Guardian: Salam Pax, Baghdad Blogger (MUST READ!)

[grytpype]

As you go into Baghdad from the west there is graffiti on the walls that says "Welcome to the Republic of Darkness and Unemployment".

Baghdad had no electricity for a whole day. Call me the master of all whiners but do you have any idea what it feels like to sleep in 50C?

-- much more --

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1017329,00.html

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1. Salam has been an unfiltered voice in Baghdad

since even before the war began. Interesting perspective.

"Two hours before the dawn call to prayer, in a village still shrouded in silence, Sabah Kerbul's executioners arrived. His father carried an AK-47 assault rifle, as did his brother. And with barely a word spoken, they led the man accused by the village of working as an informer for the Americans behind a house girded with fig trees, vineyards and orange groves. "

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

[NYC]

2. That's an excellent article.

...Keep this image in your head: an American officer stopping you, an Iraqi, from attending the press conference your government is holding.

Earlier in the day I got frisked and the car I was in searched because the colonel or something who has just passed by thought that he didn't like the people who are standing by the car (me) and that I was giving him dirty looks. Habibi, you have no idea how dirty my looks can get, you didn't get one. What you saw was the I-have-been-standing-for-a-whole-hour-in-the-sun. But because you have the power to decide what a look means I got searched. You really should have looked more carefully before you shot the nine-year-old kid in Ramadi only to find out later that it was a water gun he had in his hands. Dirty looks - yeah, totally justified frisking me.