Raed has returned

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2003-05-09 06:06am

If anyone was following the blog from Baghdad, Raed has returned to posting. Very interesting stuff.

Some excerpts from recent posts:

Prices of weapons on the market have been going up. At one point you could get a hand grenade for 500 dinars, that’s a quarter of a dollar. A Kalashnikov for $200 and a brand new Uzi for a bit more. These are on display on the roads. In Baghdad-al-Jadida and al-baya districts but the cheapest could be found in Thawra (revolution) district (It used to be caleed Thawra then Saddam now they are calling it al-Sadir district). It is like a militarized zone in Thawra. If you don’t live there you better not go.

With the exception of a newspaper called “new Iraq”, a weekly at the moment because it is privately funded by a number of Iraqi journalists, the rest is tripe. They could be one of the old Iraqi papers: a picture of the leader of X party “amongst his people”, news of the great achievements of that party. Bla bla bla. Good for the peanuts vendors on the street, makes good paper cones.

I still can’t bring myself to sleep upstairs, not that anything too serious happened after that night but I rather sleep under as many walls and roofs as possible, fist size shrapnel gets thru the first wall but might be stopped by the next, seen that and learned my lesson. So the million dollar question is of course “what the fuck happened?”. (Syrian/Lebanese/Iraqi) Fedayeen were somewhere in the area.

It has become a swear word, dirtyfilthy and always followed by a barrage of verbal abuse. Syrian, Lebanese and of course Iraqi sickos who are stupid enough to believe the Jennah-under-martyrs-feet rubbish. They want to die in the name of Allah, so what do they do? Do they stand in front of “kafeer infidel aggressor”? No they don’t because they are chicken shit. They go hide in civilian districts to shoot a single useless mortar shell or a couple of Kalashnikov shots which bounce without any effect on the armored vehicles. But the answer they get to that single shot is a hell of mortars or whatever on all the houses in the area from where the shot came. This has been happening all over Baghdad, and in many places people were not as lucky as we have been here in our block.

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2003-05-09 07:43am

EDIT 1: whoops, my bad, I meant to include a link...
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

EDIT 2: Correction: the author's pen name is Salam Pax; Raed is a friend of his.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2003-05-09 08:02am

hell, I stopped checking his site. thot he died in the bombing.

-re adds bookmark-

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-05-09 08:54am

The dude is sharp--he's got a wonderful talent for cutting through EVERYONE'S bullshit.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2003-05-09 09:27am

quite.

and, Im amused - they're selling porn alongside the weapons in bagdad.