think they opened their pictures
when they got home and they only genuine street shot they got was
of when they were in Turkey on the way back. I think they never
left their armored vehicles. Because it wasn't safe for them to do
so. Because they never dared.
In other words, everything he's saying about how "he went to
Baghdad and everything was much better than that wicked old press
will tell you" is basically a lie or self-delusion. He simply
doesn't know anything more than what he might have found out by
staying home and reading official statements because that's all he
got while he was there. He never saw anything with his own eyes.
Look at the photos on his site: shaking hands with military
officers in their briefing rooms...the long shot of some buildings,
too far away to even see the people.
His "fact-finding tour" is pretty short on facts, except that it's
possible to go into Iraq heavily escorted and make it out again, as
long as you never leave your armored vehicle. No one in the dreaded
"liberal" media is disputing this, as far as I know.
|3.30.06 @ 12:11PM|#
James,
I can't go to Nueva Larado without taking a huge risk of being shot
or kidnapped. As a matter of fact, I think it would be a pretty
close call, unarmed stuck in Baghdad or unarmed stuck in Nueva
Larado. I guess if there is any point to this it is that things are
more complex than whether a rich westerner can wonder around a city
with lots of expensive stuff and a big target on his back safely or
not.
|3.30.06 @ 12:20PM|#
I can't go to Nueva Larado without taking a huge risk of
being shot or kidnapped. As a matter of fact, I think it would be a
pretty close call, unarmed stuck in Baghdad or unarmed stuck in
Nueva Larado. I guess if there is any point to this it is that
things are more complex than whether a rich westerner can wonder
around a city with lots of expensive stuff and a big target on his
back safely or not.
This example would be more relevant if you posted a big blog entry
talking about what a safe and wonderful place Nueva Larado was, and
insisted that Nueva Larado only has a bad reputation because of the
big bad liberal media.
|3.30.06 @ 1:17PM|#
John: I gotta call bullshit on that. I wandered all over East
Africa unarmed and no one ever set off a car bomb at me. Border
towns are notorious and yet, Anglo tourists wander into Nuevo
Laredo every day. They take tour buses, not armored cars, and are
protected by guides, not heavily armed mounted infantry.
Baghdad is not a tourist trap. It's the capitol of the country with
the heaviest police and military presence in the world. But you
can't even get out of a vehicle in broad daylight long enough to
take a photo of a street scene? Comparing that to bordertown
pickpockets is absurd.
Incidentally, Jennifer, the word on the building in the picture was
that it is a police station and it was bombed on April 12 of 2005.
From the pictures I saw the exterior of the building was not badly
damaged and it's quite possible the site's photo is genuine. But it
does make a nice bookend to the story to see posts of the same
building wreathed in smoke from a car bomb eleven months ago...
|3.30.06 @ 2:15PM|#
James,
I live in San Antonio and used to go to Larado used to be a tourist
trap and only dangerous to the unlucky and the stupid. The drug
gangs have now taken it over. The murder rate is huge, the local
cops are in a running war with the federals and kidnapping is
second only to drug smuggling as the local industry. It is not
getting much play outside the Southwest, but the Mexican border is
out of control and Northern Mexico is getting close to becoming
Columbia. Larado is not a tourist trap anymore. Americans don't go
there because it is so dangerous. All of the old tourist places
have closed down. I was very serious about Baghdad versus Larado
comparision. Yeah, a car bomb or two may go off in Bahgdad, but
like I said, it is the size of Los Angelas, what are the odds of
you being there?
|3.30.06 @ 2:27PM|#
Yeah, a car bomb or two may go off in Bahgdad, but like I
said, it is the size of Los Angelas, what are the odds of you being
there?
So if one or two car bombs per day are set off in Los Angeles,
you'll be of the opinion that really, this is nothing for Angelenos
to worry about?
|3.30.06 @ 2:30PM|#
If two car bombs per day went off in Los Angeles, and we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Syria was behind it, John would call for an immediate invasion of Turkmenistan.
|3.30.06 @ 3:28PM|#
In a city the size of Los Angeles, how many car bombs have to be set off per day before you'd consider it an actual problem, John?
|3.30.06 @ 3:48PM|#
The keys to a successful car bombing in southern California
are:
1) Leave plenty of evidence so that your guilty is clearly
established.
2) Get a celebrity of some sort involved in the act.
With those measures in place, there's no way that any southern
California jury will convict.
|3.30.06 @ 3:50PM|#
Look, I had to go back to the restaurant to get my detonator. I was nowhere near the place where the bomb went off. And it's merely a coincidence that I had previously asked my stunt double if he could rig up some explosives.
|3.30.06 @ 4:11PM|#
I was very serious about Baghdad versus Larado
comparision.
If you're serious about it, then could you provide at least
ball-park figures on the rates of violence for each city?
|3.30.06 @ 4:38PM|#
Kidnapping, Murder Sweep Nuevo Laredo
Friday, August 05, 2005
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico � A city official in charge of public security
was gunned down along with another man in the downtown area of the
embattled city of Nuevo Laredo on Friday.
According to reports, it appeared to be an organized hit involving
two cars.
