Celebrations in Iraq: Deja Vu
Here are some images from the celebration in Iraq:
Can you tell which one is the “real” one, which demonstrates how thousands of Iraqis are celebrating Saddam’s downfall? Well, both or neither may be. The one on the left is from April, during the staged statue-toppling event, where the U.S. press willingly went along with a U.S. military event where crowds of Iraqis came to watch the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. 
We found out only later that there were just dozens, not hundreds or thousands, of Iraqis gathered, that it was U.S. soldiers, and not Iraqis, who pulled down the statue, and that the few Iraqis who were pictured were actually members of a group the U.S. military had brought in themselves. But the press obligingly took photos close-in and upward to make it appear as if there were far more people than there really were.
The photo on the right, meanwhile, was from today’s “massive” celebrations–and the look of them was very, very close to the staged photos taken some time back. Not that I doubt that there are Iraqis who are celebrating, but the question becomes how many and who. Looking at newspapers, I have noticed that the photos accompanying almost every story are of the same group of a dozen or so Communist Party Iraqis celebrating, taken from different angles (see photo at right).
A few other photos have been taken and published, if you look for them; here are a few. Look closely and see if you don’t see a striking similarity between them:
Pretty much every image I have seen so far is of just a few people at a time. I have not seen a single photo of an actual crowd. And yet the vivid impression that the press has been giving is one of thousands of Iraqis parading through the streets, a scene repeated throughout Iraq.
So forgive me for being a bit skeptical, as we have seen this before.
As a footnote, the Dow and NASDAQ are not seeing the huge boosts the press has been predicting, and it is only a matter of time before the next few soldiers get killed and the daily grind in that regard continues.
I remember the U.S. governments complaints that when Iraq showed pictures of prisoners it was violating the Geneva convention. Apparently they don’t mind doing it to advance their own interests — Saddam’s capture has produced a wave of images, including his medical examination. Please!
Your comparison of the photos of the statue toppling compared to the photos of soccer celebrations misses one key point. While the statue toppling event was from a single location, the celebration photos show many different people, in many different locations. Cumulatively they show a country wide celebration. Whereas the statue toppling event merely shows the same people, in the same location from many different angles.
Mharb:
You might want to check the date on the blog post. The photos are not showing a soccer victory celebration, this was from when Saddam was captured. And while the photos could have been snapshots of a huge celebration, they might also have been representative of a tiny, muted one. I know you were thinking of the soccer event and so in that light you would be correct in that the celebrations were indeed large… but in the case of the Saddam capture “celebration” images, there was great doubt for several reasons: (1) the US government had faked “large” celebrations before, with the help of the media; (2) there was great political motivation to induce such fakery; and (3) the photos seen were all similar: small clumps of people, usually shot from a low angle so you could not see the whole street scene, but clearly you are intended to believe it was crowded with like people.