It’s not at all obvious that it’s a fake. Look at this larger version of the photo:
http://hackingthemainframe.com/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=283&pos=2
Click on it to enlarge.
One of the two images is fake, but it’s simply not obvious which one. It could even be that both images are fake.
And anyone who accepts Libertarian’s word as an expert on anything at all deserve their own fate.
When I first saw this picture weeks ago, I thought the whole cardboard sign and the kid’s left hand were all superimposed. Ho-hum. Still, at least I called it as fake 
Images are simply too easy to fake these days to have any confidence whatsoever in their veracity.
I posted Sailor’s animation on another board, where the “original” was being argued over - in five minutes someone posted another version of the pic, saying something completely different (and a board-specific in-joke), that he had faked up in that time!
The real lesson - these days, you can’t trust pics.
That animation is very clearly faked up, showing traces of the “inoffensive” message under the “offensive” message. Shit, if you look at that frame you can read the “saved my dad” message through it.
I did the same thing myself, using the source images posted here, and the result was nowhere near as obvious. The only indication of which image is the original is the end of the KILLED/SAVED – you can see a lighter line where the larger ‘d’ of “saved” has been cloned out. Conclusive enough for me – I wonder why whoever made the animation felt they had to stoop to deception to make their point?
Frankly, what I find sick is the people who would thus slander someone who is fighting, if not (depending on your political viewpoint) against terrorism, still for their safety. Despite the flaws of the photoshopping (which I, as a non-graphic-designer, cannot detect, but I’ll take the word of a number of dopers for it), it is obviously meant to decieve.
Of course, the soldier could have authorized it, but I find that hard to believe.
Except when you clone you don`t get a lighter color, you get the same color as the source. Whover may have doctored the photo should have caught that. Why would just the cloned over (d) in killed/saved be lighter than the rest of the cardbaord?
I didn’t say I’d accept his word on it; I don’t know whether he’s an expert in the field :). I’ll reserve judgment, but I certainly won’t base my conclusions based on my own analysis, since I know for certain that I’m no expert in the field.
And friedo, assuming that I understand Libertarian correctly, he believes we are all part of his God. He asked me to use this specific language to address him when I thought he was being needlessly insulting and aggressive to other posters; though I don’t share his philosophy, I’m happy to respect his wishes in this manner.
Daniel
“If it’s not true, it should be”, huh? My God, you really are an obsessed idiot, aren’t you?
Oooops! I misread your first post, it didn’t say what I thought it did. Sorry, looks like I am the idiot here.
I saw the photo and thought it was a fake, though I’m glad to see the original as well. Still, the guy who Photoshopped it deserved to be pitted, if only for the boneheaded move of making Lance Cpl. Ted J. Boudreaux Jr. look like an insensitive ass.
And as long as we’re in the Pit, I’d like to ask Left Hand of Dorkness how much of a tithe I need to offer so he would deliver a good smiting to Libertarian. Just out of curiousity, mind you… 
It is worse than that. Much worse.
This is the sort of thing that gets endless play amongst my Saudi coworkers, and throughout the Arab world. This area is driven by rumors.
This sort of thing could very well set off attacks that could kill people.
After reading your post I thought about it and I realize what happened: I had to adjust one so the sizes would match. So I set one to be somewhat transparent and adjusted the size. Then I forgot to turn the transparency OFF and make the layer 100% opaque. I feel dumb because I could have easily gone back to check the original and I would have caught the error before posting the image. And, boy, am I glad my mistake was not in the direction of making the soldier look bad rather than the other way around, because I would have been accused of doing it in bad faith and we would have some unpleasantness. Sorry for the mistake.
It’s not like the sign appears as one flat colour. It is photographed in three-dimensional space with a single light source, so there’s shading involved. Look at the faked picture. You’ll notice that there’s a dark-to-light gradient from the top left to the bottom right. Look just to the right of the “d” on “killed”, and you’ll see the cloned line covering up the old “d”. To use the cloning tool, you have to pick a spot to take your sample from. We can tell that the retoucher cloned from a “blank” spot that was further right than the spot they are covering up, because the shading matches that area of the board. Unless the surface is uniformly illuminated, it’s impossible to perfectly clone over a spot.
If I were attempting it, I would have cloned from as close a spot as possible to the target (because, apart from shading, the perspective of the corrugation lines is an issue,) onto a new layer. Then the brightness/contrast of the new layer could be adjusted until it was a closer match to the underlying layer. Only around three minutes of extra work, but it would look much more natural.
I didn’t realize that you’d done that yourself, or I would have been gentler. I can see how that’s an easy mistake to make (especially since I had to go through the same steps to fix the scale.) Sorry for the (absurd, knowing the source) suggestion there was deliberate deceit involved. ('Cuz I think you’re swell.) 
Ask yourself the same question, because you are as much God as I am. Just be aware that so is Lib, and sometimes God’s Left Hand doesn’t know what His right is doing, I suspect.
Come to think of it, God’s Left Hand would’ve been a good username, too…
Daniel
Thank you, Daniel. You’re absolutely right.
To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell which one is the fake, or if they’re both fake. Neither side’s arguments have been entirely convincing. What about the soldier in question? What is he saying? Is there any evidence that he saved the kids’ dad and sister? From what? What about the kids? Can they be tracked down? The photographer?
Isn’t there ANY foolproof way of telling when something’s been photoshopped?
It may be a joke, it may not be. Keep in mind, though, that what you may be offended at in the relative safety of your home is something that gives a guy facing live enemy ammunition day in and day out a chuckle and a reason (for better or worse) to forget, momentarily, the imminent danger he is in 24/7, thousands of miles from home.
My point being, that under “normal” circumstances, this may likely be a joke he does not make. He is in an extereme environment and his sense of humor, among other things, may be a little out of whack. I wouldn’t judge him as a person based solely on one possibly faked photograph.
Paul in Saudi makes an excellent point, but I would suggest that whoever would retaliate has already been pushed over the edge a long time ago, and that this is not the straw to break the camels back, so to speak.
