April 11, 2004

That was a real Marine, and the sign was real (update: or was it?)

Remember the picture of the supposed Marine with the cardboard sign? ("Lcpl Boudreaux Killed my Dad. then he Knocked up my Sister!") It turns out that it was probably a real sign held up by a real Marine reservist. See the story in the Marine Times.

Would that it were true, but here's a fake based on the original sign: "Lcpl Boudreaux saved my Dad. then he rescued my Sister!"

The only problem is the handwriting is internally inconsistent, for instance in the lower-case "d"s. Nice try, but let's do better next time.

There's a higher-res version of the original picture here.

Supposedly the Marines will finish their investigation in a week or two, and I'll provide an update when that's released.

UPDATE: I just spoke with Jeff Pool, the Marine Forces Reserve spokesman mentioned in the Marine Corps Times article. He indicated that all aspects of this event are being investigated, and that it's still open whether the photo was altered or not. The Marine Corps Times article had implied that the photo itself was not in question, only the information on the sign. So, it might turn out that the photo itself was altered. The results of the investigation are expected shortly, perhaps even today.

UPDATE 2: There's a long discussion about this here.

UPDATE 3: Boudreaux says the sign was doctored; the Marines have reopened their investigation.

This post was originally just about the new fake. A minute after posting it I found the Marine Times story, so this post underwent a remarkable change.

Posted to Iraq at April 11, 2004 09:50 PM

Comments

As much as I deplore the US occupation of Iraq, you've got this backwards. The original photo said "Boudreaux saved my dad and rescued my sister." You can tell by superimposing the two pictures. The most obvious trace of the original photo is to the right of the "d" in "killed." You can see a lighter line covering the larger "d" from "saved," because the retoucher cloned from an area further right and down, where the shading is lighter. This makes it perfectly clear which version is the original.

Posted by: Larry Mudd at April 14, 2004 11:35 AM

Here's an animated superimposition to illustrate:

Posted by: Larry Mudd at April 14, 2004 01:22 PM

Yes, I thought it was obvious, so I made a page about it http://www.biodef.org/Sign/

Posted by: Afgom at April 16, 2004 05:04 AM

Yes, I thought it was obvious, so I made a page about it http://www.biodef.org/Sign/

Posted by: Afgom at April 16, 2004 05:05 AM