Kim Komando's Kool Site of the day, Regret the Error, features a site which tracks stories Newspapers and other media got wrong along with their corrections. Today's list has one misstep from the Chicago Tribune and one from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. What isn't featured is this story reported by Powerline and Michelle Malkin and others about the photo the New York Times ran of a group of Pakistani men and boys in the rubble of a home destroyed by last week's CIA missile. In the middle of the men is a rocket of some kind and the NY Times photo caption read: "Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border."
According to Powerline which shows the photo, "It's an old artillary shell. Which means the photo was deliberately faked by the people depicted, probably with the knowing aid of the AFP photographer."
Stay tuned to see if Regret the Error tracks this one. Are the bloggers right? Or not?
Actually, so many blogs are carrying this story it almost makes my head swim, especially reading comments by those who know their ordnances. Forgotten in all this is the reason the CIA or whoever dropped bombs on a residential area in Pakistan last week and that is they thought al Qaeda's number 2, al Zawahiri was there. According to a news report we heard on one of the cable channels this weekend al Zawahiri had been invited to one of the homes, but didn't come. What? He's accessible enough to be invited places for dinner? Someone can invite this guy to dinner and we can't catch him? For crying out loud.
That round in the photo is a 203mm round fired out of the M110A2 track
mounted artillery gun.
see here:
http://www.pofwah.com.pk/products/images/LARGE/203mmhowhem106.jpg
You can clearly match up the lettering from the NY Times photo to this
photo. Pakistan has these artillery guns available and they have a
range of over 25 miles so it's not inconcievable that there was
additional fire called in after the air strike by ground teams. The
shell does not look old to me. If you look at the unfired photo
round you can see the banding below the yellow markings. In the NY
Times photo you can see the unbanded round with the rifling marks
shown. Hope this helps you out. I don't really think this was some
big liberal conspiracy
Posted by: tbizzle | January 16, 2006 at 04:27 PM
And of course Powerline is absolutely the most impartial and righteous source available.
Posted by: RC | January 16, 2006 at 10:09 PM