The Islamic Hostage Barbie Hoax as
Instapundit has dubbed it (i.e. that hoax photo of a
captured U.S. soldier) is now all over the blogosphere. It seems quite clear that it was an action figure in the photo, not an American soldier. But it's not clear to me where this photo originally came from. Where is this mysterious Islamic website that the picture was posted on? If we knew that it would be a lot easier to tell if it was meant as a joke, or as a serious (though absurd) threat.
Anyway, as I've been browsing the web I've already come across a lot of photo parodies of the hoax. Here are a few that I've found so far:
From
The Templar Pundit, Hostage Barbie:
From
EtherHouse, Team America:
From
Power Line, Elmo Captured:
And from
Ludicrosity, Rumsfeld Decides:
Comments
Never mind ...
There's a website that's been around for years and years that presents evidence that Bert is pure evil. You can read his cannibal cookbook, explore his connections with alien abductions, read about his attempted rape of Prairie Dawn, and see all kinds of pictures of him hanging out with history's most despicable people.
One picture created for the website shows Bin Laden and Bert together. Well, after 9/11, certain middle eastern persons decided to celebrate by taking to the streets with posters of their hero. A local print shop (in Egypt I believe, or maybe Pakistan) cashed in by quickly pulling some pics of Bin Laden off the internet and printing them out on posterboard. The printer didn't realize that Bert was in one of the pics with Bin Laden, and that poster ended up being carried through the streets by jubilant al qaeda supporters.
So the picture is real in the sense that people really were carrying it through the streets, oblivious to the origin and meaning of the yellow puppet chatting with their holy warrior hero guy. The picture you might see of a Middle Eastern man holding up a poster with Bert and Bin Laden on it is real; it really happened.
Whether the meeting ever actually took place between Bin Laden and Bert is a matter of speculation, though.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1176621
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/tests/hoaxphototest2.html
(it's an example of a real photo)