Something is VERY ODD about that pic.

The guy is trying to shoot that Dragunov left handed (no the image hasn't been mirror imaged, the scope mount is as shown). I own a Dragunov exactly like that one, and shooting it left handed with the factory scope mounted is a massive PITA. It something (being left handed), I learned not to do real quick.

Also, aren't most arabs right handed due to various social taboos?

I wouldn't put too much stock in the NYT guy spotting for the Arab. We all know the NYT would sooner hire Deb Frisch than hire a veteran.

I wish we had a president with the balls of Lincoln. He'd have put the entire staff of the NYT in prison for the duration of the war. This is just another example of the sedition practiced by the NYT. Its also another example of just who todays liberals support.

This action deserves a whole bunch of questions.

Mine at Mind In the Qatar:

What exactly defines courage in this example Mizz McNally?

You freely disregard the lives of your own country's servicemen for the sake of publishing a good picture, but would you vilify them if they defended themselves and accidentally killed the human embodiment of your disregard? Just something I'd like to know....

Ahh...Purple Avenger is left handed. His brain works backwards. That makes sense.

Next article please.

So John-boy,

What is so "correct" or "right" about the picture and the article? Do you think the NYT did the right thing? Is it OK for an american based company to watch and make news and heroes out of an enemy that is bent on killing US soldiers? What do you think? I think you are now beyond ever saying again that you support out troops. Why don't you join Mother Sheehan and Code Pink and send those "freedom fighters" some money? Pathetic.

Bill Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Fidel Castro are left handed too.

Wait!! My daughers a leftie!! Please tell me this isn't genetic.

In all seriousness, I haven't verified the authenticity of the photo and was making a joke, at the Purple Avengers expense. I apologize PA.

In these times, when all is a train wreck, it isn't really time to make any jokes.

As I've stated several times though...I challenge right wing nuts to talk about fact and policy, instead of taking pot shots at radical liberals, then associating the few with many. This is a dead horse, and CY obviously does not want to do engage in serious articles, not lately anyways. I love O'Reilly and The Factor, but I am sad to see he is going to his old formula as well, talking about judges and professors. What can I say? When you have no leg to stand on...you have to talk about that sh#t. As Paul S. Otellini (Intel CEO), once said..."It's easy to get caught up into the he said, she said...Focus on results". We need new leadership who will serve our country instead of themselves.

I can honestly and truely say I didn't support the war in Iraq from day one like many, so I think I can stand ground to criticize the war, more so than others who are now against it now that being against the war is popular. Note...I said the war in "Iraq".

We should be hunting Osama and securing our borders, but I've already discussed that topic.

Though I don't put a lot of stock in Ted Kennedy, as I view him as a radical. I would have to agree with him when he said Iraq will be Bush's Vietnam. That kid is going to have a lot to answer for, when his day comes.

The clock is ticking, and 'ole silver spoon will be a lame duck in a couple more months. It's bad to say that I hope our President becomes a lame duck, but in his case...It is just better than he can't touch or do anything. He's got the Midas touch. Everthing he touches turns to sh#t. Every business he ever ran went belly up. What did you expect he'd do to our government? When all is handed to you, you don't know how to handle money and business affairs. Everything has been spent, used, extended, with nothing to spare. What a waste of resources.

Give me a poor smart kid from the trenches anyday, and he'll bury guys like Bush. A self made man is whom I'd like to take the presidential post. Hopefully we will get somebody to fit that bill, for everyone's sake.

Much like Vietnam our men and women are being stabbed in the back by the democrats who support our enemies. It looks like Johnnie is following the same playbook. Any bets Johnnie is a closet socialist?

In these times, when all is a train wreck, it isn't really time to make any jokes.

Bill Mauldin made a distinguished career of finding humor in disaster. You probably don't even know who he is though...

