Joseph Goebbels Works for Reuters, AP and AFP?

This is very troubling.

The Obsidian Order has a great write-up on what may be going on often in Iraq.

To wit, stringer photographers are perhaps either engaging in staged explosions, or are being notified by the terrorists (no, they're not the politically correct "insurgents"), i.e. the photographers are perhaps on the side of the enemy.

Take the time to skim through the photos, but the meat of this is the analysis.

The stories are inconsistent: one says "flames engulf a car following a nearby car bomb blast in another vehicle", another says "a car just as it explodes".

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?

There's more:

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.

And more evidence of staged mischief:

The theory that the photographers were present in response to an earlier bombing probably does not hold water since the caption says that occured "hours earlier" and "in the same area".

Also, nobody acts in the least concerned or threatened, especially in this still from the video. Looking at that, can you believe there was gunfire in the vicinity just seconds ago?

A refresher for those who don't remember the infamous Joseph Goebbels.

I'm confident the blogosphere will be calling these "new" agencies the propagandists they are if the analyses noted above are shown to be true.

This is disgusting stuff.