Photos Don't Lie

Dear Indigna,

Remember that firefight over in Iraq where we said the target was a terrorist hideout and the other guys said it was a mosque? This week Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld showed some pictures of weapons that he said were stored at the location in question to “prove” that it had been a weapons cache after all. Are those pix for real? Should we believe Rummy?

?????????
Heartland, KS

Dear ????????,

First of all, you should unwaveringly believe with all the conviction of your soul every word uttered by our government, or else you want the terrorists to win! I hope I won’t have to report you to the NSA!

That said, of course those pix are for real! Pictures don’t lie, haven’t you heard that? And they make for some mighty handy evidence, let me tell you. For example, Howard Kaloogian, a Republican congressional candidate running for Randy Cunningham’s vacated seat in the San Diego area, posted on his website a photo of a peaceful intersection crowded with happy, healthy shoppers that proves definitively that the streets of Baghdad are perfectly safe and life is totally normal for those folks. Sure, a group of bloggers (clearly a terrorist sleeper cell) “proved” that the photo actually depicted an intersection in Istanbul, Turkey, but that doesn’t invalidate the congressman-to-be’s point!

Photos can even serve to get you goods and services at no cost. For example, my neighbor had this big tree that kept dropping leaves and pollen and pine cones and stuff into my yard, but he wouldn’t trim it because he’s a communist. Here’s a copy of the photo I sent to the feds of him burying a suitcase nuke under that tree so that they would come and remove it for me, free of charge!


Even I have benefited from photographic evidence. I totally changed the dynamics of my divorce when I sent these photos of weapons of mass destruction that I found in my (now ex-) husband’s garage! Of course, he shipped them to Syria just before the cops arrived.