Seems like Warren is merely conjecturing at this point, doesn't it?

(First?)

If you ever wondered why the BBC was so happy to publicize him, here's your answer.

I think Warren is right on. I have been saying this for months on other blogs. Actually one blog deleted my comment that said basically the same thing as Warren for fear that something would happen to "Salam"!? "Salam" is a slick writer who could work for the old Pravda (or maybe the NY Times).

An Iraqi. With internet access. Who speaks english.

And it surprises people that he has ties to the Baath party?

et (#21 on the Mr. Nasty thread) brought this up first, I believe.

Hat tips for the people!

People were happy to laud Pax while he was criticizing Saddam and his regime, overlooking his apprehension about the the U.S. invasion.

Now that Pax is critical of the Pentagon's boy wonder, Chalabi, all of a sudden he's a Ba'athist agent?

Maybe David Warren is a CIA stooge?

#1 yes
excerpt:
“well it wasn’t like the mess it is now when we had saddam”. This is usually my cue for going into rage-mode. We Iraqis seem to have very short memories, or we simply block the bad times out. I ask them how long it took for us to get the electricity back again after he last war? 2 years until things got to what they are now, after 2 months of war. I ask them how was the water? Bad. Gas for car? None existent. Work? Lots of sitting in street tea shops. And how did everything get back? Hussain Kamel used to literally beat and whip people to do the impossible task of rebuilding. Then the question that would shut them up, so, dear Mr. Taxi driver would you like to have your saddam back? Aren’t we just really glad that we can now at least have hope for a new Iraq? Or are we Iraqis just a bunch of impatient fools who do nothing better than grumble and whine? Patience, you have waited for 35 years for days like these so get to working instead of whining. End of conversation.
[Link: dear_raed.blogspot.com...]

#5
hat tip to instapundit

[Link: www.instapundit.com...]

Exactly my sentiment. The most suspicious part of this mystery was Salam's ability to continue blogging in Iraq's tightly controlled environment. As we know now, Sadam's police had extensive monitoring facitlities. It is hard to believe that all those unauthorized calls to outside of Iraq would go unnoticed for so long. And any ISP were for sure under very strict surveilance. But Salam did manage somehow. There is a chance that the surveilance was as good as the elite guards divisions, but there is a huge difference between fighting and policing capabilities. With Russian help and Sadam's priority on policing the police would be able to track Salam very fast.

I do believe this thread is about to experience a blog shitstorm.

Craig: you never read LGF "lauding" Salam Pax.

I appreciate et's contributions, but I got this article through an anonymous email earlier today.

Again -- please don't make me justify and explain every "hat tip."

The kid was obviously well-to-do at a time when the only wealth in Iraq was in the hand of the Tikrit Thugocracy. He had Internet access. In the batch of posts that came out first, he says his uncle is director of a bank. And his family had a generator and fuel. And, the bomb attack on Saddam around 4/11 took place one street over from his house.

I also have trouble buying the Pax-as-Saddamite-plot idea, given some of his material (such as that excerpted by et #7). I find it hard to imagine Saddam permitting, much less engineering, that sort of frankness. And especially when one compares his writing to the laughable crudeness of most Ba'athist propaganda.

An alternate explanation of Salaam Pax could be; he really is a somewhat-coddled son of the Ba'athist elite, who really didn't like Saddam, but also really doesn't like Chalabi and Makiya (rightly or wrongly). I don't see the need to reach for a conspiracy theory to explain this.

Very shortly before Salam abruptly disappeared during the war, he introduced a female Iraqi blogger named, I think, "Riverdance". Everyone was thrilled, but no one seemed to notice what was blatantly obvious to me... "Riverdance" wrote in exactly the same style and voice as Salam! I posted this in comments on the site, but no one seemed bothered by this or suspicious. I guess no one wanted to face reality. But "riverdance" never appeared again, after my post, and then of course, Salam took his wartime hiatus. WOnder if he'll bring her back now, and try to vary his writing style?

