Paper tigers

Today's Drudge Report has a quite a story. It links to a news story telling about an Iraqi militant group's claim to have kidnapped an American soldier. That story reports that

The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back. The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless, and the photo's authenticity could not be confirmed.

What's really amazing are the photos accompanying the Drudge story. I'm reproducing them here. The first photo is the one the purported kidnappers released to show that they've captured an American soldier: This second photo shows a toy soldier, still in his box, with all the paraphenalia: And this last photo is a close up of the doll's face: You don't need to be a forensic specialist to spot the similarities. Apparently at least some of the terrorists in Iraq have been reduced to stealing dolls in lieu of real targets. Frankly, when your terrorists become delusional, I think you're heading to victory. In addition to being amusing and gratifying in its own right, this story also ties in perfectly with a blog posting I pointed to the other day (courtesy of Little Green Footballs), in which an astute blogger realized that the same clearly staged photo of a car bomb going off was being used repeatedly by different news outlets to support stories about purportedly separate bombing incidents. UPDATE: Check out this very funny spoof of this story at Power Line. UPDATE II: More funny spoofs at PalmTree Pundit and Brain Droppings.