Okay, this is good for a laugh on a slow news night.
(And just to be clear, I’m a little late to this party. Will Bunch, a diarist at Kos’s site and another at DU are already all over it.)
Howard Kaloogian, one of the wingers trying to replace Duke Cunningham out in San Diego, has this picture of Baghdad that he took on a recent trip to Iraq posted on his campaign website.
With the picture Kaloogian writes: “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.”
But is that really Baghdad? Now, I’m always a bit leery of these online mysteries. Because I’ve certainly never been to Baghdad. And I couldn’t tell you if a street was in Baghdad or Damascus or Cairo for that matter.
But do you see any Arabic script in this photograph?
My recollection is that on major highways in Iraq the major signs have written in Arabic and also in English.
But this appears to be a city square and every street and store sign I can see is written in roman script, not Arabic. In any case, the issue is less the presence of roman script than the lack of Arabic script.
Others at the sites I mentioned above point out that the woman in pink on the lower left is a bit more provocatively dressed than you might expect in the increasingly sharia-fied Iraq. The billboard on the upper right appears to feature a likeness of some modern-day Pippi Longstocking and the other billboard down the road doesn’t look quite right either.
Now, none of those latter points would make me wonder, not being familiar enough with what your average Baghdad street scene looks like. But the absence of Arabic script makes me really curious.
The one thing I really don’t get is how Kaloogian could really be so stupid as to post a picture which he claims is of Baghdad and have it not really be from Baghdad. Certainly, it’s possible to take a photograph in Baghdad and not have billowing black smoke and ambulances or anyone blown apart. And if you look at Kaloogian’s page it seems pretty clear he did go to Iraq. That level of needless stupidity seems hard to fathom. And it’s the only thing that makes me think that — lack of Arabic script notwithstanding — it must really be Baghdad.
So let’s have at it.
What do people make of this photo?
