is this real or fake?

[MarkG]

it was sent to me via mail...

[Ari Rahikkala]

OK, this proves that I'm no more perverse than anyone else in this world...

[Ari Rahikkala]

And BTW, it doesn't seem too real to me...

[rah]

Something funny with this one.

http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020222.asp

CBS’s Bob Schieffer claimed on Imus in the Morning that when President Ronald Reagan visited the Korean DMZ he failed to remove the lens cap from his binoculars, but as pictures shown by RushLimbaugh.com and FNC prove, that was a problem President Bill Clinton really had.

On the February 20 Imus in the Morning radio program simulcast on MSNBC, on the occasion of President George W. Bush going to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea, Schieffer recalled his own visits to the DMZ. MRC analyst Ken Shepherd took down his memories:
Schieffer: "I’ve been up there a couple of times, it’s quite an impressive thing. I went up there once with George Schultz when he was Secretary of State and once actually with Jimmy Carter when he was President. The interesting thing is they always, you know, have these big binoculars that the President can look through and you look across the DMZ and you see the, you can see the communists on the other side and Ronald Reagan when he was President-"
Don Imus quipped: "Or you could have looked at the press corps frankly, you wouldn’t need the binoculars."
Schieffer, missing Imus’s hit on journalists, blithely continued: "Exactly. Well, what happened with Reagan was they gave him the binoculars and he looked through them and Reagan knew, there’s never been a bad picture of Ronald Reagan, after all he did have the Hollywood background, he looked through the binoculars and so forth and then somebody realized they hadn’t taken the caps off. I mean this is for sure, this is for real. And so they had a little glitch there while they took ‘em down but he wasn’t about to let on when they first gave them to him."

Last night to end FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume, fill-in anchor Tony Snow showed side by side photos of Clinton in 1993 and George W. Bush a few days ago as each looked north through binoculars when they were at the DMZ. Clinton’s binoculars had the lens caps on, Bush’s did not. Rush Limbaugh’s Web site has posted the side-by-side photos:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_022102/content/

dumb_at_the_dmz.guest.html

I can’t guarantee that Reagan didn’t have the same problem as Clinton, but I’d put my money on Schieffer getting it wrong, especially since he had a whole explanative narrative going about Reagan playing a movie role. And if Reagan did have a lense cap problem, Clinton is a much newer example Schieffer could have cited for his humorous anecdote.

*********

I also found a few other pictures posted, but not this exact one. Which proves nothing, but since this flap has been done before, it could have given someone an idea. The links to rushlimbaugh were all bad links.

[rah]

And another photo.

Considering all the places I checked, there was no mention of the one you posted Mark, which makes it seem a bit more suspicious.

[Rogan Josh]

It doesn't look faked. If it is it is very well done.

But even if it is real, it doesn't really say much because the press are snapping away at the rate of dozens of pics a second. So even if it only took him a really brief glance before realizing the caps were on, someone would have got the picture. And there is no shame in lifting them to your eyes before realizing.

[Kropotkin]

So maybe Bush forgot to take of the lenseprotection, moves the binoculars to his eyes and in the glimpse of a moment before he discovers his mistake someone takes a photo. No big deal. Anyone can make that kind of mistake.

Even I.

[rah]

Yes, I agree that there wouldn't be much shame, but I searched over a 100 sites. If this picture is real, it is pretty funny and You would think people would be having a field day with it. That's the reason I'm suspicious. I'm sure if we wait another week, it will start appearing in more places, and finally the urban legend sites will start looking into it.

RAH
It does look well done.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Its a fake. Look around the presidents eye. You can see the spot of focused light which has come through the scope.

[Jaguar]

Lefty's right.

[Urban Ranger]

Looks real.

[H Tower]

somebody hates you mark if they send you such large pictures

[chequita guevara]

Something's definately not right. The focused light ought to be on the Prez's eyes, not below them. Heck, if the lens caps were off, it seems unlikely that there would be that patch of brightness there at all.

However, I don't see anything wrong with it, even if it were true. I have occassionally glanced into a pair of binocculars only to discover I've forgotten to remove the cap. It's humorous, but it doesn't mean anything

[Capt Dizle]

George W. Bush can see through the caps. He was only using binocculars to maintain his cover, but he blew it because the caps were on. Now the truth is out, George W. Bush is actually Superman.

[Hurricane]

This reminds me of the pic of Dubya holding a book upside down.

And just for the record, this is also a fake.Link