I odn’t know if there are people among the members who heard about these very direct reports:
On this blogspot you can read what Salam, a citizen of Bagdad, reports about the situation in Bagdad before and during the invasion and his eyewitness reports day by day right now. And not limited to Bagdad.
Aldebaran.
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
Once again I’d like to remind yoy that this is a debating forum, not a news posting service. And I’m using the term “news” very losely here, as a “blog” can hardly be considered a credible news source.
Care to define the parameters of this debate? Also, keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with copying short excerpts from web sites. It might help to inculde the most relevant issue form that site in your OP.
Everything what Salam pax posts is issue for a debate.
And there is no doubt this person is real although for a long time no one had any clue who he could be and he took enormous risks to post critiques on Hussein on an internet site.
I think you should read a bit.
An eyewitness report is something else the a “newssite”.
It is an amazing direct and historical source because as the journalist he worked for testifies: a very real and reliable one.
You can find a link to the article of this journalist about the identity of Salam Pax in the last posts he wrote on his weblog.
I have no reason at all to think that and the journalist whose translator he was and salam pax himself are fake.
If I thought there was a chance it was a fake, I wouldn’t have posted the link in the first place.
This weblog is famous worldwide… So I wondered why there was nothing mentioned about him on this board.
But if you aren’t interested in genuine messages coming from a citizen of the country the USA/UK invaded…Znd don’t find anything debatable about what he writes… I can’t help that.
Get it through your head.
YOU need to focus the debate. I’m sure that everything on the site is debatable. Just about everything is. But you need to lay down what specific things you want to talk about from that column.
It helps prevent six topics going on in the same thread, which sometimes creates confusion and makes the thread hard to follow. Just pick one item specifically from there. Please.
Well, debate the fact that there is an eye witness in Bagdad reporting directly from the scene.
What value has that for you and don’t you find it a never seen opportunity to gain a direct insight.
Not only in the situation, but in the life of the people and the mentality, how they look at the war and the occupation, the behaviour of the foreigners and the reactions of some of their own.
Like for example when salam takes a taxi and meets a driver who starts talking about throwing a granade to the Americans.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 ::
Scary war story #2
(#1 being the night when our neighborhood was attacked with 20 shells from a tank on the Ameriya main road)
I was trying to get a taxi at 10:30pm last night (which is a stupid and dumb thing to do in the first place – curfew is still at 11:00pm) so this car stops and we agree on a 2000 dinar fare. The moment I sit in the car he starts cursing and swearing at “them”. Suddenly he stops in mid sentence turns to me and asks angrily
just then we pass a US patrol; one humvee and a couple of soldiers on foot. He slows down and looks intensely at them. They are on my side and he leans on me to look out of the window. This is the point when I start wondering whether I will die from the explosion after the this crazyfuck throws the grenade or from the retaliation fire.
He decides to shout stuff and whizzes off.
I think I was in a car with a loony-suicide-fucker last night. I wanted to ask why he wanted to hide a hand grenade in his car but I was really really scared. He just might decide to stick the hand grenade down my throat, because it is Halal to kill those who are agents of the infidel occupier.
What do you do when you are in a car with someone who asks you about the best place to hide a hand grenade?
Now you might say that he is part of that movement which calls itself al-Auda [the return] and is planning attacks here and there (I wish people would stop calling them sporadic but I will get to that in a moment). What makes this guy even more dangerous is that he is not part of the Ba’athi underground plot to re-emerge. He is one of the loonies who have taken the call to Jihad issued by the Imam of the abu-Hanifa mosque seriously. And these people just play so easily into the hands of the Auda. Anyway this auda rumor needs some serious confirmation because I havn’t seen anything, banner or graffiti, that actually names them.
Or when he talks about the shootings at civilians by US troops.
Of course the topic can get a bit messed up if you start discussing all the different items. But I don’t see the problem because the issue here is what goes on there and that is a mess one can’t catch in one single issue at all.
As long as people quote on what they reply when more then one issue at the time is in the debate, I don’t think there will be much confusion possible.
I mean: we do have brains, don’t we?
I only have one single working braincell and that suffices for me to write and read a language I don’t master.
And I’m only half European because half Arab… So what about the whole non Arabs out there?
Hey! Salam Pax is back! I was horribly worried about him/her!
If anyone remembers, raed was blogging up to and until the bombs were falling, then vanished. Good stuff, and worth reading.
I second that, and there’s a new blog from G. in Baghdad (link is on Pax’s site) that looks pretty good too.
OK, I accept that there is an eye witness in Baghdad reporting directly from the scene. It’s very interesting to see what someone is writing during this time. Sort of like Anne Frank or Zlata Filipovic.
Again, what is the Great Debate? If you are just sharing this site, and it’s very interesting and I’m sure there are a ton of people on the Boards that know of it or would be interested in knowing of it, then it should probably be in IMHO.
If you want to debate the real value of one person’s perception of what is occurring around them in how it reflects the reality of what is occurring, then you need to say so.
If you want to debate the veracity of this guy, you need to say so.
If you want to debate a specific occurrance from the blog, then you need to spell out what part you want to debate.
This isn’t really a hard thing to do. Just about everyone else is capable of it.
Quoted from the blog:
… Well… don’t that beat all into a cocked hat.
yes, it does…I wondered what specifically he was talking about with “got screwed” and it must have been about Bremer. Originally under Jay Garner there was this push in setting up a provisional Iraqi government within a certain time, and then Bremer arrived and was downplaying it and mentioning time frames in years. Whoops.
He might have changed his mind by now.
Moderator’s Note: This does not in fact seem to be a debate. If you wish to start on debate on (for example) whether or not the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was and is justified, then please do so.