Via The Obsidian Order comes some anaylsis of a 3 car bombings in Iraq
What do all these pictures have in common? 3 new’s photographers are there to record these car bombs…boy were these guys lucky to be at the right place at the right time huh? Yeah right.
The key and blindingly obvious point: there are at least three photojournalists from different outfits there exactly at the time it goes off! This is not a lucky coincidence. The pictures are clearly taken less than a minute after the original explosion and less than a minute apart. Also: all of the photographers are stringers, not regular staff photographers.
Interpretation: One, this was staged, the particulars of the bomb ensure it will be ineffective and safe from the distance from which it was photographed, but visually spectacular. The people running are most likely also staged. Two, the reporters were invited to see it. Three, they knew it was staged.
My only question: who are these photographers – Ali Jasim, Ali Al-Saadi and Khalid Mohammed – really working for?
From The Adventures Of Chester comes this, the plot thickens.
A google search of the photographers shows that while Khalid Mohammed has few photos to his name, none of which show an obvious pattern, the same does not apply to the other two.
Both Ali Jasim and Ali Al-Saadi have quite a number of photos of insurgents in action with the Sadr militia and Mehdi army. Also both are credited with photos of the American corpses hanging from the bridge in Fallujah. Ali Jasim’s are the most recognized as he has the snap of the people beating the men’s ashes with their shoes. This would seem to indicate that they have good contacts with the insurgents and could, I am not saying that they were, have been notified that something would happen there at that time. Ali Jasim does have several pictures of bombs in which the flames are still quite active which seems to indicate the event was recent.
The Obsidian Order posted a still frame of the video showing 3 journalists on scene
And some on the blogosphere are alleging that the journalists were there because there was a earlier bombing but all the captions in the news media say this “earlier bombing” was hours before. The photographers just hanging around shooting the shit till this one rolls along?
There are also rumors that the car was shot at by Iraqi police and that is why its on fire. Although this is a great scenario for a movie, the odds of a car exploding from being shot at are not that great, and even if it were Obsidian has some more analysis.
I’ve tried to calculate if what we’re seeing requires anything more than just a full gas tank exploding. The big fireball is on the order of 50,000 cubic feet. This may be a gas tank if it combusted all at once – it contains more than enough energy for that. However, from comparing with a few other photos of cars on fire that I could find, I would guess this is bigger, possibly in the 50-100 gallon range. Also the fire seems to be coming from inside the car, not from underneath.
I have been around shootings where a suspects car has had more then 30-40 rounds fired at it and not once has one exploded….just doesn’t happen. Happens all the times in movies but its all bullshit. This thing was staged plain and simple.
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Curt, Thank you. It’s great to see someone doing some deep and proper research into this very question. A question that has been asked again and again and pointed out by the White House more than once I might add. Why, you must have spent at least 10 minutes on google to come up with this depth of conclusion. With well over 1,000 car bombs and roadside bombs exploding in Iraq in a year, I agree with you, it’s just incredible that press photographers might happen to capture one, just one of them on camera… just incredible. I think it’s just fine to ignore that there had been another bomb there earlier in the day and that these photographers might have been covering the aftermath of it, possibly hours after the explosion even though 90% of car bombs are photographed this way. We should also ignore the fact that about 95% of photographers working for major news oganisations in Iraq are stringers. Oh I guess some of those extremist greenies will argue that getting close to insurgents and their activities is just good journalism, showing equal coverage on all sides of a conflict and having contacts with both U.S. media representitives and those of their enemy represents this crazy notion called impartiality …. we really should just ignore these pesky truths…. Keep up the great work Curt…