Blogs to Watch

[BMT]

Iraq the Model


BMT

[SWJED]

Iraq the Model


BMT

I often link to Iraq the Model from the SWJ Daily News Links Page. Also, the Wall Street Journal often picks up posts for inclusion in their Op-Ed page.

[tequila]

I'm not sure why these guys are so popular. Perhaps because they write in English for an English-speaking audience, and they tell us what we would want to hear? I think so (the same goes for other popular Iraqi English-language bloggers, like Riverbend and Raed in the Middle for the anti-Iraq War side the political spectrum). I believe these guys ran in the last Iraqi elections, where they managed to secure the votes of their family members and few others --- perhaps accurately reflecting the political popularity of a pro-American secular liberal in Iraq today.

The journey of the Healing Iraq blog, run by an atheist Sunni dentist who eventually fled for New York is instructive --- originally started as a very loud pro-American Iraqi blog, perhaps the first that was so pro-Western in its approach. He then had a cousin forced off a bridge in Samarra by American troops in this nasty little incident, which ended the career of LTC Nathan Sassaman and resulted in six months' jail time for one of the soldiers involved, which he posted about in some dismay, at which point most of his prowar American supporters deserted him and whereupon he gained an antiwar American audience.