I guess The Democratic Party couldn’t find a photograph of a US veteran that had the right attitude for their web site’s page slamming the Bush administration for not supporting the troops enough.

So they found a picture of a Canadian soldier, digitally removed the badge from his beret, and used that instead (see updates below; turns out the original photographer edited the picture). Michelle Malkin has details: DNC supports vets…but from which country?

Someone (mardukhai) tipped me off about this too, and I was preparing a post before I knew Michelle had already broken it. Because I hate for all this work to go to waste, here’s the screenshot of their page, linked above:

Here’s the photoshopped image:

And here’s a zoomed-in version showing the incredibly obvious rubber-stamping and blurring of the badge area:

This is how they show us the depth of their caring and support for US soldiers—with a faked image of a member of another country’s military.

UPDATE at 10/7/06 8:01:58 pm:

LGF reader MeanMrMustard discovered the original:

UPDATE at 10/7/06 8:25:26 pm:

Here’s our Canadian soldier in a better mood, no longer fretting about the ill treatment he’s received from the Republicans. (Hat tip: Catttt.)

UPDATE at 10/7/06 9:32:08 pm:

There is also a version of this photo posted at iStockPhoto that has been photoshopped to remove the badge, so it’s possible that the DNC didn’t do the alteration themselves, but went searching for a picture of a soldier looking grim and seized on this one without noticing (or apparently, caring) that it wasn’t a US soldier.

UPDATE at 10/7/06 10:10:18 pm:

Florida Cracker makes a similar observation:

LGF is claiming a Democratic photoshop on the cap insignia, but iStock’s photo is without it. Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence (as I need to keep telling my own self). They went for a free iStock photo of a soldier, and had no clue what an American one looked like.

UPDATE at 10/8/06 8:55:38 am:

I believe the badge was probably removed before uploading to iStockPhoto because they have a policy of not accepting photos with trademarks or identifying marks, which they specifically define to include military decorations.

UPDATE at 10/8/06 9:24:13 am:

Just received this email from the photographer:

Hi,

Some of you asked me about the photo in question. I am the one who took these pictures. So to clarify some things:

I am selling my photos at Istockphoto.com which is by the way a nice and affordable site for buying photographs.

So the Democratic Party should have bought the photo on this site. Yes, he is a canadian soldier. Now, Istockphoto doesn’t accept photographs wich contain certain copyrighted elements like brand names, insignia, etc. Therefore I myself got rid of the insignia on the soldiers cap when I put it on for sale.

Regarding the second photo, on which the same soldier is smiling , the insignia is there on the cap, but if you zoom on it, you will see that it is blurred out, so copyrighted elements are not visible. Again I did that myself because of the above mentioned reason.

I hope this clarifies some things,

Best regards,
Arpad Benedek

And please, if you use my photos, buy them at Istockphoto.com They are copyrighted.

Thanks for the note, Arpad. (And I did indeed purchase the smiling soldier photo above.)