FTC continues to make me laugh.

[RobtheBarbarian]

A general rule I follow is: after an important event occurs, wait a month until the special on the History/Discovery Channel to learn anything about it, because you can be damn sure than you're not going to get one shred of meaningful information from the news networks.

[Hobbit]

yup cant trust the news to be unbiased anymore.  which makes me want to cry really

You never could trust the news.  The only reason people used to trust the news is because without the internet, it was harder for people who caught their bullcrap to publish it widely.  I think Dan Rather and his 100% factually correct and irrefutable National Guard records were the beginning of the end of the big news stations getting away with anything.  Hell, you can't even misspell somebody's name anymore without thousands of friendless losers posting the thing about 1000 times on Newshounds or some other such site from their parents' basement.

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

god bless those friendless losers :salute:

[Hobbit]

god bless those friendless losers :salute:

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

what the hell is that?

[BathTub]

That was the insanely bad photoshop of lebanon that reuters published.

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

apparently i missed that story, so what happened now?

[ScottotD]

Hell, you can't even misspell somebody's name anymore without thousands of friendless losers posting the thing about 1000 times on Newshounds or some other such site from their parents' basement.

Are you talking about Obama Bin Laden?

[BathTub]

You missed all the fauxtography that came out of the Isreali/Hezbollah conflict? This was the shot that got the most publicity as it was just so amazingly mind bogglingly bad. Another Photoshop job by the photographer Adnan Hajj was found before Reuters did a picture kill on all his stuff. The official line was 'he was trying to remove dust under bad lighting conditions'.

they replaced it with this version

[gbeenie]

So how is that whole 'ever changing reasoning for attacking Iraq and STILL looking for Bin Laden' thing going?

There is no "ever changing reasoning." Saddam failed to comply with the terms HE agreed to in his 1991 surrender at the end of the first Gulf War; the fact that the United Nations (an organization whose leadership, it now appears, was practically on Saddam's payroll) refused to act to enforce ITS OWN resolutions put the onus on US for dealing with his continued violations. That, combined with Saddam's attempts to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger, as well as the Iraq Liberation Act (passed by Congress in 1998 and signed by William Jefferson Clinton) made a compelling case for us to act. While I can certainly understand ambivalence about the course of action taken, I dismiss utterly the insane notion that the appropriate thing to do in this situation would have been nothing.

[ScottotD]

So, those WMD's shown up yet?

In those photos, I realize the smoke is thicker in the retouched one but... yeah, I don't get it.

[gbeenie]

So, those WMD's shown up yet?

In Iraq, troops have found mustard and sarin gas (along with delivery systems) in a quantity sufficient to kill 500,000 people.

Oh, wait; let me guess: that's not enough WMDs.

[Hobbit]

IMO, trying to make the Middle East look worse is like trying to make Rosie O'Donnel look fatter and uglier.  I mean, there's really no point.

Anyway, while that photo is mind-numbingly bad in its fakery, its significance is that it led to a lot more scrutiny of photos leading to the following discoveries:

A single woman is shown mourning over the loss of 'her home' (according to the caption) for two, or maybe three different bomb sites that happened within two weeks of each other.  She's either the unluckiest woman alive or posing.

In the picture of one bombed building (Hezbollah safe house, according to Mossad), the same 20-something man is shown in three different pictures:  one as a casualty, one mourning over the loss of 'his home,' and one as a first responder lifting rubble.

In a picture that was the cover of Time magazine, a Hezbollah 'freedom fighter' is shown carrying his AK-47 with the 'carnage and destruction' of Lebanon in the background.  Closer examination clearly reveals that said destruction was a burning pile of tires.

During the conflict in Lebanon, Hezbollah 'commandeered' several ambulances and drove them in circles around the city so American and European news agencies could get plenty of video of ambulances 'taking innocent victims of Zionist aggression to the hospital.'

[pyro]

IMO, trying to make the Middle East look worse is like trying to make Rosie O'Donnel look fatter and uglier.  I mean, there's really no point.

Anyway, while that photo is mind-numbingly bad in its fakery, its significance is that it led to a lot more scrutiny of photos leading to the following discoveries:

A single woman is shown mourning over the loss of 'her home' (according to the caption) for two, or maybe three different bomb sites that happened within two weeks of each other.  She's either the unluckiest woman alive or posing.

In the picture of one bombed building (Hezbollah safe house, according to Mossad), the same 20-something man is shown in three different pictures:  one as a casualty, one mourning over the loss of 'his home,' and one as a first responder lifting rubble.

In a picture that was the cover of Time magazine, a Hezbollah 'freedom fighter' is shown carrying his AK-47 with the 'carnage and destruction' of Lebanon in the background.  Closer examination clearly reveals that said destruction was a burning pile of tires.

During the conflict in Lebanon, Hezbollah 'commandeered' several ambulances and drove them in circles around the city so American and European news agencies could get plenty of video of ambulances 'taking innocent victims of Zionist aggression to the hospital.'

That's what the maker of a failed reality show I worked would call "canned reality"

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

and people like that are what i would call target practice