WOW! I would imagine everyone is busy reading, and a good read it is.

Read it all, in chrono order.

It still doesn't pass the smell test.

Smell test? Care to comment which parts are odiferous?

I can't detect any agenda bias, but then, I'm not very good at all this.

This made my day, i was worried about ol Salam.

Nice one!

If you read this, welcome back Salam.

Oddly enough, his posts are the most unbiased journalism I've come across throughout the whole war.

Thanks for posting this here. It was a good idea.

So did the Raed who was coincidentally arrested in New York the very day that the Raed supposedly in Iraq stopped blogging just get out of jail on his charges?

On April 15, 2003, the AP wrote:

"Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, 28, . . . the son of Iraq's former liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors appeared briefly in federal court."

Den Beste wrote about the coincidence:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/WheresRaed.shtml

Where is Raed Al-Anbuge? Is he still in jail, or did he just get released, or was he just given access to email?

did this guy spend a lot of time in the US? he sounds like a bitchy 15 year old from california dropped into iraq a month before the war.

Where is the smell ?

Well, the first thing was:

"G. had a falafel sandwich and we drank “ZamZam Cola”. Baghdad is flooded with “ZamZam Cola” – named after the “holy” well in Mecca. Iranian product and tastes too sweet. But since it is called ZamZam it must have some divine qualities. I have been drinking ZamZam Cola for a while now; I am expecting to grow angel wings any day. "

At first I thought - cool, I know a little tidbit about life in Baghdad, and the name is neat" - then it suddenly struck me that I was being *fed* a tidbit for the purposes of establishing 'authenticity'. I was a trifle suspicious, and began looking for other simliar entries.

I immediately noted something similar, but with a different significance: the sudden use of a new word: "Hizbi" - a nickname for Ba'th party members. In the new material posted after the long absence, the word appears, never, ever appears in the previous postings.

I can understand having never encountered ZamZam cola before - a bit of local colour he just never mentioned previously - but he talks about the Ba'ath party members *a lot*, but *never* uses the apparently common nickname "hizbi" until the new postings.

Additionallly, chronologically, he doesn't explain what a hizbi is until 4 days after he first uses it.
As might happen when he writes the whole thing ex post facto, and decides to fill in the posts for the 30 march and 1 April after having already written the post for 4 April.

It may mean absolutely nothing, but it smells to me.

I was glad to read that Salam already has a satellite phone, so he shouldn't have any problems anymore posting to his blog, if only by proxy. Some people were contemplating taking up a collection for him and buying him a sat phone, but that's not a problem anymore. All's well that ends well !

Alan: A cursory scan of my floppy copy from his Blogspot version compared to the copy you have posted here seems to reveal a discrepancy, so I have copied to floppy your version as well as the one I already have. On 26/4 (April 26th?), there seems to be an episode missing on Blogspot about Burns. Did Blogspot censor Salam Pax? Is there anything slanderous in this interlude? Or was I slipshod in the way I downloaded the first version from Blogspot? I have not yet carefully studied this. But the question that would naturally flow from the foregoing, if there does exist this discrepany, is: what other discrepancies or inaccuracies exist? And why do you suppose there would be discrepancies or inaccuracies? In what other ways might the text be altered or redacted or expurgated or doctored or tailored?

Just when I thought I could put this puppy to bed and go on about my own business... this complication would have to arise! Argghhh!!

You can reach me through my blog for which I have enabled a commenting device. I'm aggravated about this. I wish I could say "Happy Ending;" now let's move forward.

Button: Alan E Brain here (not the Alan who wrote the story).

Diana Moon, who was the point of contact for Salam Pax, asked me via E-mail to yank the story, as she wanted to redact a few other minor phrases regarding issues of a private nature. Blame Her for what's on Blogger.

I then took it upon myself to temporarily yank the story, delete the old un-redacted version's mirror of the words while leaving the link, and (honouring the estimable Diana's request) also remove several comments concerning the passages that she omitted. For this, Blame Me. Address all brickbats to my e-mail address. I plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the Court.

I may censor - but I won't conceal it if I do. I've restored the post now, along with this comment of explanation. If I've over-reached myself, I'm sure Michele or Alan (the other Alan) will gently chide me with a KluBat.

Alan: Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!

You're too late at whatever you think you're doing because The UK Guardian has already posted YOUR version on their Iraq Special Report. So it's already being publicly circulated.

It is now impossible to ascertain what is authentic Salam Pax and what is Diane's confabulation or his "cousin's" fanciful contribution.

And didn't she say explicitly that she doesn't have time to "edit?"

Are you going to try to remove what the Guardian is publicly circulating, too?

I didn't realize that Diane is his ventrilogquist. That just about destroys any serious credibility he may have had.

Alan E. Brain: You may be way too late-- it has escaped! I was just over at Wired Magazine and they are asking Burns about this. They may have read the original version. It may begin to appear that Diane or possibly Diane and the "cousin" fabricated the whole thing. I'm taking a break from this; it has turned into a frankenstein.

Let me see - Salam is still an anonymous Iraqi bitching about his "worthless" 10000 dinar notes but not chasing the 1000s of US dollars journalists will throw at a world famous blogger.

Oh well, Diane will just have to tell Salam Pax that his last-minute request to redact what he said is too late. C'est la vie and all that.

As for ventriloquists - it's pretty clear (explicitly stated in fact) from the website that the post was done via an e-mail attachment to Diane. Diane was Salam Pax's agent (for this post only), because Salam Pax still doesn't have an internet connection, only e-mail via satphone. This will change soon.

Alan E. Brain: When I went to ping my latest post on weblogs.com, I noticed a ping for salam just below me, so I went over there and read that from now on his former roommate in austria, stefan, will be his proxy. O.K., fine. But then, I notice that stefan's name on each of the e-mail addresses is spelled differently each time. Well, that's just terrific. And, oh, by the way, if you're over 55-ish, his name might ring a bell-- not that there's anything wrong with that ;-)

I have been checking on the report of an Internet Cafe in Baghdad for days. None reported except for Salam who says that they are popping up all over!

"5 US Dollars for a single hour of browsing. Talk about someone milking it, I wonder if they would let me pay for only half an hour.
I am not complaining; I would not have believed anyone who would have told me a week ago that I will be able to browse at all. There are more of these centers popping up here and there so the prices will go down. Besides I have heard today that a NGO called [Communication sans frontiers] has arrived in Iraq and will help."

Yes, Charles, but he got the name of the outfit wrong; it's called Telecom Sans Frontieres on Al Bawaba. I posted an entry on this previously. You can find it there on Al Bawaba or if they took it off, look for it on the business report called Mena. I also blogged an entry about a Greek company who is trying to get in on the telecom business in Baghdad. I'm not sure that I remember their name accurately, but maybe it's Intracom. It's on my blog, I think a couple of days before Salam returned (May 7) or maybe from the archives the week before. I just republished my archives because they weren't working.

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