OR: so you're willing to believe that someone could be writing a blog in Baghdad under the Saddam regime, connected to the internet through the Iraqi proxy (or even more suspicious, making long distance telephone calls), without the Mukhabarat knowing?

Wishful thinking, my friend.

Damn right Charles. Who was lauding Salam? No one here. Some blogs over the past few weeks were saying that he has a million dollar book deal from his posts. Yea, from those who follow Mike Moore. Thats the thing about how Salam wrote. You had to see what he was really writing.
et, this piece you took out of one of his most recent posts is a classic example. On the surface it looks like something it is not. There is not one doubt in my mind that Salam (at least his family) is a baath party member of some standing who knows of nothing how ordinary Iraqis feel. I have been reading him for months and everytime after I got done I wanted to write him what a complete crock of shit I thought he was. He just always gave the impression that he wanted Sadddam to stay in power.
Sorry to rant but his blog really just boiled my blood ever since I started to read it.

An alternate explanation of Salaam Pax could be; he really is a somewhat-coddled son of the Ba'athist elite, who really didn't like Saddam, but also really doesn't like Chalabi and Makiya (rightly or wrongly). I don't see the need to reach for a conspiracy theory to explain this.

Why is outing him as a Baathist a "conspiracy theory"?
 

I like to read Where is Raed, just so that I can know what the cool kids are talking about by the water cooler. But, as we've seen repeatedly with "real" journalistic institutions like CNN and the New York Times, one simply can't believe everything one reads.

I find Salaam highly entertaining, if verging on abrasive.

Sheesh.

I honestly belive salam pax is just sum dude bloggin in iraq.

This thread is a turn to LGF i do not think I like.

it is turning into a witchhunt.

Charles,

No he hasn't been lauded here, but I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the bandwagon of the "Salaam Pax is an agent of the Ba'ath party" conspiracy theorists. Not that what he says should matter much to any sane person who takes everything he/she reads on the Internet with a pound of salt.

Pax has his agenda, just like everyone else. He doesn't like Saddam, and has made that perfectly clear. He doesn't trust the Bush administration's intentions and wasn't eager for a war, and he's made that clear as well. Well, that describes a lot of the membership of the Democratic party right here at home.

So what am I to think of Salaam Pax? He's an anti-Saddam secularist, a cynic and a blogger. And ultimately, he's just one voice expressing an opinion. I take it for what its worth.

I read Warren's article earlier this morning, from the comments section on this site. The presence of firewalls don't necessarily denote him as a Ba'ath agent- on the contrary, this is the only way Salam could have posted and remain alive.

However, it is interesting to note Salam's views: they're about the same as what well-off Germans had during the dying days of WWII. That the old guard was needed to help run the country, the "few bad apples" theory, the problems with the Allied invasion. I feel Salam probably isn't deliberately attempting to sabotage the American effort in Iraq, he just thinks that he's a decent guy who did what he had to in order to survive. And if he IS a computer whiz who managed to evade the security services by transmitting "packages" that someone else posted, or found other ways to mask the fact he was transmitting data to Blogspot, more power to him. DenBeste ended up eating his words on the issue earlier this year, and I don't particularly feel like coming down hard until I know what the hell is going on.

I'm blogging on this too because, as Charles well knows, I completely agree with him on this issue. And as a crime writer, I have met a fair number of intelligence agents in my life.

www.rogerlsimon.com

What's the big deal about calling into question somebodies motives? There is no witch hunt. But, if the guy is a shill for the Baathist regime, then we, his audience, reserve the right to call him out as one.

#17, I agree. Long term reading of his blog led me to believe the same thing.

I posted as much on LGF last week, with "Salam Pax" excerpts from April 9 (Liberation Day) that could have been written by Saddam himself, or his Disinformation Minister.
 

If he's a plot, he isn't a particularly good one. The messages I get from him are too muddled, too small and too infrequent to be of much use in anyone's propaganda campaign. Sounds like a stupid, muddled kid to me.

