If you find one, be sure to post the address for all of us.

But would you want him to be the naked man walking around the locker room? You could then confirm that the rest of his hair matches his eyebrows.

sig by Syren and bouncy by IceCat

*barfs*
Thanks, Hobbs. I really needed *that* mental picture this early in the morning.

You are so welcomed....

and if I ever meet the man I'm going to take a razor to those eyebrows....

sig by Syren and bouncy by IceCat

More competition for the good spots.

"To educate a man in mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society." -- Theodore Roosevelt

Some additional snippets worth mentioning in the first article:

Suki Dardarian (deputy managing editor of The Seattle Times) said that as Mr. Silverman (managing editor of The A.P.) and Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.'s executive editor, responded to the concerns, the editors realized that some questions were impossible to answer. For example, she said, the editors understood that it was much easier to add up the number of dead than to determine how many hospitals received power on a particular day or how many schools were built.

Mr. Silverman said the wire service was covering Iraq "as accurately as we can" while "also trying to keep our people out of harm's way."

"The main obstacle we face," he said, "is the severe limitation on our movement and our ability to get out and report. It's very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel."

Iraq remains the most dangerous place in the world to work as a journalist, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least 13 media workers have been killed in Iraq so far this year, bringing the total to 50 since the war began in 2003.

Conclusion: The hazards of being a journalist in Iraq affects the content we receive.

---

Regarding the second article, I wonder if it's really a success story.

Life in Sadr city, a sprawling slum of 2.5 million people, is dominated by the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose face is on posters plastered everywhere. At police checkpoints, unarmed men from the Sadr Bureau wearing yellow shirts and black pants enforce security, keeping car bombs and foreign fighters out.

Despite the lack of terrorist violence, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers constantly find bodies dumped in industrial areas, bound, blindfolded and shoeless. American commanders say Sadr controls a "punishment committee" that enforces vigilante justice against the cleric's opponents and those who violate religious strictures, such as those who drink alcohol and men who go without beards. "There's some intimidation that is ongoing," (Lt. Col.) Luck said.

Here, in Sadr City, it appears that the local Shiite warlord, Muqtada al-Sadr, is consolidating his power (through means that includes murder) and pragmatically biding his time until the Americans leave (whereas before, he encouraged the fight against the Americans). Is this really a success story? It seems that he is little better than Saddam himself, even if he does keep out foreign fighters and keeps a truce with the Americans.

Conclusion: Success might be relative.

Handcrafted by RollDdice

Conclusion: The hazards of being a journalist in Iraq affects the content we receive.

Nope, that was all misdirection in the story. The AP buried the lede (the most important information in the story). Here it is:

Mr. Silverman also said the wire service would make more effort to flag articles that look beyond the breaking news. As it turned out, he said, most of the information in the anonymous e-mail message had been reported by The A.P., but the details had been buried in articles or the articles had been overlooked.

In other words, it isn't that the AP isn't reporting these events, but that they're not making it into your local paper -- like the Sadr City piece, for example.

As far as Sadr City goes, I agree that it proves that success is relative. I think the proper model to use in envisioning Iraq is America circa 1786, when people opposed to the prevailing post-war orthodoxy had to flee for their lives ... and the situation was so bad everywhere that the ex-colonies decided to hold a convention to figure out a way to make things less dangerous.

It would be nice if we could use America circa 1970 as a model, but it just isn't going to happen. America needed 200 years on its own to get there. Iraq will need a few more years on its own, too.

Difference between al-Sadr and Saddam? al-Sadr didn't invade Iran and Kuwait. If Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait, he'd still be oppressing the Kurds and Shi'ites to this day.

Thanks for the clarification on the AP piece.

AP has a fast running "breaking news" link I sometimes follow (TBO AP News), with new stories popping up almost by the minute that you can catch before it shows up elsewhere. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet. I started tracking it when rumors came out about Rehnquist resigning. Based on your post, I would guess that local news services have to pick and choose among these (which are hard enough to keep up with).

Here's a sample over the last 25 minutes:
• 08/16 09:15 pm Northwest Has Spent Nearly $1 Million in Lobbying This Year
• 08/16 09:14 pm Looming NWA Strike Leaves Travelers Wary
• 08/16 09:09 pm Windows Users Battle New Computer Worm One Week After Microsoft Disclosed Security Flaw
• 08/16 09:01 pm Trade Group Announces Policy to Limit Soft Drinks in Schools
• 08/16 08:59 pm Rumsfeld: Iraq Constitution Delay Not Helpful in Fight Against Insurgents
• 08/16 08:58 pm Former Lobbyists Plead Innocent to Security Disclosures
• 08/16 08:57 pm Rumsfeld: Iraq Constitution Delay Not Helpful in Fight Against Insurgents
• 08/16 08:51 pm Air Safety Abroad Not Always Up to U.S. Standards, Ex-Federal Investigator Says
• 08/16 08:50 pm U.S. Pushing for Comprehensive Limits on Chinese Imports of Clothing and Textiles

---

No, al-Sadr isn't a Saddam - yet. He has the hallmarks of an early Saddam, though, ruthlessly dispatching his political opponents. Another difference is al-Sadr seems to have sort of a local theocracy going, and it's probably not one where women get many freedoms (unlike freedoms many of them had during early Saddam days, prior to Gulf War I). And the men - just don't be caught clean-shaven.

Handcrafted by RollDdice

Behold the power of OT.

Yhanks for the interesting articles Ayak!

"Them people had to be pretty dumb to make their camp in a riverbed." - Rudy Boesch

LAST EDITED ON 08-16-05 AT 07:45 PM (EST)

to post this link:
http://www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

As read about in today's paper:
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/ny-etbag4384950aug16,0,6173158.story

Interesting reading from a woman who lives in Iraq.

"We forget that Baghdad had been a thriving metropolis just like us before the war," Kefgen said.

The Kuwait War, that is. Baghdad was the most Western city in the Middle East in 1990 (at least in the Sunni portions; it wasn't supposed to be safe to go into the Shi'ite slums). But it suffered terribly under the sanctions, which is why the systems collapsed so completely.

One of my acquaintances worked for KBR right after the war. He said that the Iraqis expected that, once Saddam was gone, then overnight Baghdad would return to where it was in 1990. Of course, it couldn't, because the systems hadn't had any maintenance in over ten years, so the war damage was very hard to repair. Combine that with the fact that the U.S. focused on trying to fix up the Shi'ite slums, and you have a recipe for unhappiness among the Sunni.

If these two women really believe that Baghdad was a thriving metropolis in 2002, they must be working as brain donors.

they drew attention to the blog. I haven't read much of it yet but perspective from inside is what interests me. I don't care much for the idea of making it into a show.

Thanks for the links, moonbaby.

Who else hasn't heard of the Green Republic? Interesting.

Handcrafted by RollDdice

Thanks Ayak....

As I said in the other thread there was a report on a Iraqi contractor working in Sadr City on his own on a water/sewer project but he lost a brother and a few workers to insurgents because they thought they were working with the Americans.

I would love to see that this work but from what I've seen it's still not going well from my point of view. I hope that we hear more like this so it changes my mind but I so worry about Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and people like him once we leave or if he turns again or if he is just buying time for something else.

sig by Syren and bouncy by IceCat