The Messopotamian, a new blogger from Iraq. He calls himself alaa.
"I suppose that I must introduce myself a little. I am a man, in middle age, alas, which brings to my mind the famous Arab verse which I translate very imperfectly: “ Oh how I wish that youth returns one day so that I may tell him the evil doings of old age”. I have a family, boys and a girl whom I love so much and about whose security and future I care more that anything else in the world. I am a professional (an engineer), practicing my profession and quite busy at that. I cannot pretend to be a typical specimen of an “Ordinary Iraqi”, but a fairly typical middle class professional Baghdadi. I believe quite honestly that my views and attitudes are quite common amongst this particular class. But one cannot elaborate further at this stage without becoming boring (“a pain in the ass” as many a genteel American would politely put it), so more and more will come out “Inshallah (Gods Willing)”, as time unfold."
These voices are now free voices. And they are our "primary sources" to what is happening in Iraq. We add them to our daily dose of mainstream media. Consider, compare and contrast.
"I note that most of my visitors are american. This is natural and welcom really. American public opinion is a matter of life and death to us here, at this particular time. The "enemy" ( let us call them that at the moment and they include some Iraqis too, to be absolutely honest ), is doing his damn best to influence american and western public opinion. He has people monitoring, watching, relaying back information. He has allies, especially amongst the other non-iraqi arabs. We don't really like to be too hard on our arab "brothers", but we are really angry with them now. The just don't seem to care one little bit about our safety and future.This dancing, over wrecked vehicles, he discovers is most graphic and effective. Any ordinary american watching this on T.V. is likely to be very upset. The enemy is past master at this. I mean he may not be very briliant militarily, but when it comes to psychological torture, they are the greatest masters of the "art" in human history. I bet you anything that for each operation carried out in a certain well known area by now, a chorus is prepared and asked to go and dance for the benifit of photographers of the press, most likely notified of the show before hand."
He is now listed in our "Iraq blog" links. Visit him. Say hello.
-bear
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