Qana Redux

The EU blog is onto something and I'll leave you to take a look there. But someone sent me some images independently today which appear to depict yet more staging at Qana - while perhaps helping out EU with his current puzzle.

The two images (right and below) look as though they were simply taken in close sequence with the addition of significant flash. But there seems to be a bit of a tell, so I have placed a red box around it in both pictures.

Note at right there is a soldier standing next and apparently slightly behind the fellow with his hand propping himself up on the ground. You'll also note the little ditch and large sizer chunks of rubble around the poor child.

But now look at the red box in the image below (click image to enlarge) - notice that the fellow's hand is all but up against the wall. What I first dismissed as simply minor re-positioning and some cleaning of the area, perhaps flooding out some stones with the high level of flash, appears as though the very same crew took up an entirely different position for the benefit of the photographer. I can't explain all the differences in the image away otherwise - even allowing for a different angle, lighting, etc. The only other explanation I can think of is some strange artifact including the fatigues made its way into the top right image. Perhaps someone has an alternate explanation.

As for EU, what I think he's missing is that the child with the pacifier was underneath another child, consequently, one is in long pants, one in short. He has what look to be video grabs from a TV in that regard. Take a look and compare it to the third and final image below. Actually the whole sequence, of which there are a few more shots, has a bit of a hard time adding up.

Comments

[Mustafa-no-Brain]

I think you guys are right. In the two pictures of green helmet extracting the "baby" there are several points of reference:

1a. In the first the solidier with fatigues has latext gloves that is his hand under the head of the body
1b. In the second that his his hand reach forward
2a. In the first where the red square is, is a wooden beam
2b. In the second below the red square [middle of the pic to the left] you can see the base of the wooden beam
3a.In the first you have two sets of arms in the background, darker one in the very back, lighter one with grey and black clothing
3b. In the second you can see who's arms in the background they belong to

Problem

1. From the angle of the wooden beam base and seeing the outside in the second photo note green helemts body stance / position;

2. In the first photo green helmet's body is in the exact same and and position with nothing more than his head held up.

The Real Problem

1. in the second photo look at green helmets foot and boot is is bent as he is standing in a depression,it is also next to the body's head.In fact his tip of his boot looks like its on a rock that is why it is bent

2. In the first picture his foot is away from the head, there is no rock under the head, there is zero indications of broken ground anywhere. at miminimum there should be a crack in the ground where the tip of his boot is in the first picture if this was flash bright out. Even so the lighting of the body's head is near identical in both shots.

Picture blown up below of all that:

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4418/foogd3.jpg

[Waif]

I noticed the difference in the background around the guy's arm, also. I posted about in at the EU Ref Forum, a week or so ago. I've been looking at the photos, since, and what I think I am seeing is evidence of photoshopping, in the second photo. If you blow up the second pic, you can see a halo around the baby's head, remnants that were not removed by some erasing tool, and there appears to be smearing of the ground, which may have edited out the rocks, shown in the Hajj pic. Whether the second photo was a restaging, or was pieced together, in Photoshop, I can't say, but the two pix side by side are certainly fishy.

I also think the position of Green Helmet's boot, in the Hajj photo (the first one), is peculiar. It's a weird angle for the leg/foot to be in, doesn't it seem so?

[Mustafa-no-Brain]

Good catch. Look very very closely at green helmets hand in the first picture. It is formed in a grip but outside the arm of the body. I like the idea of the ground being photoshopped, all smoothed out and half the baby appearing to be buried under the dirt - looks much more dramatic than the second picture and the body stands out clearer.

The whole thing stinks.

[Phoenix]

Blow up (click on) the second photo and slide up next to the first - the one with the little ditch. Compare the size of green helmet's left shoe/foot with the second photo. The arms are approximately the same size when you compare the pictures - the shoes not. The shoe does *not* fit. It is way out of proportion. It's easy to see the ground has been smudged. There is no detail on the ground even when there is detail elsewhere. (Second shot) Yes, green helmet's hand grip in the second shot is way off.

[ajacksonian]

First photo, see men in ditch, with depth and shadowing. Man behind green helmet rests his hand on side of ditch.

Second photo, see ground become flat, see man rest his hand upon nothing. See bottom of post obsucured, but now obviously below hand level of man resting hand on non-ditch... see the uniform surface of the ground. Differences in tonal qualities apparent as well as color characterstics between dirt in first and compacted clay in second. Messy dirt is replaced by smooth clay. Hezbollah must have some very fast, clean and accurate earthmoving equipment, plus someone to go and level it off, all in an eyeblink.

Watch the media deny any problems with doctoring photographs.

See journalistic ethics thrown out the window... and soon the defenestrations will begin.