One of the world’s most deplorable (and unfortunately, untried) war criminals, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, died in the early hours of the morning today, aged 93 years.  McNamara’s New York Times’ obituary names him “the most influential defense secretary of the 20th century,” a fitting epithet for a man who was in many ways the proto-Rumsfeld, an apparently cold-blooded technocrat brought to Washington by John F. Kennedy.  McNamara’s talent - systems analysis - birthed the tactical rationale for General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay’s firebombing of 67 Japanese cities during World War II.

McNamara: LeMay was focused on only one thing: target destruction. Most Air Force Generals can tell you how many planes they had, how many tons of bombs they dropped, or whatever the hell it was.

But, he was the only person that I knew in the senior command of the Air Force who focused solely on the loss of his crews per unit of target destruction. I was on the island of Guam in his command in March of 1945. In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children.

Errol Morris: Were you aware this was going to happen?

McNamara: Well, I was part of a mechanism that in a sense recommended it. I analyzed bombing operations, and how to make them more efficient. i.e. Not more efficient in the sense of killing more, but more efficient in weakening the adversary.

I wrote one report analyzing the efficiency of the B—29 operations. The B—29 could get above the fighter aircraft and above the air defense, so the loss rate would be much less. The problem was the accuracy was also much less.

Now I don’t want to suggest that it was my report that led to, I’ll call it, the firebombing. It isn’t that I’m trying to absolve myself of blame. I don’t want to suggest that it was I who put in LeMay’s mind that his operations were totally inefficient and had to be drastically changed. But, anyhow, that’s what he did. He took the B—29s down to 5,000 feet and he decided to bomb with firebombs.

…

50 square miles of Tokyo were burned. Tokyo was a wooden city, and when we dropped these firebombs, it just burned it.

Errol Morris: The choice of incendiary bombs, where did that come from?

McNamara: I think the issue is not so much incendiary bombs. I think the issue is: in order to win a war should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way? LeMay’s answer would be clearly “Yes.”

“McNamara, do you mean to say that instead of killing 100,000, burning to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in that one night, we should have burned to death a lesser number or none? And then had our soldiers cross the beaches in Tokyo and been slaughtered in the tens of thousands? Is that what you’re proposing? Is that moral? Is that wise?”

Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay’s command.

Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.

I don’t fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The U.S.—Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history - kamikaze pilots, suicide, unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time - and today - has not really grappled with what are, I’ll call it, “the rules of war.” Was there a rule then that said you shouldn’t bomb, shouldn’t kill, shouldn’t burn to death 100,000 civilians in one night?

LeMay said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

- The Fog of War (2003)

McNamara posing “But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” to his audience creates an excellent opportunity to frame his involvement in the Vietnam War from the his own perspective.  If McNamara’s collaboration in the firebombing of Japan is excusable because the United States won World War II (and, given McNamara never faced charges as a war criminal, we must assume this is the international consensus), then what are we to make of his role in the millions of deaths concomitant with Vietnam?  If McNamara isn’t a war criminal because the United States won World War II, then isn’t Operation Rolling Thunder enough by itself to condemn McNamara as a consequence of America’s defeat in Vietnam?

The answer, of course, is that morality does not depend on, and cannot be dictated by, success or failure, and that McNamara engaged in criminal activity in both wars.  One must conclude that, on some level, McNamara realized this.  Thus, in 2003 we were treated to the self-serving, contrived mea culpa that is The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.  It seems fitting that, on the occasion of the man’s death, we revisit the film.

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Half-truths and obfuscations, the remaining smoke from an artillery barrage of twisted statistics fired in self-defense, shroud the Facts, those tiny riflemen of Truth, from the observers’ eyes.  These observers strain to discern the Forces of Truth through the choking smog, catching ghost-like glimpses of limbs and outlines of figures, but never focusing on a single identifiable form.  Perhaps their eyes are slightly out of focus, struggling to see through a bit of accumulated tear-water, present either from the irritating gas of the broken artillery shells, the effect of an eighty-five year old man’s crocodile tears, or from the wisps of somber, sober music floating in the atmosphere, unsettling in their disturbing beauty.

