More New York Times Photo Fraud in War on Terror?

Did the New York Times fake a photo as part of an ongoing effort to undermine America's war on the masterminds of the September 11th attack?

Check out this picture that was published at the New York Times website on January 14, 2006.  It can still be seen here.  The caption reads, "Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border."

According to experts, the "missile" shown at the center of the picture is not a missile at all.  It is the remains of an old artillery shell.  Read the full discussion from Thomas Lifson.  More at Reason.

Obviously the photo is an attempt to gin up anti-U.S. sentiment.  In this missile attack, however, the U.S. was doing exactly what any reasonable person would expect it to do after losing thousands of its citizens and having its Pentagon attacked on September 11, 2001. This attack was aimed directly at a mastermind of the September 11th attack and those who are planning further attacks.  To protest this attack is to wish for the death of the United States of America. 

It is beyond me how the New York Times manages to maintain any circulation at all with this kind of anti-American propaganda.

Hat tips to Michelle Malkin and Lucianne.

Update:  Apparently the fraud goes beyond the New York Times.  The photo is still posted at Yahoo News Photos, but with a caption that describes the shell as "unexploded ordnance."  This is misleading because any normal consumer of news will assume that the "ordnance" has some relationship to the "alleged U.S. air strike" mentioned in the same sentence.  As Powerline points out, much of the damage has already been done because the photo will undoubtedly be reproduced in many places around the world.

Hugh Hewitt sees it as another symptom of a "deep disease" that infects the mainstream media -- a "deep, deep bias that afflicts every elite media operation."  Unfortunately, Hugh is right.  Someday, the mainstream media will be balanced again, but today the mainstream media are still dominated by left-wing agenda journalism that leaves too many errors unnoticed and too many facts unchecked.

Update:  The New York Times picture can still be seen here.  The caption has been updated to read:  "Correction: A picture caption on Saturday with an article about a U.S. airstrike on a village in Pakistan misidentified an unexploded ordinance. It was not the remains of a missile fired at a house." 

Great.  Now please go undo the damage you've unfairly done to America's public image.   Also you might want to talk to your 30 layers of editors and add a few military experts to your fact-checking staff.  Oh -- and if you cure that "deep disease" that Hugh Hewitt is talking about, a lot of these problems will take care of themselves.

More comments at Winds of Change, RightWinged, Sister Toldjah, Iowa Voice, Old Controller, Generation Why, California Yankee, The Strata-Sphere, The Dread Pundit Bluto, and The Jawa Report

Comments

[Haha]

"Fake photos and a right-wing smear debunked!"

[tbizzle]

That round in the photo is a 203mm round fired out of the M110A2 track
mounted artillery gun.

see here:
http://www.pofwah.com.pk/products/images/LARGE/203mmhowhem106.jpg

You can clearly match up the lettering from the NY Times photo to this
photo. Pakistan has these artillery guns available and they have a
range of over 25 miles so it's not inconcievable that there was
additional fire called in after the air strike by ground teams. The
shell does not look old to me. If you look at the unfired photo
round you can see the banding below the yellow markings. In the NY
Times photo you can see the unbanded round with the rifling marks
shown. Hope this helps you out. I don't really think this was some
big liberal conspiracy

[jack]

I don't really think this was some big liberal conspiracy

Agreeded ...just some very sloppy reporting that happen to push the NYT agenda.