Because when you unleash the loons, you never know where they're going to run.

Over the years, the warblogging site LGF has led an online jihad against war zone journalists and specifically Middle Eastern stringers working for wire services, claiming they concoct the news--they fabricate violence--in order to spread terrorist propaganda. That local Arab or Muslim journalists are incapable of telling the truth about breaking news and that every dispatch they write, especially if it's for the AP, and every photo they file, especially if its for Reuters, must be dissected and mulled over and questioned by right-wing bloggers, lots of whom have no expertise in journalism.

This whole deranged online movement provides all sorts of comfort for war-loving bloggers as it allows them to attack and demean journalists and Muslims/Arabs at the same time.

The phony crusade has been on display since the launch of the Gaza incursion, as supposedly sharp-eyed bloggers, thousands of miles away from the action, stand vigil, looking to save the world from fabricated reports of violence. This week the swarm descended and casually accused a journalist of photoshopping a picture from Gaza. Of just making stuff up. Of taking photos of explosions and then digitally doctoring them and then sending them out on the wire service.

Why? Because the media are the enemy. Because that's what Arab/Muslims stringers do. They quote phony Baghdad police chiefs like Jamil Hussein in order to spread insurgent lies. Actually, on second thought, warbloggers would prefer you leave that embarrassing episode alone. (Still waiting for a collective warblogging apology/acknowledgment/retraction on that one.)

Anyway, here's the Gaza photo that set warbloggers all atwitter:

The debris is too big! The mountains look out of place. The photo caption seemed weird. Blah, blah, blah.

Except here's a photo of the exact same explosion from another angle:

So eventually LGF had to call off the hounds and assure everyone that this photo had not been photoshopped, but that warbloggers still needed to scan wire photos and be on the look up for manufactured images of Middle Eastern violence.

Because, y'know, there so little actual violence in the region these days, journalists have to stage it and make it up.

UPDATE: LGF has already launched another media-hating crusade regarding footage aired by CNN from inside Gaza. It was a report featuring a freelance cameraman whose brother and cousin were killed in a rocket attack. The warbloggers are in DEFCON 5 mode because--get this--an anonymous LGF reader, who claimed to be a doctor, announced that a hospital scene from Gaza captured in the report was clearly staged because when a doctor on film performed CPR on a victim, it just looked totally weird.

Normal people, please take two steps back for context: Nearly 800 people have been killed in Gaza the last two weeks, yet warbloggers are focused on launching a anti-media jihad based on the fact that an anonymous reader announced a single scene from a Gaza hospital looked strange.

Behold the right-wing blogosphere.

And just out of curiosity, are there any conservative adults who are the slightest bit concerned about what warbloggers are doing to the online movement? Or are they okay with having these folks running the show?