What Osama Bin Laden Doesn't Look Like Today

by Michael Jones · 2010-01-18 07:48:00 UTC
Topics:

Bin LadenLooks like the Federal Bureau of Investigation knows how to get its comedy on. Either that, or a graphic designer was really just looking to cut some corners.

Over the weekend the FBI gave the U.S. State Department an image of what they thought Osama Bin Laden would look like now, trying to account for the aging process over the last several years. Turns out that living as a terrorist on the run high in the mountains makes one look ... like a Spanish member of Parliament?

The FBI admitted over the weekend that their updated photo of Bin Laden was not what it seemed. Yes, there were some good intentions behind the photo, but in the end this story turns out to be an FBI -- and a Photoshop -- fail.

A forensic expert with the FBI, in trying to define the features of what a 52-year-old Osama Bin Laden might look like, ended up just swiping an image of a 52-year-old man from a Google image search. Better yet? The photo that was swiped from Google ended up being that of a Spanish politician -- Gaspar Llamazares, a member of the Communist Party of Spain and a former leader of Spain's United Left.

It's kind of like the FBI was playing that Conan O'Brien game, "If they mated." According to the Times Online, "Llamazares’s grey hair, jaw line and forehead had been simply cut and pasted from an old campaign photograph by an FBI technician." Ah, the perils of Photoshop.

Llamazares, for his part, didn't take the news too kindly. "I was surprised and angered because it's the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist," Llamazares said. "It's almost like out of a comedy if it didn't deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens' security."

After the FBI admitted the blunder, the U.S. State Department pulled the photo. And we assume that at least one FBI employee is going to have a really tough Monday at work (possibly his or her last).

Photo credit: TPM

Michael Jones
PREVIOUS STORY:
Texted Donations to Haiti Delayed
NEXT STORY:
A letter from Bettina Siegel, "Pink Slime" petition creator

COMMENTS (1)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.