This is The Fog of War, an aptly-named movie, the title taken as such from the military term for the ambiguity that descends upon a battlefield, the uncertainty about self and enemy, about Good and Evil, the kind of mist where men lose their moral bearings and become unmoored, free radicals in a dubious ethical soup.  Robert McNamara comes across as steadfast in his portrayal of himself as a capable military leader who became lost in the thick of the fog of war in Vietnam, and who bears little of the responsibility for his actions during his tenure as Secretary of Defense.  To borrow a line from A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, if McNamara believes what he says in the film, he “must still be missing in the mist.”  That is, if there was any fog, smoke, or mist in McNamara’s Washington to begin with.

Throughout the documentary there are precious few interruptions by the interviewer.  It is quite clear from the presentation that this film is McNamara’s story; where he takes the story is his prerogative, shaped by his goals for telling it.  McNamara makes this practice quite clear, at one point remarking that his personal policy has always been to “never answer the question that is asked of you -  answer the question you wish had been asked of you.”

Equally telling is McNamara’s answer to a gentle probing by the interviewer on the subject of his reputation while Secretary of Defense as an arrogant technocrat who wouldn’t ever admit to being wrong.  McNamara responds (in the original 1960s interview cited by the interviewer) that while he’s certainly been wrong on occasion, that “I’m not going to tell you when I’m wrong.”

Nor does he.  As a documentary the plot is simply McNamara’s life story, encountered in a series of “lessons” which give the overall structure to the film.  Culled from the interviews, these lessons help the viewer navigate the story McNamara tells, though many of them are so vague as to seemingly contradict both one another and McNamara’s message, such as “Rationality will not save us.” “Get the data,” and “Belief and seeing are both often wrong.”

One particular portion of the film which proves problematic for McNamara is the subject of the firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War.  McNamara was a member of Statistical Control, a portion of the then-US Army’s Air Force which analyzed mountains of data in an attempt to both increase tactical efficiency and reduce casualties.  While with Statistical Control, McNamara wrote a report stating that the high-altitude bombing of Japan by B-29s was grossly inefficient, despite the bombers being designed to operate from that altitude to evade anti-aircraft fire.  General Curtis LeMay, who McNamara characterized as “focused solely on loss of crews per unit of target destruction,” subsequently ordered the low-altitude firebombing of Tokyo, likely based adjusting the ratio of casualties incurred to damage inflicted by firebombs on a wooden city.  McNamara states he “doesn’t want to suggest” it was his report which lead to the firebombing (although it was certainly the type of statistical research LeMay would have devoured), but this statement comes off more as false modesty than wishing to distance himself from the atrocities.

McNamara, who participated in the post-bombing debrief, related a story about a bomber captain angry over a lost wingman.  The captain was upset that the bombers had been ordered to fly so low when they could operate from high altitude.  LeMay responded to the captain by stating,  “You lost your wingman, but we destroyed Tokyo.” While McNamara does not take responsibility for this destruction, he states that, had the United States lost WWII to Japan, he and LeMay would have been prosecuted for “acting as war criminals.”  He also raised a question, “What makes it immoral if you lose, but not if you win?”  Unfortunately, he seems to view himself as exempted from needing an answer because most Americans likely viewed the action, as McNamara himself seems to, as a necessary evil.  Of engaging in necessary evil McNamara later states “recognize you will have to engage in evil - but minimize it.”

This unrepentant attitude toward over the firebombing of Tokyo mirrors McNamara’s attitude on Vietnam.  Much of it he simply won’t discuss, though it was the defining moment of his life and his career.  What he does say is largely geared toward blame-avoidance.  On the subject of the use of Agent Orange, Mcnamara states “Let’s look at the law - which chemicals are acceptable in a time of war and which are not?,” which best illustrates McNamara’s devotion to the quantifiable, or the the letter of the law over the overriding spirit of it.  When asked whose responsibility the war was, he simply throws President Johnson under the bus by claiming ultimate responsibility rests with the President, and engages in a “counter-factual”, supposin’ that, had Kennedy lived, the war likely would not have been continued.  He also points out less than 50% of casualties occurred on his watch, though he does not mention that it was also on his watch that the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, for good or ill, was cemented.  Finally, when asked why he did not speak out against the war after being fired by Johnson for difference of opinion, McNamara simply would not engage the subject, “You don’t know how inflammatory my words can appear,” he said, adding “I’d rather be damned if I don’t [than damned if I do].”