Back before there was such a thing as the web, let alone the blog, people overlooking Red Square were getting out by public phone line to post to Usenet that tanks were rumbling down the street. Ah, the delights of ones and zeroes.

He doesn't like Saddam, and has made that perfectly clear.

Craig - I dare you to find one post that says that. You can't. I looked for months. He NEVER said one thing about how much he dis-liked Saddam (before the war). Before you go off saying that he couldn't remember, according to Salam no one from the Iraqi govt was able to read his posts.

He came across to me as anti-U.S. rather than pro-Saddam, probably a far more palatable view for his international audience. Given the abject fear under which the entire Iraqi population lived, where a stray word against Saddam could result in imprisonment, torture or death, it always struck me as odd the way he seemed to feel so unafraid to criticize Saddam on occasion on his blog. Does that mean he was a Baathist agent? I don't know; maybe for some reason he knew that the regime lacked the capability to track him down through his internet connection. Did his family have Baathist connetions? Of that I have no doubt.

26-

And you find nothing wrong if a baathist plant (or even an immature kid for that matter) is disseminating dis-information to millions?

I've always invoked Occam's Razor and taken Salam Pax's (Arabic - Latin = "Peace Peace") identity claims at face value.

But that didn't stop me from disliking his blog. It's just one long whine. He doesn't like Saddam, he doesn't like Bush, he doesn't like Chalabi. What does he like? Oh yeah, posters by a Communist group. It's all a shallow stream of consciousness from the kind of anomic thirtysomething smartass I can find at any coffee shop here in America.

Furthermore, I take exception to the Samuel Huntington quote in his blog's sidebar -- (paraphrasing) "The West beat Islam through the superiority of its weapons not the superiority of its ideas." To that all I can say is, Peace Peace, feel my stiletto heel grinding in your face, the heel of a LIBERATED WESTERN WOMAN. Ever occur to you that superiority in technology may stem from superiority in ideas, one namely being the, oh, RADICAL idea that maybe 50% of the population deserve an opportunity at reaching their intellectual and economic potential?? Bwa ha. FU, loser.

I am reserving judgement of salam pax for the time being.
To me he is just another source of information. No better or worse than Peter Arnett, George Galloway, Jayson Blair,
Linda Granstein(sp), Peter Jennings, et al

silly girl--Well done.

#30 silly girl

Beautifully done.

Charles #16:

Frankly, I have no idea if he could do all that without the Mukhabarat knowing. I've never claimed to be anything other than a technophobe when it comes to these matters, My only point was, his writing seemed awfully odd for a purported Mukhabarat agent. Even the passages cited by William in #25--yes, they look overblown to me, too, but they could just as easily been written by any soft-left Western writer. Hardly the same as Saddam's typical propaganda.

And to put it another way; if you're Saddam, and during the most critical moment in your career as a tyrant (the war that will in all likelihood depose you), you have your choice of offering as your face to the world A) a smooth talker (or at least a smooth writer) like Pax, or B) a clown like al-Sahaf, which would you choose? Keep in mind that Pax seems very important to people like us, who regularly read blogs; but I doubt most people in the US, Europe, or the Arab world (Saddam's target markets for wartime propaganda) have ever heard of him. They've seen al-Sahaf on t.v., though.

And BTW #18 William--what Warren's article suggests is not merely that Pax is a privileged member of the Ba'ath elite (of course I believe that too), but rather that he is an active agent of some sort--e.g., his reference to Pax perhaps only having met ordinary Iraqis "unless he was interrogating them privately." These are two very different things.

#27 BJW

Craig - I dare you to find one post that says that. You can't. I looked for months.

You didn't look very hard. His posts after the war are very critical of Saddam's regime.

He NEVER said one thing about how much he dis-liked Saddam (before the war).

Which is exactly what you would expect from someone blogging from inside Iraq while the secret police were monitoring communications.

I'll add my kudos to silly girl. Nicely put.

I agree that Salaam Pax came across as something of a spoiled brat who whines a lot. And it's highly likely that at least someone in his family had very dirty hands, in order for him to enjoy the privileges he apparently did during the Saddam regime. But it's a long way from those observations to "Mukhabbarat agent".

