My, Junior Sure Seems to Be Taking an Interest in Current Events Recently

Abu Ghraib brings the pranksters out of the woodwork:

The Boston Globe was reeling yesterday after graphic photos of alleged sexual abuse of Iraqi women by U.S. soldiers turned out to be staged shots from a hardcore porn Web site.

For the rest of the story -- including the alleged involvement of the Nation of Islam (?!) -- go here. The article's exultant tone (the headline begins "Globe caught with pants down") is explained by the fact that it's in the Boston Herald.

The Globe didn't actually "run" the photos in the ordinary sense: It ran a picture of speakers at a news conference holding up the photos. Whether you could make out what was going on in the images apparently depended on whether you were looking at the early edition.

Comments

[Mo]

I prefer the freaky sex stories of the previous administration.

[Mo]

Oh and this also provided me a good reminder of why I hated the Globe. RC, you would have canceled your subscription well before something like this came up. I would rate the Glob betweeen the Chronicle and the LA Times.

[KentInDC]

But, Mo, what about Cathy Young's column in the Globe?

[Mo]

The exception that proves the rule. (I was actually thinking of mentioning her as the saving grace of the paper) 🙂

[Logic Police]

Exceptions don't prove rules.

[KentInDC]

Many years ago, I read Cathy's book "Growing Up in Moscow" after my late mother, who rarely read nonfiction, recommended it. I had received the book as a freebie with an order to Laissez Faire Books and left it at my parents' house. I've been enjoying CY's columns since she began writing for Reason in the eighties.

[M. Simon]

Has Ashcroft heard of this?

Where is he when we need him?

[The Lonewacko Blog]

Before the Boston Globe, but apparently after they were first released, TalkLeft linked to them thinking they were real. The fact that she linked to a posting at sydney.indymedia.org that had been posted by the kind folks at aztlan.net should have provided a wee bit of a clue.

Perhaps this is some of our propaganda designed to discredit future pictures. Hmmmmm.......

-- If I get $3000 to my Amazon account, I'll visit the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July and cover it on my blog.

[Pray For Mojo]

Nice editing, editors. I'm a bit peeved the Herald didn't at least show a photo of the photo of the guy holding up the photos.

Plus, to be corrected by WorldNetDaily is a little bit embarassing.

[Vanya]

This particular issue is a tempest in a teapot.
The right-wing has doing its damnedest to work up a nice froth of outrage but come on, you couldn't see the photos, and if you actually read the story it's quite obvious that the city councilmen are nutjobs. The article even says the individuals in the pictures have no insignia that would identify them as American soldiers or the women as Iraqis. Plus the article was buried inside the city/region section which is probably the least read part of the paper.

Meanwhile today the Globe printed a truly outrageous anti-American comment on today's op-ed and no-one notices. To wit, in an op-ed by Ruth Daniloff: "The US administration overlooks human rights abuses by the Russian military in Chechnya, which are comparable to those which have taken place in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." Comparable? Let's try at least 50 times worse than anything our soldiers could even imagine doing. Russia has completely brutalized Chechnya for 10 years and this is "as bad" as the US in Iraq? Talk about a lack of perspective. I hope Ms. Young has a talk with the editors.

[Ed Drone]

"Exceptions don't prove rules."

Actually, they do, but only in the sense that "prove" means "put to the test," an older meaning of "prove." So exceptions are those things which prove if a rule is true or not.

But yes, most people mean it in the wrong sense.

Ed

[Sir Real]

FWIW, the reporter was extremely skeptical, but no fewer than 3 editors ordered that it be run.

Maybe the Globe and the NYT should trade that reporter for Judith Miller- she seems more in-line with their editorial "vision".

[R C Dean]

The Globe ran the "pictures in a picture" without making the slightest effort to see if they were genuine.

Their provenance alone (Islamic activists and allied politicians) should have tipped off the Globe. The content should have clinched it.

I had seen those same pictures a couple of weeks ago when I clicked through a link to "photos of US war crimes" or somesuch, where they were mixed in with Abu Ghraib pictures. I immediately recognized them for what they were - porn shots. The posing, the production values, hell, even the uniforms and haircuts, all said "these are not real US soldiers in candid photos."

What kind of idiot would fall for them, I don't want to know, but it makes me wish I subscribed to the Globe, just so I could cancel my subscription.

[dhex]

the day you can't trust the nation of islam is the day i don't want to be alive.

[garym]

Ed: The "put to the test" meaning is occasionally invoked, but the actual original meaning is that the assertion of an exception implies a rule to which there is an exception. For instance, if a street sign says "No parking here to corner," that implies, in the absence of other prohibitions, that parking is allowed on the other side of the sign.

There's an ombudsman op-ed at the Globe's website, which I believe was also run in today's (as it's often called around here) Glob:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/14/a_series_of_errors_on_lewd_images/