DKos: Kaloogian Fake Baghdad Photo ID'ed

[Hissyspit]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/29/11569/6885

Kaloogian fib photo mystery solved.
by jem6x
Wed Mar 29, 2006 at 09:56:08 AM PDT
I'm sure we are all aware of the puzzle posed by Anthony LA. Where was that photo taken?

Here is the answer. (I posted this as a comment in Anthony's diary, but with 700 comments it's hard to find.) The photo is of a bustling street in the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy.

?v=0

This photo was taken by a photographer named Faruk, a member of the wowturkey.com community, and posted there. Check out his portfolio.

(Note: I grabbed a copy of his photo to put onto flickr.com, just to avoid stealing bandwith from the wowturkey.com site and avoid Dailykos traffic crashing that site. I do not intend to steal Faruk's intellectual property. He takes great pictures, by the way!)

For comparison purposes, here is the photo Kaloogian claims he or his staff took in Baghdad:



Uncanny, you might say.

UPDATE: Credit where credit is due. This was mentioned in Anthony's thread but it bears repeating. The spot was recognized by a friend in Istanbul from Kaloogian's photo. She emailed the information that it was Istanbul Caddesi in Bakirkoy. Once I had that, it took about a 5 minute google search to find this photo. I have not mentioned the name of this friend because I don't have permission, but I'll find out if she would like a piece of glory and if so I will update with her name. In the meantime, I hope that all Kossacks will raise a toast in her honor.

[salvorhardin]

1. Oh, that's rich!

Sounds like Kaloogian hasn't learned that the internet makes the world a very small place yet.

Scratch that. Sounds like Kaloogian is just your typical lying right wing scum.

[oasis]

2. Kaloogian's cover-up lie was a lie within a lie.

:crazy:

[npincus]

3. That's WRONG! Ka-LIE-gian asid his crew had taken a 'side trip'

to Istan-bull! Faruk-Schmaruk. That's what YOU think.

[caligirl]

4. So kaloogian blames a staffer, but the DOD is sponsoring the Truth Tour?

that resulted in these fake photo's of Bagdad?


http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=78

According to an entry at SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy (website), in June 2004, RM&R "formed a front organization called Move America Forward… 'to stand up and support the brave men and women of our Armed Forces.'" Sal Russo, who began his political career as a special assistant to then-California Governor Ronald Reagan in the late 1960s and who later founded his own political consulting firm called California Capitol Consultants in 1976, is a member of Move America Forward's board of directors and is listed as "Chief Strategist" at the MAF web site.

SpinWatch reported on July 6, that the "Truth Tour" was also in part sponsored by "the newly created Office of Media Outreach, a taxpayer-funded publicity arm of the Department of Defense."

[Hubert Flottz]

9. And they can spend our tax dollars on such stupid shit!

The can't afford to keep helping Granny pay her huge gas bill and buy her food and meds too, but they can tax us poor folks and SPEND on frivolous propaganda to try and make GOP political blunders look good! They are not like Nazis...THEY ARE FREAKIN' NAZIS!

[RedEarth]

5. That's great.... they can't keep their lies straight...

[unblock]

6. let's RATHER him! make him resign over this!

:rofl:

[ContraBass Black]

7. Let me get this straight--

They stole a photo of Turkey off of somebody's online photo album and ssaid they took it in Iraq? When will this one hit MSM?

[npincus]

8. did he take the photo down? Page won't load.

here's a screenshot:

[Nothing Without Hope]

18. Great screen shot! Here's an informal ***LIST OF DU THREADS*** on this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x776401
thread title (3-28-06 GD): Fake photo of Baghdad used to bolster GOP's claims?
Howard Kaloogian (R) has posted a photograph on his campaign website which he claims to have recently taken in downtown Baghdad, to show how "calm" and "stable" the city was during his visit. But the photo is actually from Istambul, TURKEY!!! Long thread with additional finds all confirming Istambul ID. Now up at Huffington Post and other blogs too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x785305
thread title (3-29-06 GD): Oops...Kaloogian Blames Iraq Photo Error on Staffer
Says there were “hundreds and hundreds” of photos taken on his Iraq trip, and they had a layover in Istambul. His campaign site says “Baghdad is calm and secure. I know. I’ve been there.” So egregious!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2194954
thread title (3-29-06 LBN): Baghdad, Turkey Baghdad photo scandal
See Reply #17 – It’s not the first time Kaloogian “got lost” like this. What a lying slime. Good composite photo showing obviously NOT in Iraq but Turkey.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x784983
thread title (3-29-06 GD): More photos of things going great in Baghdad
Hilarious! Photos from all over the world – favorite: the “banana burka” from Rio