In terms of the film as a piece of cinematic work, few documentaries will match this one in visual or oral power.  Of particular note, and meriting particular praise, is the technique of utilizing computer-enhanced photo montages in sequence with music to lend fluidity and near-action to the still media.  No mere licensing of the patented “Ken Burns pan-and-scan,” the camera seemingly moves through some of the images as if zooming in or moving within the photograph, a technique both mildly disconcerting and fascinating to watch.  This process also acts as an interesting foil to the use of archival footage throughout the film.  As mentioned, the Philip Glass soundtrack is a shifting tone of grey-ish atmosphere, a translucent, but not transparent, layer hovering over the film, perpetuating the half-lit murkiness.  It would be quite worthwhile to listen to merely as a composition in its own right.

Rating this film is difficult.  Viewed solely as a film, The Fog of War is an outstanding piece of work.  The skilled splicing of archival footage, contemporary interview with McNamara, still photographs, and the brooding score creates a captivating, powerful film well worth the 2004 Oscar for Best Documentary and the many other awards showered upon it.

However, as a piece of self-serving, legacy-attuned propaganda, I was quite disappointed.  When McNamara refuses to discuss his inaction after his firing as Secretary of Defense, and when he adheres to an observation of the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it, the fog of war begins to swirl into the audience, to creep into the lungs and respiratory tracts, impeding breathing and inhibiting clear judgment.  This is a man portraying himself as a participant on a battlefield, choked with smoke and dust and hung with clouds of blood, while the truth is that his position as Secretary of Defense offered him one of the best vantage points in the world, one which should have allowed him to see down through the fog to the situation on the ground in Vietnam.  If there is a lesson to be learned by McNamara’s use of the fog of war analogy, it is that McNamara himself either lacked the sight to see through the fog, or that his ability to judge the situation based on what he saw was insufficient to the task at hand.  In either case, McNamara failed.  This movie is an attempt to obscure that fact, and to consign it to a foggy battlefield on another continent nearly half a century ago.  By all means, watch this movie.  But when you do, use your eyes to see clearly the riflemen in the trees, concealed by the fog.

The last few months I was in Iraq I was stationed on this tiny-ass FOB (FOB Givens, on the border with Jordan) way out in BFE. There was a mosque right next to our perimeter, and the mosque’s minaret overlooked our entire position, which was somewhat unsettling for us.

The Minaret overlooking the FOB.

At the time, I was working a 12-on, 12-off schedule. For twelve hours, from 1800-0600, I stood watch in the COC (Command Operations Center), monitoring the satellite uplink and the shortwave radios, and (since the Sergeant of the Guard liked catch a few Zs at night) regularly conducting radio checks with the guards posted on the roofs of our buildings. Most of the time I was one of five or so people awake on the entire FOB, which was a bit disconcerting in the event that anything seriously ill went down in the night.

Looking toward the Jordanian border, marked by the lights just beyond the structure in the middle ground, at night.

I’ve always been a night owl, so the late shift didn’t bother me. I was posted on that watch because I was a digital communications guy, not a radioman, so there wasn’t really anything else for me to do on the FOB, making the job was mine more or less by default. It was something of a vote of confidence in my sense of personal responsibility, since I was directly responsible for keeping us in contact with Camp KV, the next nearest base, which was over two hours away. Help would be a long time in getting to us, should something really bad happen, but apparently I enjoyed enough of the platoon commander’s trust to be the one guy who absolutely had to remain awake through the entire night.

