LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Staff at a California school were scratching their heads on Friday after their facility mysteriously appeared as a backdrop during John McCain's Republican Convention speech.
A giant image of Walter Reed Middle School in the Los Angeles suburb of North Hollywood was one of several pictures projected onto a backdrop at the Republican Convention on Thursday as McCain addressed delegates.
However ABC and online reports have speculated McCain's campaign could have intended to show a picture of the prestigious Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. rather than a relatively obscure school in California.
A McCain campaign spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the reasons for the selection of the photo.
But Walter Reed Middle School's principal Donna Tobin said in a statement that use of the school's image had come as a surprise.
"It has been brought to the school's attention that a picture of the front of our school, Walter Reed Middle School, was used as a backdrop at the Republican National Convention," Tobin said.
"Permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school's picture an endorsement of any political party or view."
Walter Reed hospital was at the center of a national scandal in 2007 after revelations of negligent patient care at the facility.
Reports revealed how wounded soldiers convalescing at the hospital were often lost in a bureaucratic morass as outpatients, or housed in rooms with moldy walls, holes in the ceiling and infestations of rodents and cockroaches.
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