Picture Gate

I don't know what to make of this.

Earlier today anthony LA over at Kos noticed this portion of Howard Kaloogian's site. Kaloogian is a Republican running for Congress in the seat vacated by the Dukestir, Randy Cunningham. He put up a photo with the following caption: "We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. 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."

I don't know what one photo would prove anyway. But the kicker is that the photo doesn't appear to have been taken in Baghdad or even Iraq. Look at it:



There isn't any Arabic script in the entire photo. The two main signs that are readable are "edo," a Turkish ice cream company, and "2.Noter." Noter is Turkish for notary. There's also what looks to be a Turkish cab, and a couple holding hands, the woman wearing a shirt that appears to be a little too skimpy for Shiite-controlled Baghdad.

That's just not Baghdad, and it's bad enough to use the tortured logic of "see, this ONE photo means everything's great in Iraq!" It's worse to use the dishonest logic of "see, this photo of Turkey means everything's GREAT in Iraq!"

Amazingly, Kaloogian STILL has this up at his site.

Francine Busby, the Democrat in this race (who's ahead in all the recent polls, but not by enough to make it out of a potential runoff) hasn't commented on this, and Kaloogian is just one of the many Republican candidates running for this seat. Best that she stays above the fray. But it's certainly something we can laugh about. What a putz and a fraud.