The longest part of the night was always 0300-0500. The platoon commander sometimes stayed awake until 0200, but by zero three the last guard shift had taken their posts and just about everyone else on the FOB was asleep. I’d call the guard towers every so often to make sure no one was drowsy, or in need of coffee, but other than that I was generally left to my own devices. I read books on politics and issues of The Atlantic my dad regularly sent me, listened to music on my laptop, and stepped outside every so often for a tobacco snack. Cigarettes were cheap out there. I could get two packs of Sumers and a two-liter of Syrian orange soda for under two bucks at the local Iraqi truck stop, and my habit had grown over the deployment to about two and a half packs per day.

The minaret at night [at center], marked by the green and blue lights.

My habit was to get a radio check with the other base just before 0500. Around that time, the muezzin at the mosque would begin chanting the adhān for Fajr, the prayer at sunrise. I loved to go stand outside under the slowly lightening sky and smoke, listening to the eerily beautiful call. Though I didn’t know the meaning at the time, the last line of the adhān is “As-salatu khairum minannaum” - “Prayer is better than sleep.” The call to prayer always filled me with a sense of peace, because, ironically, an hour after the call began my relief would show up, and I’d retire to my rack in the squad bay for a few hours of sleep. For me, the call represented the end of the last hour of the day I could enjoy as my own, uninterrupted by the demands of others, the oppressive and ever-present heat of day, or the noise of a lively squadbay intruding into my fitful sleep as I lay beneath my poncho liner.

Given the events which unfolded yesterday in Iran and carried on into the night, and finding myself awake at this early hour of the morning, I feel it somehow appropriate to remember in my own prayers the Iranians struggling for a greater role for civil society in their country. And although I don’t smoke anymore, before I go to bed I’ll listen to the adhān again and remember what my life was like five years ago in that corner of the world. I hope the events of the next few days change the political climate in the Middle East for good in a way my own country hasn’t accomplished in the six years we’ve been meddling over there.

The tumult in Iran has lasted late into the night, and yet, here in America, the cable news networks are firmly in fire-and-forget weekend programming mode. Larry King was on during his regularly scheduled slot this evening, MSNBC is running it’s standard “documentaries” on prison life, and CSPAN-3 was airing an interview with former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who has been dead for over ten years.

Meanwhile, here’s the main page of CNN.com, which might as well be a representative sample of America’s perspective on the world:

That’s right. A (counter?-)revolution may well be brewing in Iran, and in CNN’s best judgment, Americans should be more interested in the bankruptcy of a national chain of amusement parks.

Sometimes I marvel at the extent of our national self-absorption. Is any other country on Earth as staggeringly ignorant and dangerously influential as ours?

The recent ban of trans fatty acids (commonly known as “trans fat”) by the City of New York is such a mockery of the American public and our system of government that it would require more space than I have available to address each flaw in the collective judgment of the New York City Board of Health.

The health effects of a quantitative intake of trans fat aren’t really debatable - once one considers the fact that until as recently as the early 1990s trans fat wasn’t viewed as a significant threat to the physical well-being of the ever-consuming public - but that really isn’t the issue I care to raise. If sufficient evidence indicates that trans fat is dangerous when consumed in significant quantities, I can understand a need to inform the public about the detrimental effects of a diet rich in trans fat. What I don’t agree with is the need to ban the consumption of it entirely.

What concerns me most, what annoyingly chafes my libertarian (please note the lowercase “L”) sensibilities, is that any government, no matter if it is city, state, or federal, feels it has the authority to legislate what may justifiably be consumed as food by the consenting populace. What we eat, beyond the questions of pesticides on produce and the handling of actual foodstuffs prior to the purchase by the consumer, should be matter of personal choice. With the exception for ensuring the general public is not poisoned by unsanitary conditions at the processing plants or during shipment, the essential freedoms engendered by the Bill of Rights should allow Americans the choice - whether ill-advised or not - the food they eat.

One can raise several questions which take into account various aspects where this freedom may be dangerous to the consumer, and naturally such situations require attention and appropriate action.

