The Ceremonial Display of the Baby

UPDATE: Much more deceit at Hot Air and Michelle's place.

My apologies for the gruesome nature of the photos, but...

We've seen it with Green Helmet Guy many times.

Pluck a tiny body from the wreckage of a bomb site, and instead of immediately covering or removing the victim, take great pains to display the victim to the assembled press. I was trolling the pictures from on Yahoo! from the Middle East today, and found another gross example of this "displaying of the baby."

Here's picture No. 1:

And, the cutline:

A Lebanese youth shows the body of a baby after it was recovered under debris of a destroyed building, attacked late Monday by Israeli forces, in the southern Beirut suburb of Chiah, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2006. The raid on the Muslim southern suburb next to a Christian neighborhood killed at least 16 people, police officials said, as Lebanese civil defense rescuers were still working on recovering the bodies of citizens believed to be trapped under debris and concrete late Tuesday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

AP - Tue Aug 8, 1:14 PM ET

Now, either AP photographer Lefteris Pitarakis is extremely acrobatic, or "Yellow Shirt" stretched out his pulling of the child from the wreckage quite a bit to oblige the photographer.

Here's photo No. 2

A Lebanese youth shows the body of a baby after it was recovered under debris of a destroyed building, attacked late Monday by Israeli forces, in the southern Beirut suburb of Chiah, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2006. The raid on the Muslim southern suburb next to a Christian neighborhood killed at least 16 people, police officials said, as Lebanese civil defense rescuers were still working on recovering the bodies of citizens believed to be trapped under debris and concrete late Tuesday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

AP - Tue Aug 8, 1:17 PM ET

Now, Lefteris Pitarakis would have had to move around the scene and probably climb up a pile of rubble to get this completely different vantage point on the same action. It seems a bit unlikely that "Yellow Shirt's" actions are just a natural part of removing bodies from the rubble. He's displaying the child, just as Green Helmet did, for quite a while before he bothers to take cover his body or remove him from the scene.

Civilian deaths during wartime are always a tragedy, especially those of children. Using those same children as political and P.R. props after their deaths is disgusting.

I just wonder how many other photographers were there, getting the same shot.

UPDATE: One of my commenters offers a word of caution:

Looks to me like the photos could have been take from the same vantage point, but the first one was zoomed in or cropped.

I think he may be right, looking at it closer. The poor child remains on display, but the photographer may not be misbehaving. If it was taken from the same vantage point, it means the photog caught "Yellow Shirt" twice as he was swinging the baby from one side of the crowd to the other.

If that's the case, photographer= all right, "rescue worker"= still trashy.