Nuevo Laredo, just cross the border from the United States, has
become one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Rival drug
cartels have turned the city into a war zone as they battle for
control of the lucrative illegal drug market in the U.S.
Gun battles in broad daylight are common, and the U.S. Consulate
(search) has shut down, at least temporarily.
The drug gangs have killed the city's last two police chiefs, the
second of whom lasted only six hours on the job. Widespread police
corruption has compounded the problem. The entire 700-officer force
was fired for corruption this summer, though many were hired
back.
In addition to the killings, there has been an epidemic of
kidnappings. There have been over 400 in the past year, including
dozens of Americans.
**SNIP**
Often, there are no ransom demands. Both of Rosita Gonzalez' sons
were kidnapped, and she has no idea why.
"It's a pain that you can't have no appeal for it," said
Gonzalez.
The Nuevo Laredo story that has gone largely unreported, as many
journalists say the drug wars in there are too dangerous to cover,
especially after a number of their colleagues have been gunned
down.
**SNIP**
|3.30.06 @ 4:39PM|#
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - Last September, Brenda Cisneros was
celebrating her 23rd birthday with her family at a restaurant in
Laredo, Texas, when she begged her father to let her go to a
concert with a friend across the border in Nuevo Laredo.
"Please, Daddy, I'm a grown-up now," her father, Pablo Cisneros,
remembers her pleading. Reluctantly, he said yes. "I know you're
legally an adult," he recalls telling her, "but remember, you'll
always be my baby."
His daughter and her best friend, Yvette Martinez, set out for
Nuevo Laredo and a concert featuring the popular ranchero singer
Pepe Aguilar on Sept. 17. Cisneros hasn't seen them since.
The last he knows is that she and Martinez, a 27-year-old mother of
two, called a friend at 4 a.m. to say they were heading back from
the concert and were just five blocks from the U.S. border.
Since January, at least 107 people have been killed in a fierce war
that pits rival drug gangs in an increasingly violent struggle to
control this key crossing point into the United States. Bodies are
found in streets showing evidence of painful deaths: tortured,
bound and gagged, handcuffed, with missing limbs. Some have been
burned alive.
But the deaths are only part of the story. Since last fall, 23
Americans and at least 400 Mexicans have disappeared here, and
their relatives complain that little is being done to investigate
the disappearances or stop the gangs who perpetrate them.
No one knows who's doing the kidnapping. Some residents and police
blame the abductions on the same gangs that are battling for drug
turf. They talk of "safe houses," where victims are taken until
ransoms are paid. Some say young women are housed there for drug
lords "to play with" until they're used up, ending with
death.
Others, such as Martinez's stepfather, William Slemaker, blame the
police. He claims he spotted his stepdaughter's 2001 pearl-white
Mitsubishi in a municipal police parking lot about a month after
her disappearance but that when he pointed it out to police they
denied it was hers. Later, the car turned up in the lot of a
private towing company, which sought $2,500 for storage before it
could be released. Slemaker said he didn't have the money, and the
car remains in one of the company's lots.
"There're fingerprints, DNA, who knows what else inside that car,"
said Slemaker, who quit his job as a railroad worker to help Pablo
Cisneros found a Web site called laredosmissing.com.
Every week, Cisneros and Slemaker cross from Texas into this gritty
city of nearly a half-million residents to continue searching for
their loved ones. They paste up posters asking for information. In
return, they get death threats and anonymous calls: Their daughters
were killed by drug traffickers, who used them for sex until they
were "done" with them; they were fed to lions; their bodies were
submerged in acid and only bones remain.
Cisneros and Slemaker said the calls were painful to hear, and they
worry that they may be true. Forty-three Americans are known to
have been kidnapped so far this year; 17 either escaped or were
ransomed, though police will provide little information about them.
Three others were found dead.
Mexican officials said they were concerned that the reports of
kidnappings and violence were hurting this border city's reputation
as a tourist destination. They said most of those who'd disappeared
had ties to drug traffickers and that others were safe.
"In my experience, most of the missing and murder victims are
involved in organized crime," said Daniel Hernandez, Mexico's
consul general in Laredo. "Sometimes, it's involuntary; it can be a
cousin of a cousin and they're at the wrong place at the wrong
time."
U.S. officials are less certain. The State Department, at the
urging of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza, has issued a travel
advisory for Mexico, warning U.S. citizens to stay clear of Nuevo
Laredo.
The United States can do little to solve crimes in Mexico. U.S.
authorities can't go into Mexico to investigate a crime against an
American unless Mexican authorities invite them. So far, there's
been no such invitation.
"Mexico is very protective about its national sovereignty. That's
the issue. It could become a political problem," said Laredo-born
Raul Salinas, a burly and congenial 27-year veteran of the FBI who
once worked at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and now is running
for mayor of Laredo.
The suggestion that their daughters might have had drug connections
enrages Slemaker and Cisneros.
"Our daughters didn't have criminal records. But suppose they came
in contact with a trafficker or Mafioso; is it all right to kill
and kidnap people because of this?" said Slemaker, who's been
Yvette's stepfather since she was 8.
