You don't really need side by side evidence with the "original" to see that the repeating patterns in this smoke do not appear natural in any way but I'll agree with you that no one will admit that there's definitive proof of this alteration until and unless and original is displayed.
There ought to be a way of overlaying the negative image of the pattern which has been repeated on top of the places to which it has been copied. Line it up perfectly, and the smoke should disappear perfectly - leaving a pure gray or black area with essentially no character to it at all.More to the point, there is the question of ground truth - prove that there is (or is not) bomb damage everywhere that the smoke image suggests, and the Photoshop hypothesis can be rejected (or accepted) with high confidence. Are relevant post-attack satellite or aerial recce photos available to compare to the damage pattern suggested in the suspect image?