Soldier Picture Follow-Up

This is good. Some guy has created a program that lets you put whatever text you want on the sign held by those kids posing in the desert with an American soldier.
Also, Salon.com recently had an article about this picture, although I didn't think it was a particularly well researched article. The author tried to argue that the new ease with which images can be manipulated somehow poses a dangerous threat. It contains statements such as:

There was a time when photographs were synonymous with truth -- when you could be sure that what you saw in a picture actually occurred.

Oh, really? What period in history was that? Images have always been manipulated, and people have always known it can be done.

Then he warns that a doctored photo might be used for political dirty tricks, going on to state:

If a doctored photo ever does lead to the defeat of a political candidate or some other disaster -- puts the wrong guy in jail, say -- one immediate consequence might be a quick decline in the trust we have in pictures.

Reading this, I can only assume he doesn't know anything about the history of photography. What about the Tydings Affair, when Senator Tydings lost his 1950 Senate reelection bid because of a doctored photo? And William Randolph Hearst, of course, was notorious for using fake (or misleading) pictures in his newspapers for political purposes.

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