Slemaker acknowledges that Martinez's estranged husband is in a
Texas prison for drug crimes, but he said Martinez had been seeking
a divorce for the past six years. He and Cisneros also said it was
possible the women ran into a bad crowd.
"We heard later that a bunch of 70 armed men dressed in black
uniforms turned up at the concert," Slemaker said.
Police refuse to discuss the Cisneros-Martinez case, or any case
for that matter, saying doing so would endanger current
investigations.
The local police chief said drug trafficking and related crimes
were the problem of Mexico's federal police, not him.
"My priority is to prevent assaults, burglaries and auto theft,"
said Omar Pimentel, 37, whose predecessor was gunned down after
just seven hours in office. "The federal police are in charge of
drug crimes."
Cisneros said the months since his daughter disappeared had been
hard. He said he could barely eat and that his chest burned.
"My heart and soul are broken," he said. "All my energy is spent on
finding our daughters. But I know what will cure me: Brenda."
Knight Ridder special correspondent Janet Schwartz contributed to
this report.
|3.30.06 @ 4:50PM|#
http://www.mexidata.info/id750.html
187 people were murdered in Nuevo Larado in 2005. The population
there is about 335,000. Baghdad has a population of 5.9 million or
about 17.5times the populuation of Nuavo Larado. In the three years
since the war started in 2003, there have been 24,000 civilian
deaths in Baghdad. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11763834/. No one
seems to know however, how many of those were due to violence. That
is total death count that includes death by all causes.
That works out to about 8,000 deaths per year. If Nuevo Larado were
the size of Baghdad it would suffer 3,300 deaths per year. If you
discount the natural deaths in the 8,000 figure, Baghdad is
probably twice as dangerous as Larado. More dangerous yes, but
Larado is a lot closer to Baghdad than people think and that was my
point.
|3.30.06 @ 5:19PM|#
I appreciate the numbers hunting and anyone would agree that
Laredo is in terrible shape. If only the drugs they were fighting
over (like the alcohol gangs used to fight over during Prohibition)
were legal, there'd be less to fight about.
But I think we've lost the point here. A Bush loyalist prints a
picture he says is of peaceful Baghdad as proof that the media is
trying to paint a negative picture of the city. When it's pointed
out that his picture is of a city in Turkey, he doesn't post a
picture of a peaceful, happy city scene in Baghdad, which he claims
to have seen. Instead, he posts a picture of Baghdad from a
balcony. The same kind of picture he condemns the MSM for showing.
And he still maintains his position that the MSM is working to
paint an inaccurate picture of safety in Baghdad. How is this
defensible?
|3.30.06 @ 5:34PM|#
If you discount the natural deaths in the 8,000 figure,
Baghdad is probably twice as dangerous as Larado. More dangerous
yes, but Larado is a lot closer to Baghdad than people think and
that was my point.
New tourism motto: "Baghdad--Only a little more dangerous than
Larado!"
|3.30.06 @ 5:48PM|#
John,
How does saying Baghdad is as dangerous as Nuevo Larado (one of the
most dangerous in the world) bolster your point? Baghdad is a
dangerous scary place, exactly as portrayed by the media.
Oh, most signs, government and commercial, in Cairo and other parts
of Egypt (Sharm, Alexandria, etc.) are in Arabic and English/French
(the older ones are in French, when it used to be the internatinal
language).
|3.30.06 @ 8:57PM|#
Fine. Nuevo Laredo is, apparently, half as bad as Baghdad. And
according to the news stories you've cited, the liberal press isn't
reporting very much good news from Nuevo Laredo. In fact, it sounds
almost like they're dwelling on the kidnappings and drug murders
instead of looking for heartwarming stories about new schools
opening and cops that only take payoffs from the drug lords instead
of actually killing on their behalf.
That darned liberal media! It never says anything good about Nuevo
Laredo! It's almost as if they want the Federales to fail!
On another note, it appears as if the Drug Warriors got a real
bargain in Mexico. The nightmare in Iraq cost us hundreds of
billions of dollars but the nightmare in Nuevo Laredo is
practically free by comparison. Maybe the DEA can give the Pentagon
some tips on how to destroy a civil society on a budget so our
future fiascos don't bankrupt us.
|3.30.06 @ 9:39PM|#
I'm with James. If the good news is that Baghdad is twice as dangerous as a city racked by drug violence, then maybe Iraq isn't turning out quite as well as the hawks had hoped.
s.m. koppelman|3.30.06 @ 9:49PM|#
I like the idea of a rabidly anti-immigration son of Armenian immigrants, raised in an Armenian immigrant neighborhood, completely unaware that he's visiting Turkey.
|3.31.06 @ 9:36AM|#
"The new pic also presents some new questions.
Is that smog in the background, caused by the hustle and bustle of
daily economic activity, or merely gunpowder smoke?"
Comment by: Happy Jack
Something like that was my thought - remember that famous picture
from the Vietnam war, where a police official was shooting a VC
prisoner in the head?
There could have been an equivalent moment in that picture - one
hundred people in that street with the bullets just exiting their
heads, a horrific sight - and you couldn't have known it from that
picture.
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Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245