Nice Try Johnny. We have already seen your colors. You belong with the far left. Sorry. There are good Democrats - middle of the road people. But you are not one of them. You did not say that the NYT should not be publishing, let alone supporting the extremists in Iraq. You obviously thought that was just okey-dokey. Words don't mean much when you sling them around without any real thought behind them. Quick - call Code Pink. Maybe you can join them for the next anti-war rally outside the VA hospital near you.

Hey Johnny, it would not be so funny to you if you were at the recieving end of that Dragunov sniper rifle. There is nothing humorous about that. The NYT and group are a Leftist Rag that is more concerned about selling papers than winning a war.

This pix is a pure pose. Everything about what this "sniper" is doing is wrong. I won't bother to detail all of the problems, but suffice it to say they are numerous.

Further, this sniper/poser is referred to as a member of the Mahdi Army - there is no such thing. There is a rag tag group of idiots and slum dwellers who follow around the fat f Mookie al Sadr, but they are a militia, and more accurately, a bunch of useless idiots.

I only wish this was accurate - Coalition forces wd have taken him, the photographer and half of the bdlg down if this were in fact something other then it is: Terrorist propaganda disseminated by the NYT.

Further, this sniper/poser is referred to as a member of the Mahdi Army - there is no such thing.

Tell that to Casey Sheehan and the other coalition soldiers they have killed. Never underestimate a militia. You seem to forget that another "made-up" army that primarily comprised of militiamen once beat the most powerful nation on earth at that time, and you are Americans because of it.

The Madhi Army isn't very good and will always lose set-piece battles against traditional units, but a bullet from one of their rifles is no less deadly than one from one of ours.

As for those of you cracking on the sniper's poise and pose for various reasons...

Their are no specialized requirements to being a Madhi Army sniper, other than having been born in a certain area, being loyal to a certain cleric, and then being able to find a rifle to put rounds downrange, so lets drop all the "this can't be real because he's doing 'X' wrong" talk.

He is likely not a formally-trained sniper, so trying to compare him to one is completely irrelevant. I have seen people fire both rifles and pistols with unconventional poses and put rounds on target with astonishing accuracy, including pictures ad demonstrations of teh techniques of long-range target shooters from the 1800s who fired while laying on their backs with the barrel running alongside their foot.

As for what would have happened if the U.S. had targetted this building at this time... well, I think that is probably the reason so many journalists have died in this war.

True a bullet will kill if it comes from a trained sniper or not. However if this fine specimin of iraqi terrorists is in the act of firing his weapon he wont be a sniper long.

I am in Iraq working for one of the services as a "security guy"...I have to agree with CY on this one...this guy most likely is shooting at US troops...the TOOL from NYT calls him a sniper and now you are arguing over symantics.

Bottom line is the idiots over at NYT are liberal fanatics selling newspapers to other fanatics...but unfortunatley we have to let them do that because we are Americans and that is their right to do so...

As for the TOOL that took this photo...Jaoa Silva...what can you say about a guy that will sit by an watch a TERRORIST gun down your fellow countrymen...wait until you need help from one of these troop out here...oh wait a minute.. luckily for you he or she will save your sorry ass anyway because they are a Marine, Soldier, Sailor or Airmen with HONOR and REAL courage.

I actually SUPPORT our troops its my job...and I quit a great job to come over here to do this. I didn't do it for money or to get my name in the paper...I did it because I was watching kids half my age (both Iraqi and American) being buthered over here everyday and wanted to do something to help the situation. I talk with soldiers and Iraqi's everyday...these people over here want our help, the troops here are doing a great job and that is what needs to be recognized, not some self gratifying liberal potsmoker with a kodak....Mmmumbles

I am in Iraq right now as well, working in Mookie Al Sadr's stronghold, southern Iraq. That being said, I do not believe that this clown is actually sighting in on coalition forces and if in fact he was doing so, he would probably be spotted prior to shooting and be taken out - this pix is a posed shot, no question.

However, I asked my security manager, a former Brit SAS Sniper Instructor what he thought and he too said this is BS.

