If Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple Had Blogs

I've been really quite slow, in blog time, getting to this story. Yesterday afternoon, diarist anthonyLA at dailykos posted this story, about the GOP's wannabe Duke replacement, Howard Kaloogian. AnthonyLA reported that Kaloogian had "posted a photograph on his campaign website which he claims to have recently taken in downtown Baghdad, to show how "calm" and "stable" the city was during his visit." But the photo featured a great many clues abundantly suggesting that it was not, in fact, a picture of anywhere in Iraq. Without any firm conclusions being drawn one way or the other, an intensive search for the truth was undertaken, by a great many people acquainted with the useful investigative properties of Google. Will Bunch and Josh Marshall got caught up in the sleuthing. And the General made his own unique contribution to the story. This morning, jem6x at dailykos posted the indisputable proof that Kaloogian's claim was, to put it in polite Nixonian terms, "inoperative." He found a photo of the exact same location; the exact same architecture, the exact same signs and billboards, featuring the exact same roman letterforms (none arabic). Taken maybe 10 or 15 feet from where Kaloogian's picture had been taken. In the portfolio of a photographer from Turkey. Both pictures are of a street corner in Istanbul. update: Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker reports Kaloogian Blames Iraq Photo Error on Staffer