War and the press

I've been discussing with various folks how staged the felling of that statue of Saddam Hussein might or might not have been. The camera angles and the fact that this all happened right next to the hotel housing most of the journalists made many suspicious. This web page gives one angle on it: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm -- it claims that some of the Iraqis photographed greeting the Marines with glee... were shipped in by the Pentagon on Sunday, and the plaza "teeming" with people never had more than 150 people in it. (We had several times more in front of John Harvard's statue for the protest the day after the war began.)

The militia member in that bottom right photo... it reminds me of the "spontaneous" "Florida" protesters during the 2000 ballot recount process, who were actually shipped in from various Republican campaigns.

Bleah.