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x786665
thread title (3-29-06 GD): Kaloogian Slams Press Coverage of Iraq With Bogus Photo (Its made the MSM)
Cites 3/29 Editor & Publisher article on the whole debacle.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x789542
thread title (3-29-06 GD): NEWSWEEK - Baghdad/Istanbul - Blogosphere Nails Kaloogian

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x785264
thread title (3-29-06 GD): Re FAKE PHOTO: It's not just Howard Kaloogian, it's BIG right-wing players
” It's Move America Forward, and it's Russo Marsh & Rogers, the Sacramento-based political public relations firm with major right-wing ties. Move America Forward is an astroturf political action group that RM&R uses to woo big-money financiers of right wing candidates and causes. While it feels good to nail Howard Kaloogian, that phony "downtown Baghdad" photo used on his Web site has a stream that runs right to the heart the right wing ….”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x787933
thread title (3-29-06 GD): UK Guardian now linking to DU thread on the Kalgoolian photo
Excerpt from the Guardian UK: “The Backbencher has been enjoying the spat over a picture, allegedly of Baghdad, that wannabe Republican congressman Howard Kaloogian posted on his website. It purported (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x776401) to show a peaceful street in Baghdad. "Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be," Howard wrote. "But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it". Inevitable, then, that left-liberal blogs would point out that this picture actually shows a street in Turkey. The tight female clothing and non-Arabic signs did give it away.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x790319
thread title (3-29-06 GD): Kaloogian: "It’s one itty-bitty picture"
From msnbc site (Newsweek): “Kaloogian is no stranger to controversy. He was one of the architects of the successful recall drive against former California governor Gray Davis. But he seemed annoyed at the sudden onslaught of attention. ‘Journalists weren’t interested in our trip for nine months afterwards, and now they’re trying to find one picayunish mistake,’ he complained to NEWSWEEK. ‘It’s one itty-bitty picture. The Associated Press gave us a Mark Twain Award for a broadcast we did from Iraq, and nothing was written about that at all.’ (Kaloogian is not named on the Web site of the Associated Press Television and Radio Association of California-Nevada as a Mark Twain Award winner, although several radio talk-show hosts who accompanied Kaloogian on the Iraq trip are named. ‘We invited these talk-show hosts to go with us, it was our trip, but they were on it,’ Kaloogian told NEWSWEEK.)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x785904
thread title (3-29-06 GD): DKos: Kaloogian Fake Baghdad Photo ID'ed
”This photo was taken by a photographer named Faruk, a member of the wowturkey.com community, and posted there.” So Kaloogian didn’t even use an ORIGINAL photo from Istambul!!!
Full SCREEN SHOT of Kaloogian’s campaign page with the bogus photo and its caption in Reply #8.

[jsamuel]

10. original image from Kaloogian site

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Send this story to Keith Olberman

I'll bet he will jump all over this!

REAL Picture of Bagdad and Bagson!

[robinlynne]

12. why on earth do you call it uncanny?

there is no similarlity between the 2 photos.
It's great to catch their lies, but don't add untruths, or we lose our credibility.
there is nothing even remotely similar about the 2 images, unless you've posted the wrong phoot by mistake?

[immoderate]

13. Check the pictures. It's the same intersection.

Match up the buildings and the signs.

--IMM

[tandot]

14. There is another pic on that guys website showing exactly the same street

corner and same building, just from a different angle. Even the cab is in the picture.

It is the 4th down under "Faruk" with the heading "Cmt 29 Ekm 2005, 00:12"

Republicans just lie...it is in their blood.

[mdmc]

15. this is great stuff

[Imagevision]

16. Kaloogian and Harris went to different schools together...!

[Hissyspit]

17. E&P talks about this DKos post in an article!

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002274257

But the blogosphere quickly smelled a rat. The photo featured people who didn’t seem dressed quite right for Iraq, and signs and billboards that looked off, too. In the now-familiar pattern, the ace detective work leaped from obscure blogs to the well-known (Talking Points Memo, Eschaton, Attytood, more), and back again, as eagle-eyed experts proposed alternative locales, with Turkey a likely suspect.

In less than a day, it was over. “Jem6X” at the popular DailyKos blog confirmed the street scene was in Bakirkoy, a suburb of Istanbul, not Baghdad.

Tipped off by someone who recognized the actual intersection in Turkey, Jem went through online photo galleries and in a matter of minutes today found a snap taken by a “Faruk” that lined up with the “Baghdad” photo in numerous conclusive ways. Game, set, and match to the blogosphere.