But isn't it a bit strange to think that a regime that would use Mo Sahaf as its main spokesman could pull off such a sophisticated hoax? Or would bother to?

The more interesting thing in Warren's piece, I thought, was his apparently inside information that much of the "looting" and "anarchy" is orchestrated Baathist resistance, sort of a wimpier stepchild of the "Fedayeen". Makes sense.

silly girl (#30): Yeah, that Huntington quote should be paired with an excerpt from Carnage and Culture. We're better at fighting because of our ideas. They make us free, rich, and technologically advanced. Sure beats Islamic backwardness.

Dear Occasional Reader:

You are probably not an Occasional Reader of John LeCarre. Otherwise you would realize how silly this sounds:

"My only point was, his writing seemed awfully odd for a purported Mukhabarat agent. Even the passages cited by William in #25--yes, they look overblown to me, too, but they could just as easily been written by any soft-left Western writer. Hardly the same as Saddam's typical propaganda."

The one thing a good Mukhabarat would do is to try not to sound like one. Suggest reading: EVERY SPY A PRINCE, about the Mossad. It should tell you how good intelligence operatives work, this time, obviously, on the other side.

www.rogerlsimon.com

Craig, please re-read my post. Salam said he was getting his posts thru because of some super secret way to transmit packets without the govt able to read them. He does not have that excuse.

For instance... I just took a look at the Pax blog now. And yes, after he whines on and on about how the American administration isn't coming up with "enough bright ideas", he then adds: "Yes yes I know. Patience. God needed seven days to finish his work and all that."

And his complaints about the American administration center around them not doing enough, rather than anything along the lines of "imperialist zionist occupiers etc. etc." He seems to want more US involvement, not less.

Sort of a strange position for a Saddamite intelligence operative to take.

Roger L. Simon #39; the trouble with your argument is, you're assuming that the Mukhabarat were/are a "good" intelligence agency. From what I've read (e.g. Pollock), they were quite good at pulling people's tongues out and things of that nature, but not so good at sophisticated, internationally-targeted operations. I'm sure if I read the book you recommend, it will teach me a lot about the Mossad; but I also think the Mossad is way, way, way out of the Mukhabarat's league.

It seems simple enough. He's not an agent for any side. He was probably related to someone high up in the regime, so he had freedom and education that others didn't. So he had it pretty good. Atleast relatively.

Sure he didn't like Sadam much but why shake the boat when you got it so much better than the others? Now Saddam is gone and he's unemployed and has nothing just all the rest of the Iraqis for the last 30 years.

He's just a coward with mixed feelings.

#27 BJW

How about this from 12/25/02

If anybody but Saddam Hussein himself seems like the perfect totem for all that is past, it is Uday. Yet his posture now is to present himself as the one Iraqis can turn to, should they want a more modern man to lead them out of the dead end his father has led them to.

sorry what posture? Everyone except his closest ?friends? know that he is a sick monster. He has already driven himself into a dead end before his father did. Families walk out quietly when he enters a restaurant, he is known to send one of his boys to bring him the women sitting at the closest tables to ?join? him. People hate him, as much as they fear his father. So no one is looking for him to lead them anywhere. What a pointless thing to write.

Anyway since it is the season to be merry, here is a funny little story about him: In the early eighties the Iraqi Hunting Club had a new indoor swimming pool built. Quite big and state of the art. They decided to have some sort of a party to announce it?s opening. A nice classy affair. at around eleven Uday comes in with his entourage wearing a white tuxedo and top hat, there is still a photo of him in that tux being printed on calendars but without the top hat, has a couple of drinks, decides that the party is boring and to liven things up a bit commands everyone to jump into the swimming pool, and unleashes his dogs = bodyguards to push people into the pool. Has a good laugh and leaves, A fun guy eh?

[Link: www.dear_raed.blogspot.com...]

NY'er - nice try. That post is about Uday whom it is well known that even Saddam didn't much care for.

