quote from msnbc weblog central:

"Ostensibly based in Baghdad, Where is Raed? is written by a person blogging under the pseudonym of Salam Pax, a tech-savvy Iraqi whose mastery of English provides for vivid descriptions, cutting wit, and thoughtful commentary. In the past there has been some discussion of the veracity of the writer’s claims, but those appear to have been resolved, with several bloggers offering testimony to Salam’s authenticity —and frankly, the more you read, the less doubt there seems to be."

Where is Raed ?

] This is a Human Security project to establish an
] independent and comprehensive public database of civilian
] deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions
] by the USA and its allies in 2003. Results and totals are
] continually updated and made immediately available on
] this page and on various IBC counters which may be freely
] displayed on any website, where they will be
] automatically updated without further intervention.
] Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey
] of online media reports. Where these sources report
] differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum)
] are given. All results are independently reviewed and
] error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body
] Count project team before publication.

Iraq Body Count

] In the 1991 Gulf war the strategy of the US-led coalition
] was shaped around an overestimation of Iraqi strength.
] Saddam Hussein promised the "mother of all battles" and
] was said to have assembled the world's fourth-largest
] army, packed with battle-hardened veterans and noxious
] weapons. In the event, the Iraqi leader made every
] mistake in the staff college manual and by the time the
] serious ground fighting began the only strategic decision
] left for most of his troops was whether to run away or
] surrender.
]
] This time, the Iraqi position looks hopeless from the
] start: virtually no air force, air defences battered by
] US and British aircraft and an under-equipped and anxious
] army. Stretches of the country are already in opposition
] hands and more soon will be. The only conceivable Iraqi
] war plan involves conceding everything but Baghdad and a
] few strongholds and making a determined last stand. Mr
] Hussein may have nasty surprises for the invaders, such
] as igniting oil wells or releasing chemical weapons, but
] he cannot keep them in reserve since territory and
] systems will soon fall into enemy hands.

Title is misleading.. More like "Occupation may take longer then we believe"..

FT.com / The war may take longer than we believe

] A man protesting the looming U.S. war on Iraq fell to his
] death from San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge on
] Wednesday as he was hanging a banner, officials said.
]
] "He appears to have been hanging a banner of some kind,"
] said California Highway Patrol officer Timothy Willock.
] "We're not sure if he decided to jump or slipped while he
] was, you know, hanging the banner. That's unclear right
] now."

ABCNEWS.com : Iraq War Protester Dies in Golden Gate Bridge Fall

] An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in
] awe by what it believes to be a mystical visitation by a
] 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many
] Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle.
]
] Many of the 7,000-member Skver sect of Hasidim in New
] Square, 30 miles north of Manhattan, believe God has
] revealed himself in fish form.
]
] Still, the shouting carp corresponds with the belief
] of some Hasidic sects that righteous people can be
] reincarnated as fish. They say that Nivelo may have been
] selected because he is not Jewish, but a weary Nivelo
] told the New York Times : 'I wish I never said anything
] about it. I'm getting so many calls every day, I've
] stopped answering. Israel, London, Miami, Brooklyn. They
] all want to hear about the talking fish.'

The Observer | International | Word is made flesh as God reveals himself... as a fish

] This is the worst-case scenario for identity theft
] victims. Losing your clean credit history is one thing;
] losing your freedom is another. And victims of America's
] fastest-growing crime are discovering they often have
] much more to worry about than the hundreds of hours of
] paperwork necessary to clean up the financial mess
] associated with ID theft. Sometimes, they have to worry
] about ending up in jail — again and again.

The darkest side of ID theft

] While I'm on the topic of mediated personae, something
] that came up during that CBC taping, last night (for me,
] anyway) was the idea that blogging (or even posting to
] fora) represents the democratization of the mediated
] persona. Literally anyone can have one, now, or several.
] I am an exception to this, because I have mine via the
] printed word, the oldest mass medium on the planet, and
] this website is maintained by a publishing company that
] belongs to an even larger corporation owned in turn by
] shapeshifting reptiles from Beta Reticuli, but the rest
] of you, today, are free to mass-mediate your own
] personae. Which was formerly, hugely, not the case.
] Choose a handle, post: you're mediating a persona.

William Gibson - SOMEONE WONDERS... - Media perception and blogs

] Blogs are novelists' notebooks (too)
] Today in Gibson's blog, a rumination on what it feels
] like to be a novelist between novels:

Gibson:
] LIKE A MAGPIE WITHOUT A NEST
]
] That's how Rudy Rucker, in an email yesterday, described
] how it feels to be a novelist between books. No place to
] take the shiny things we constantly find. He's treating
] his own condition, he said, by writing a horror sorry
] about having belonged to a country club in Lynchburg,
] Virginia, in the early Eighties (man, that *is* scary).
]
] No place for the magpie mind to take the trinkets and
] bits of tinfoil, currently. If I bring them here, for
] instance, I'm just leaving them on your window-ledge,
] something no magpie would ever be satisfied with doing.

Doctorow:
] I've been using this blog to keep track of stuff that
] needs to work its way into my novels for years now.
] Rucker's blog is nothing but notes on his books. Sterling
] says you can extrapolate his next book from this links on
] his blog. I betcha that's true of Warren Ellis, too.
] Blogs are the new novelist's commonplace book. I've been
] saying this for a while, but I thought I might be the
] only one.

Links contained within..

Boing Boing: Blogs and novelists

] I'm calling in from the highly-guarded border of Iran and
] Kurdistan. A truck is waiting for us to transport CNN
] staff, our personal belongings, and our television gear
] into kurd-controlled northern Iraq. We're crossing into
] this region to cover the northern front of a potential
] war with Iraq, in an area dense with oil-rich fields
] along the northern no-fly-zone.

Kevin Sites Blog

Don Johnson, Mr. Miami Vice, stopped in germany with a suitcase containing bonds, stocks, and credit notes worth 8 Billion .. yes BILLION dollars.

This is insane. Don Johnson, while I'm sure loaded, is _not_ worth $8b. Something fishy is going on here.

The Miami Herald | 03/13/2003 | 'Vice' or price? TV star Don Johnson car-shopping with $8 billion to spend