Nutritional education is essential and should be started at an early age. Schools have become the easiest way to disseminate such information, just as most schools now handle the sexual and drug-awareness education of children, matters once reserved to the attention (or inattention) of parents. While there is a dietary education system already in place for much of the country, the effectiveness of that program is certainly open to debate, especially as the rates of dietary-related disease continue to rise. I submit that this is a failure of the system as it stands and not an opening for the encroachment of the government into the civil liberties of Americans in regard to their food consumption. If an American citizen chooses a diet rich in fast food and other products of questionable nutritional value, it should merely be the duty of the government to inform that individual in advance, through prior education and requiring the posting of nutritional information by food purveyors, of the danger to their health posed by such activity.

Of course, there are children to consider, particularly children of parents incapable of providing them with proper nourishment. Unfortunately, with or without the trans fat legislation, this will always be the case until: a) an application and approval process is established for an official license to have children (which might not be such a bad idea after all), and b) a proper oversight and enforcement agency is developed to ensure all parents provide their children with the proper level of nutrition. The likelihood of either of these suggestions coming to fruition is of course minuscule at best.

I am amused when individuals develop a sense of self-righteousness about the “poison” in the food their children are exposed to and yet who would not stop to consider much of the mental poison that permeates our culture. In reality, which is more dangerous to the development of a child - the harmful ingredients in certain foods, or the glamorization of a life of crime, violence, abuse of women, and illicit drug use through certain types of popular music or motion pictures? As a parent, which would you rather give your child, a Krispy Kreme doughnut or the latest 50 Cent album? Which product is more dangerous? Which should be more strictly regulated?

As a matter of legality, we cannot ban 50 Cent and his cronies from making and selling albums because their rights to do so are protected under the First Amendment. They are using their freedom of speech to make an “artistic” statement in the form of music (although the musicality is considered open to debate by some). We can control, to an extent, the distribution of these products through a ratings system, but a complete ban on the expression of such “artists” would never hold up in court.

I suggest, then, that any company or individual involved in activity that would be endangered or altered by this trans fat ban file suit against the City of New York for a violation of their First Amendment rights. Common consensus is that culinarians - the bakers, butchers, chefs, and restaurateurs who provide us with the (edible) products of their self-expression - are artists of a certain degree. To infringe upon the artistic expression of an individual or group of individuals would constitute an unlawful suspension of such rights, particularly as it applies to the restaurant sector of the industry.

Why not parallel the regulation of the food and beverage industry with the “regulation” of the motion picture and music industries by developing a ratings scheme for food stuffs, restaurants, and bakeries? If that seems a daunting suggestion, I suggest that the enforcement of the trans fat ban hardly is an easy one, either.

A ratings system would not only allow the food providers the latitude to use whatever foodstuffs they required (with subsequent effect on their rating), but would create several niche business opportunities for restaurateurs interested in filling the demand for healthy eateries. A top rating in a variety of categories would be a selling point for chefs and restaurant owners, much as high scores in crash tests are for automobile manufacturers. The roll-out of such a ratings system would also be an opportunity for organizations like the FDA and American Heart Association to educate the public on their intake of the food available to them.

In the end it comes down to how much we care to allow the government to influence our lives. Do we tolerate regulations and legislation that provide a safety net for individuals incapable of fending for themselves, despite the restriction they create in the lives of the rest of the citizenry? Is there a certain level of food safety that we as a society need to ensure is met by all food providers, just as we require emissions and safety regulation for vehicles?

At what point do we draw the line, or do we continually allow the government the latitude to decide what is best for us, collectively, with no respect for our greater rights as individuals? When do we say that the needs of a group outweigh the rights of each individual?

Like it or not, this is about more than just food. This is another battleground in the struggle with the government for control over your body and your personal freedom.

Some time ago it came to my attention that a photograph of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s widow, Constanze, had surfaced in Altötting, Germany, a small town in Bavaria, the southeastern most state in the country. The photograph, a copy of an original daguerreotype, was believed to be one of the oldest surviving photographs in Bavaria. Constanze Mozart was said to be the left-most figure in the photograph (which appears at right), the elderly lady in black widow’s garb.

The BBC reported that the photograph had been found back on the 7th of this month, and the article remains on-line for viewing. Before reading any further, I suggest you check out the article to familiarize yourself with the story.

