Notice anything weird about this 'New York Times' Situation Room photo?

Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote an op-ed in his “Conscience of a Liberal” column Monday evening.

The piece is titled “Terror Politics” and reflects on how nonsensical it is for Republicans to tout their anti-terror bona fides (9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, and Obama was the president who oversaw the killing of Osama bin Laden) and how that backwards logic explains why Trump saw a spike in the polls after the terror attack in Paris.

It is a small, somber take on the sad state of politics today.

And it includes an iconic photo, of Obama, Clinton, Biden and other members of the national security team in the Situation Room, receiving updates on the progress of the Navy’s SEAL Team Six, which found and killed the orchestrator of the 9/11 attacks. You know the one:

Except Krugman used a doctored image instead of the original one. Here’s a screengrab of his post:

Do you see how the two images are different, if only by a whisker? Still don’t see it? Does this help?

That photo apparently came from a facetious slideshow of military cats by Slate in 2011.

This was confirmed by Krugman himself, who noted in an update: “Yes, I know there’s a cat in the picture; I took it from Slate, ‘The Cats of War.’ I’ve used that image before, to lighten things up slightly. Apparently I didn’t succeed.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

This post has been updated to reflect Krugman’s comments.

Danielle Wiener-Bronner is a news reporter.

 
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