This picture, if taken at face value, seemingly confirms the worst of what is rumored about U.S. servicemen in Iraq — not only has the Marine pictured killed a man (presumably a civilian), but he has also impregnated the dead man's daughter, then proudly and grinningly advertised his deeds, humiliating the Iraqi family even more by enlisting two of their young sons as unwitting accomplices. But should the photograph be taken at face value, or was it the product of some kind of a staged set-up? Is the photograph genuine or the product of digital manipulation? If real, was it on the level, was it a joke pulled off by the Marine pictured, or was the Marine — like the two Iraqi boys in the picture — the victim of a callous prank?
LCpl. Boudreaux has told reporters that the sign in the picture originally read "Welcome Marines!" but was altered by someone else. He has not, however, (publicly) produced a version of the original photograph or identified who might have altered it. (If the photo was indeed manipulated, someone involved in the process had to be sufficiently acquainted with Boudreaux to be able to match his name and rank with his picture.)
This photo has surfaced numerous times with various slogans that make it obvious that people are changing the text there. Snopes is run by idiots with an evil agenda.
This isn't the only such example of Snopes' bias. They shrug off complaints saying that validity of the statement is determined by the framing synopsis.
As someone framed it on another thread: "On some debunks, they exagerate by calling something "False" when after you read the thing, you find some truth and some exageration."
They still refuse to call Hillary a liar over the "Sir Edmund Hillary" comment. They say that maybe her mom was lying. Claim: Hillary Clinton was named after world-famous mountain climber Sir Edmund Hillary. Status: Probably not.
Hillary Clinton didn't technically claim the story of how she came by her first name was literally true (at least in any of the accounts we've found); she said her mother told her it was true — a minor but important distinction given how often parents make up harmless little fibs to amuse their children or misremember past events.
Claim: John Kerry's Vietnam War service medals (a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts) were earned under "fishy" circumstances.
Status: False.
Snopes: "T Kerry donates millions to fringe political groups through the Tides" = Urban Myth
Claim: Photograph shows school buses caught in a flooded New Orleans parking lot. Status: True.
"Whether this photograph truly represents a lost opportunity to have evacuated a substantial number of New Orleans residents ahead of Hurricane Katrina is difficult to assess."
Online Rumor Mill Spins Its Own Myth(Snopes.com's leftwing bias undercuts its credibility)
Yet Snopes seems to have different standards in evaluating stories involving conservatives. Take a bizarre new rumor asserting that Attorney General John Ashcroft believes that calico cats are a sign of the devil. This claim was first made in November by liberal financial writer Andrew Tobias, the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, on his Website (andrewtobias.com). To say the least, Tobias was vague about his sources, writing only that "I got this odd story from someone who was definitely in a position to know and then confirmed it with someone else, also in a position to know." Given the stringent Mikkelson standards about anonymous sources in evaluating Metcalf's story, one would have expected them to classify the preposterous Tobias story as false. Instead, they labeled it undetermined. "What the game is here — if indeed there is one — we can't fathom," they wrote of the silly Tobias smear of Ashcroft, a cum laude graduate of Yale with a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.To be sure, Snopes has quelled some rumors about President George W. Bush, such as the one about him having the lowest IQ of modern presidents. But it has split hairs trying to protect Clinton and Al Gore. For instance, Snopes flags the claim that Gore said he "invented" the Internet as false, and signaled it with a red light. The reason given is that Gore actually said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet." Never mind that many dictionaries and thesauruses list the words "invent" and "create" as synonyms. Snopes also lists as false the claim that "the Clinton administration failed to track down the perpetrators of several terrorist attacks against Americans." The Mikkelsons echo the dubious claim by Clinton's defenders that the missile strike in Afghanistan in 1998, widely thought to have been launched to distract the public from the Monica Lewinsky affair, reportedly "missed bin Laden by a few hours" and cite a Washington Post story claiming that the federal antiterrorism budget tripled to $6.7 billion on Clinton's watch.
But the biggest criticism Snopes has attracted for defending the Clintons involves Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and the Black Panthers. Differing sharply from news and historical accounts, and even from another urban-legends Website, TruthOrFiction.com, Snopes maintains that it is false that "Hillary Clinton played a significant role in defending Black Panthers accused of torturing and murdering Alex Rackley."