Sadly, it seems someone has put one over on the ‘Beeb.

A few experts have weighed in on the claim, and it appears that the photograph in question does not contain the image of Constanze Mozart for a variety of reasons. I was particularly amused to find out that this isn’t even the first time this particular photograph has been “found.” More on that particular bit of information later on in the story.

The most damning evidence in the case regards the technological state of photography at the time the picture supposedly was taken. One of, if not the earliest of outdoor portraits on record, taken by the pioneering Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot (and displayed at right), dates from 1842, the year Constanze Mozart died.

The reason for the exactness of the dates stems from the issue of exposure time, which, for a daguerreotype in the 1840s still amounted to around three minutes in length. This was significantly decreased from the previous exposures of twenty minutes, but certainly too much for an image of such clarity to be taken at the time. During this period the subjects of the photograph had to remain perfectly still, which is easy if one is photographing fruit or a landscape, but people, even the extremely patient folks of yesteryear, would need to consciously exert quite a bit of self-control to not move their head for three minutes, let alone a hand or elbow. Heaven forbid someone should sneeze.

When motion disturbance is exhibited in early photography, it tends to take the form of a blank white space, not the streaky image we are more familiar with today. This is because the methods of photography weren’t yet advanced enough to even register motion. In fact, the lenses needed for such outdoor photography hadn’t yet been invented by the time this photograph had been taken. Joseph Petzval, the inventor of the optics necessary for clear images in outdoor photography, made his findings in 1841, which, along with other substantiating evidence, makes it extremely unlikely that the visage of Constanze Mozart appears in the photograph as claimed.

The corroborating blow to this story comes from Agnes Shelby, author of Constanze, Mozart’s Beloved. By the time the photograph was taken Conztanze Mozart was already unable to travel due to particularly bad arthritis. Furthermore, it appears that her last communication with Max Keller, who supposedly was her host when the photograph was taken, occurred some fourteen years previously. Constanze was a meticulous diarist, and no record of either correspondence or travel to visit Keller exists after 1826, the year her second husband died.

The final blow to this story is delivered by a Dr. Michael Lorenz, from the Institute of Musicology at the University of Vienna, Austria. In an email to the blog Sounds & Fury, the site which has done the most to expose this hoax, Dr. Lorenz supplies the following juicy nugget:

“The ‘newly discovered’ picture of Constanze Mozart has already been published twice [emphasis mine] in the 1950s, the last time in an article by E. H. Mueller von Asow in the Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, March 1958, p. 93. For decades it has been known as a hoax among Mozart experts.”

Far be it for little old me to accuse the BBC of being taken in by the oldest trick in the book, but it certainly does appear that they fell for this one hook, line, and sinker. I’ll admit, the idea of Constanze Mozart having her picture taken was pretty exciting. In fact, I shared the story with Jo the morning after I read the original BBC article, and both she and I agreed that an actual existing photograph of Constanze was incredibly cool. I added that I had originally thought that it was fake, stating:

“When I first read the headline, I was like, “But they didn’t have cameras when Mozart was alive.”

And then I read it, and I felt a little stoopid.”

I might not have known exactly why I was right to believe something was out of whack, but I’ve gotta say, I don’t feel so “stoopid” anymore.

If anything, I’m actually more excited about this story now than I was when I actually did think it was Constanze. Who the heck is the lady in the picture? Photography experts think the photo dates not from the 1840s, or even 1850s, but from the 1870s. Constanze would have been dead for about thirty years by that point, and though I haven’t checked the dates, and maybe I should, just to be safe, I’m willing to bet Keller, her “host” at the time the picture was allegedly taken, was, too.

This entire event has not only captured my imagination, but it has completely superseded the Paul is Dead and Cottingley Fairies hoaxes as my favorite attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. I might believe in vampires, ghosts, and a bunch of other completely silly stuff, but the blatant attempt to get away with resurfacing an already exposed hoax and passing it off as new completely takes the cake. If I come across any more details related to the photograph or the hoax, they will be posted here.