NZPundit’s Craig Ranapia and WhackingDay have decided Richard Neville is trying to pull one over on us. On his web site he posted a picture of a maimed Israeli girl instead of maimed Iraqis in relation to his “Netizens of the World…” speech, which we republished here two days ago.
Clearly the great left wing conspiracy is at work. Call out the black helicopters etc etc blah blah bloody blah.
Presumably since Neville got the picture wrong Shua’le (aka al Shoala) never happened. That must be the case because these guys would rather talk about an incorrect picture than the incident itself. They never seem to address such incidents, except to try and explain them away and make sure no blame attaches to the US or Israel. I still haven’t seen anything from NZPundit about the recent evidence on the Israeli missile attack at the Nuseirat refugee camp.
You were quick enough with your “Gotcha” on that occasion, Gordon.
Anyway, Richard Neville explains his mistake:
Hi Rob, For your information, typing Baghdad Explosions into Google produced the image which I first put on the site ... in too much of a hurry. The following morning I received an email pointing out that the scene depicted an Israeli girl who was injured in the bombing of a bus carrying Jewish families home from prayer at the the Western Wall in August of 2003. More than 20 were killed, and dozens were injured. I immediately changed the pic on the site and apologised to the person who drew my attention to the error. Because some have assumed malice behind my mistake, or other sinister intentions, an explanation has been posted today. It is an error I regret.
I’ve checked. The picture does show up on such a Google image search.
The US would like the world to think Shua’le never happened. They have apparently never investigated the incident as they promised to at the time.
U.S. Central Command said at the time that it was investigating, but spokesman Capt. John Morgan now says no inquiry was conducted. Centcom never confirmed or denied firing the missile.
On April 1, Iraqi officials and witnesses said, U.S. Apache helicopters attacked a neighborhood in the central town of Hillah, killing 33 civilians. The bodies were shown to reporters at a hospital there. Central Command said no Apaches were involved.
Queried again this week about the al-Shoala and Hillah attacks, Central Command said it had no information to add.
Surely “Nyah nyah nyah he got the wrong picture” is a somewhat inadequate response to all this.
Yes, yes, I know. If it happened in the Herald it would be an issue. But in the blogosphere?
Anyway for those out there who prefer their dead kids Iraqi rather than Israeli, here are some snaps from Shua’le.
They look pretty much alike, really, dead and maimed kids.