Now can even a clown like this take out a coalition soldier? Of course - however, what is disturbing to me about this pix is not what it might convey, but the pure propaganda aspect of it and the wonderment expressed by the NYT over the bravery of their photog.

h, What difference does it make if the guy does not know the "proper way" to kill someone! Follow along, 1. Is he in posession of a Dragunov rifle?
2. Is he pointing it down range?
You guys need to learn something here. It doesn't take a certified S.A.S. approved sniper to pull the trigger. No matter how inadequate his posture is the effect is still the same. Instead of the photographer walking out and and reporting it to the military he lets the guy pull off rounds at our troops. If I was in the area and had witnessed this the NYT would be short one photographer.

The bellicose posturing here only further cements the fact that the right-wing has no idea how to fight a guerilla war. In a war like this you need as much information as you can, any way you can get it. It's why the media talk to everyone in a war, and they don't just print Soviet-style propaganda that parrots whatever the top Generals say. To get information you need access, and you can't get access if you don't present yourself as a neutral observor, at least temporarily. I know it's a difficult concept, a gray moral area. But that gray is the definition of guerilla war, and it's not something black and white right-wingers do well.

And Soviet-style is the right word here, since Russian war journalists kept separate journals for what was actually going on in the war, while they stuff they printed was full or patriotic glory. You can still have that option in America: just watch Fox News if you want to see the sugar-coated war. But the rest of us, including our soldiers, would prefer to have as much information on the enemy as possible.

OK maybe this is going over your head: The point is while this guy can no doubt kill a coalition soldier with this or any other rifle this appears to me to be solely a posed shot - that is my point. If he was pointing down field at soldiers he would already be dead - do you think our soldiers would not notice a freaking sniper rifle sticking out of a window in broad day light??

F'ing A.

First, it is not merely s matter of semantics. The word sniper (often used mistakenly in place of sharpshooter) has specific meaning. I can cut your chest open, split your ribs and work on your heart - does that make me a cardiac surgeon? And just for the education of those who are unlearned in the art of accurate marksmenship - no way in hell can anyone accurately shoot a rifle while the BARRELL is resting upon a hard surface. He is a poseur. The Mahdi wackos get a good photo without risking a real fighter.

Jim, I hate to pick on you, but there are stances specifically that call for the barrel being rested against a hard surface, be it using a barrel-mounted bipod (not uncommon), monopods or shooting sticks (the former on certain WWII-era Japanese combat rifles, the later common today in western and mountian regions by big game hunters) or pistoleers and classical long-range rifle shooters using the Creedmoore position, where the berrel is braced against the leg.

The position and cover used by this Madhi insurgent is not of a top-flight, classically trained sniper, but then, these aren't real soldiers. These are street thugs from a Baghdad slum. If you saw a picture of a L.A. gangbanger about to fire a sniper rifle from this position, who you question the authenticity of the shooter?

Stupid and ineffective doesn't mean inauthentic, and it might just explain why our recent raids against them have been so one-sided.

I'd also like to point out the irony here: you guys wouldn't be able analyze and assess the potency of an insurgency figher, like you are doing at present, were it not for the courage of a NY Times reporter to embed with them. Where else are you going to get a photo like this in the middle of a battle?

I'd also like to point out the irony here: you guys wouldn't be able analyze and assess the potency of an insurgency figher, like you are doing at present, were it not for the courage of a NY Times reporter to embed with them. Where else are you going to get a photo like this in the middle of a battle?

The same place I've picked up a substantial portion of what I've seen: in insurgent video that they took, and that our troops subsequently recovered from their bodies.

Fair enough, but that doesn't dent my overall point. For instance, would you rather Michael Ware of Time magazine not have spent time with insurgents, getting them on video (in masks, of course) discussing their views and motivations for why they do what they do? How does this increased knowledge of the enemy hurt us?

I hope this *gentleman* keep doing this: sticking the barrel out the window, exposed in broad daylight, unsteady firing stance. Makes a poster child at having a short carrer as a sniper.