I'm skeptical, but I've never thought much of Peace-Peace's "insights". Because of stuff like this:

Do you know when the sight of women veiled from top to bottom became common in cities in Iraq? Do you know when the question of segregation between boys and girls became red hot? When tribal law replaced THE LAW? When Wahabi became part of our vocabulary? It only happened after the Gulf War. I think it was Cheney or Albright who said they will bomb Iraq back to the stone age, well you did. Iraqis have never accepted religious extremism in their lives ...

Uh huh. Yep, yep.

One more thing NY'er - doesn't that post sound like someone who was THERE at the Hunting Club?? I don't think they let any ole Abu off the streets - do you?

#48 Glen Wishard--actually, I think the observations he makes it that quote about Iraqi society might be correct. Look through the anti-American cant in the piece (and the fake "back to the Stone Age" quote), and he seems to be referring to the pretty well-documented fact that Saddam began his "faith" campaign after GWI, probably after realizing that islamism is a force he should be coopting to his advantage. Of course, Pax's blaming this on the American bombing is just stupid--our bombs forced Saddam to embrace Islamism? Yeah, sure.

37-

It doesn't have tp be the regime itself, just a sympathiser that can obfuscate information to journalistic being self important.

A few months ago, a reporter discovered that Saddam's email had been hacked. Turns out that the emails had just piled up. No one had checked the Inbox in ages. Does this sound like a technologically advanced regime who would necessarily be able to stop someone from blogging from inside Iraq using circuitous methods?

I don't know about Salam, who he is, or who his family maybe. But I believe he could be anti-Saddam and still manage to blog from Baghdad.

BJW

My point is that someone who would say this is either: (1) a Baathist agent who's not worried about what he says, (2) someone who somehow knows for sure that he won't be tracked down by the Baath party, or (3) a fool. I don't think (3) applies, and I don't know enough about internet technology to have an opinion as to the likelihood of (2).

Roger,

Let's assume for a sec that you're right, and that he's an agent of the Mukhabarat. So what's the point of him continuing with the blog? The war is over, the U.S. is in charge and can do whatever it wants.

Surely, unless he's an idiot, he knows that posting on his blog isn't going to change American policy. He also knows that by continuing to post, he makes it easy for the CIA to track him down.

Hey, I just had an idea! Let's stroll down J.J. Angleton's hall of mirrors and imagine that he's a CIA agent, posing as an Iraqi kid. He builds up his credibility by being critical of the U.S. at first, then it would be very effective if he changed his mind in a month about Chalabi, wouldn't it? Many of his followers, who unfortunately are just a bunch of western nerds on the Internet and who have no say in what happens in Iraq, will fall in line and support Chalabi.

Well, so what?

If the CIA or the Mukhabarat wants to influence the future development of Iraq, wouldn't their efforts be better spent influencing Iraqis?

Sorry, but the "secret agent Pax" theories don't wash for me. He's just some guy with a blog. His opinions carry no more weight in Iraq, or on the future of Iraq, than those expressed on Indymedia.

Want to know how long the gas lines are in Baghdad? Call Salaam Pax. That's pretty much all the hard info that he has.

I guess I'm in the Occasional Reader camp. Salam Pax is probably the son of privelige (privelige in Iraq being the exclusive property of the ruling Baa'th party elites), but that doesn't mean he is an agent of the Mukharabat. So he's anti-American and skeptical of the United States long term intentions in Iraq? Try finding me someone in the Middle East who isn't. I had a very contentious conversation with an Egyptian (a Coptic Christian) who tried to convince me that the Jews perpetrated 9/11 and have a stranglehold on the world economy, the media, and American foreign policy. I succeded in pointing out to my very misinformed friend that the American media was heavily dependent on Arab news sources during GWII. I also deflated his illusions regarding Jewish cabals by pointing out that much of the prime real estate in downtown Houston is owned by Arabs!. Doesn't sound very convincing, but when you succesively point to several 60 and 70 story buildings and prattle off names like Rafic Harriri (former President of Lebanon) it begins to sink in. I also asked him to imagine "the capital used to purchase these buildings being used to finance Jewish ingenuity instead of finance the eradication of the Jewish people". It all had good effect.

