By now you'll have heard that a handful of conservative blogs -- including Gateway Pundit and Little Green Footballs -- suspected at first or second glance that this image of Iran's recent missile launch had been doctored. It had been: one missile was reduplicated by some enterprising young master of Photoshop. Never mind that the New York Times' website, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times and scores of other daily newspapers ran with the original photograph published without much scrutiny by Agence France-Presse, which obtained it from Iranian state media. Noah Shachtman of the ever-reliable Danger Room compiles a slew of fun parodies here.
Now the Drudge Report discloses that tomorrow's NY Times will show there was further falsification by the Iranian regime:
The missiles tested DID NOT not have 2,000-kilometer range, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Saturday.
Iran DID NOT launch a Shahab-3 missile, able to reach Israel.
It was an older missile that was out of production, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE.
And a video showing what appeared to be many missiles being fired -- is actually one missile, filmed from different angles!
NYT's Bill Broad is planning to quote military insiders.
While it's encouraging that the mullahs feel insecure enough to want to embellish their displays of military prowess, one wonders if this gotcha won't lead to public skepiticism about their weapons capabilities and true intentions. Most Americans, not to mention a host of journalists, haven't yet realized that the 2007 NIE on Iran did not in fact give the all-clear on its continuing nuclear ambition. And consider how much linguistic attention has been paid to whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map" or "erased from the pages of time," when either outcome would probably upset Israelis' weekend plans. (Take a step back from that phrase, itself a holdover from the apocalyptic speechifying of Khomeini, and ask yourself if a Judenrein Levant wouldn't put a smile on Ahadminejad's already goofy face.) Now we have this clownish bluffing by a state that, try though it does to be taken at face value, can't help but be willfully misunderstood time and time again. A tyranny that toils in dead earnest has been made to look ridiculous, yet somehow it's hard to crack a smile.
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