Did Drudge doctor anti-Kerry photos?

BradBlog suggests he has. As Brad's server is having issues today - perhaps it caught a draft? - I'm posting this message Brad just sent me, authored by him.
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"Drudge's Orange Alert/Yellow Journalism"

Has it come to this? Doctored pictures on the world wide web's #1 news website in order to try and defeat John Kerry?

Drudge has been running this uncredited photo since last night on his website a with the headline "KERRY ON ORANGE ALERT: SKIN TRANSITION ON EVE OF DEBATE"...



Though I was unable to find the source of Drudge's original photo (Drudge doesn't give the source for them, and he's run lifted and doctored photos before, as recently as during the Democratic Convention - ) an examination of other news photos from the same event on September 27th in Spring Green, WI, clearly suggests Drudge's photo is a phony.

This one is from Reuters..!



Note the bald man to the right of Kerry is the same man on the left of Kerry in the doctored Drudge photo (why did Drudge flip the photo? Hmmmm.)

And this one also from Reuters...



And this one from AP where though Kerry looks a bit more tan, it's nothing like the one that Drudge is running...



Note the woman in red behind Kerry in both this and the Drudge photo.

And just for good measure -- what a world -- here's an AP photo of Bush from September 24 -- undoctored -- but appearing rather orange himself...


I can't believe, frankly, with thousands dead, dying and beheaded in Iraq and the largest budget deficit in the history of mankind in this country that we're wasting our time with this kind of bullshit. Such is the case of the world, I guess, when running against the "Anything to Win" man in the White House and his cronies in the Rightwing Smear Media.

From the BRAD BLOG at www.BradFriedman.com/BradBlog where we've been knocked off line for the last 14 hours, but hope to be back up soon! Urgh!