Of course, perhaps I'm a Mukhabarat agent, whose assignment is to cast doubt on any assertion that Salaam Pax is a Mukhabarat agent, in order to protect this valuable agitprop asset of our Glorious Leader and Father of Our Nation, Saddam Hussein... mwuu-HAHAHAHA!!!

Thanks for the backup, Agent 27.

I MEAN "DIRK DIGGLER", thanks Dirk Diggler.

A few more thoughts:

In order to have a halfway decent job in saddam-held iraq, you had to be a member of the baath party. Were salam's folks baath party members? Mayby, does this make him some evil scion of a pro saddam government? no.

Iraq has a fairly thriving middle class. this is not a county that had ONLY the extream rich and the extream poor. (although it had those as well)

is salam a pro-american blogger? of course not. his country has seen so much shit over the past couple of decades, the iraqi people trust nobody.

# 46 BJW: NY'er: - nice try. That post is about Uday whom it is well known that even Saddam didn't much care for.

Nice try? That’s a touchdown with a 2 point conversion in overtime. Game over!

Would Saddam be tolerant of someone saying that he led the country into a "dead end"?

Sounds like treason.

Craig wrote:

Would Saddam be tolerant of someone saying that he led the country into a "dead end"?

Absolutely. This was not intended to be read by Iraqis, but by people like you who would believe it.

I also find OR's arguments persuasive. If SP is Mukhabarat, then it really is one of the most brilliant propaganda campaigns ever conducted: not only does it make use of the Net, which can disseminate disinfo to Westerners far more effectively than any other medium under Saddam's command, but the "persona" of SP ("the kind of anomic thirtysomething smartass I can find at any coffee shop here in America," as silly girl put it) is perfectly designed to appeal to the kind of person most likely to protest the war.

The thing is, given the top to bottom incompetence we saw from Iraq last month, how could they be so stunningly brilliant in this one respect? It just doesn't add up.

David Warren writes with great insight, as he has first hand experience of the islamic world.

[Link: www.davidwarrenonline.com...]

Lots to read here on Islam and the West etc

I'm not saying he is an Iraqi agent. I am saying he is PRO-Baath party and ANTI-west. He is no friend of ours no matter how entertaining his posts are. We have about as much in common with him as Charles does with Arafish....

By the way, before you dismiss the idea that the Mukhabarat was capable of a disinfo operation, do some research. The truth is that they were a highly sophisticated intelligence apparatus, on the Soviet model, who carried out assassinations in other countries among other operations. The Mukhabarat was quite accomplished and very competent.

#6 Craig
"criticizing Saddam and his regime"

Where did he do this? When? I've read his whole blog. I don't remember him criticizing saddam.

This is my last post on the subject, Occasional Reader, but your rebuttal does not wash. Doubtless they are not as good as the Mossad, but the Mukhabarat had many thousands of agents. Surely a few are good. Recently it has been revealed that they quite succesfully infiltrated Al Jazeera (probably not that hard) and many other media outlets. Peaceniks in the blogosphere are sitting ducks. Figure it out for yourself--or go read Little Drummer Girl.

And I would add to NC #61's observations, that Pax's writings were not only highly "sophisticated", but they don't seem designed to do anything that would be rationally connected to a Saddam agenda. I'm sorry, I can't read that blog and find any coherent message being delivered that would advance some sort of "protect and/or restore Saddam" agitprop agenda. At worst he complains about the hardship of the bombings, and that the US administration isn't doing enough to patch together postwar Iraq--and then qualifies both with "we have to be patient"; how does that propaganda line help Saddam get back in power?

#60 Charles,

Absolutely. This was not intended to be read by Iraqis, but by people like you who would believe it.

Did it give Pax credibility with westerners (and Arabs outside Iraq) to be critical of Saddam? Sure.

