Short answer - CMYK is probably not a proper color profile for .jpg images
This is a tricky question because it was obvious that the image file was linked to properly, and the missing image block did show up in IE.
The first thought was the image was captured with a non-standard program or the file extension was changed. The bizarre thing is that most of the time IE is more flexible with standards than firefox.
Step one
I opened the folder that the image was in and opened the file in photoshop. The image did show up.
Step two
I saved the image with the save for web photoshop feature that does a good job of stripping away non-standard "gunk".
Success
The image was now visible in both browsers, but I did not know the real cause.
Prologue
Original image was a CMYK color profile
The image was a thumbnail display from a .pdf that it linked to. The image was fairly mangled so I opended the document and took a screen shot of the page that was being used as the placeholder. Wen I went to make some fine adjustments in photoshop, I noticed that the options available to me were for a CMYK file. I am pretty sure this was the original issue.
NOTE: this was not a headache because a few years ago I had a similar issue with import images from absolute adresses into a flash display. The whole time I thought it was a flash coding issue, except it worked on one or two files. I finally noticed when saving for web that some of the files were saved as progressive .jpg. I turned this option off and finally the headache ended
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