Free Republic

David Warren comes out and says something that’s been my privately held belief for quite some time: 'Salam Pax' Plays Americans for Fools in Iraq . What we can know, just by reading his blog, is that this Salam is up to no good. He is spreading "inside views" of the new Iraq, not only to the blogosphere, but directly among the journalists still encamped at the Meridian (formerly Palestine, formerly Meridian) hotel. Not the "embeds" who've gone home after remarkable learning experiences, but those "hacks" not yet transferred to the next breaking news story, and so still kicking around...

The star of the blog 'Where is Raed?' is part of an anti-Western conspiracy "Salam Pax" is rising as one of the media stars in postwar Iraq. He began blogging from Baghdad well before the war, and has come back sporadically since. (He calls his blog "Where is Raed?") He is the darling of fellow bloggers in the West, who light up with links whenever he appears on the Web. He has been written about in the New Yorker magazine and elsewhere, and his jottings copied into the Guardian in the Britain. Not bad for a person whose very existence...

Online diarists are flooding the Web with battle news, analysis and debateHe calls himself Salam Pax — peace in Arabic and Latin, respectively. He claims to be an Iraqi living in Baghdad, and he posts poignant first-person reports on the Web. "The images we saw on TV last night...were terrible," begins one. "The whole city looked as if it were on fire. As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion, I was close to tears." Pax's missives (at dear_raed.blogspot.com) offer Web watchers a rare look at how one Iraqi views the war. Although no...

<p>SAN JOSE, Calif. - Americans are turning to the Internet in record numbers for news and opinion, underscoring in new ways the Web's powerful, global reach as the U.S prepares for war.</p> <p>By the millions, they are going online to get up-to-the minute news, read reports in the foreign and alternative press, and check out so-called "warblogs," electronic diaries pushing myriad views on the conflict with Iraq.</p>