Would Saddam have been tolerant of some criticism if it aided a disinformation campaign. Maybe. It depends on who it was critical of. I don't believe he would have tolerated anything that attacked him personally. A man who builds that many statues to himself wouldn't accept it, and his underlings at the Mukhabarat would have been unlikely to attack Saddam himself in such a campaign.

That's playing with fire.

This is a tough one. When you read about Saddam's regime, he seems so intolerant of anything that could even be remotely construed as criticism or even sarcasm, let alone of anything that would have given lower officials this kind of freedom, that it's hard to imagine even the intelligence services being given enough rein to go around saying vaguely anti-Saddam things-- as Salam Pax plainly did. When generals are routinely purged for showing the least bit of ability, it's hard to imagine the intelligence services being allowed to spread anti-regime propaganda.

On the other hand, that of course is an argument why it's hard to imagine Salam being less than a very well protected figure, either-- he put his butt way too far out on the line not to have some reason to think he could stay out of trouble, unlike the average schmoe.

My gut says that his work would be much too subtle and low-impact (since when did blogreaders count as an important audience?) to be an intelligence operation per se (especially one conducted by this thugocracy, as others have pointed out)-- surely if they were running his blog he would at least have manufactured all kinds of atrocities, the better to spread around the world. Instead he was silent during the most pivotal period of the collapse of the regime. Maybe that was involuntary, but the regime could have easily set up blogging from somewhere else if this were an official operation. So, while the IDEA of a secret agent blogger is theoretically interesting, the reality of Salam's blog doesn't seem like it delivered much for them, and missed many rather obvious opportunities to exploit his mild fame and audience.

What I do find convincing is the idea that he belongs to the elite, and is sniping at the Chalabi crowd because he does seem to be a member of the group that will shortly be very, very out. That part of Warren's analysis seems hard to refute.

What are the chances he was working in an embassy and not actually an Iraqi citizen?

Craig - In my year or so posting at LGF I have never resorted to name calling so I'm just going to ask you to read my post again. Have a wonderful evening.

#61,

I don't think it's so stunningly brilliant. If Salam Pax is really a plant, it's a fairly run-of-the-mill idea. I don't think I'd be Mukhabarat Employee of the Month for dreaming that up.

But... contriving Salam Pax presupposes a familiarity with not only the Internet, but what particular Internet phenomenon would constitute the best medium for spreading disinformation.

I'm a little skeptical that Saddam's government, which was hardly sober and reality-tuned in its geopolitical calculations, would have such nuanced knowledge.

Mike G. #69: well put. My feelings exactly (but stated more eloquently).

And to the folks throwing the word witchhunt around, this entire thread wouldn't exist if Salam had not chosen to be anonymous, even after the fall of Saddam.

His handle reminds me of the Salman Pak. Just a coincidence no doubt.

I'm sure they were capable of a disinfo campaign, but one as clever as this? I don't know. If they really were running a campaign to target disaffected American youth, then SP would have spent more of his time comparing Bush unfavorably to Clinton; would have drawn parallels between the war and America's use of the death penalty; would have focused on Arabs' status as an oppressed racial minority; etc. All the sacred cows of the left.

And if the answer to that argument is "They didn't go that far because they didn't want to make it too obvious," then we're in a position where we're ascribing perfect subtlety to their operation. They walked just the right line between effective propaganda and not being so effective that it becomes obvious what they're doing. It's possible, but like I say, there's not much in Saddam's operation that makes perfection plausible.

Charles,

If the explanation is far more mundane- that he's just a kid whose political views fit the "German in Denial" theory of powerful people on the wrong end of a war- what are you going to say about that? Again, Den Beste ended up with a pretty theoretical model which turned out to be based on crap. How sure are you that Salam's blog can't be explained through a more mundane view?

John-Paul (#72)--The brilliance of it wouldn't be the fact that they used a plant, but the "persona" they invented combined with (as you explained) their familiarity with the nuances of the Internet. A guy like SP with his own webpage is a character Western kids would instantly "recognize," and therefore be more likely to believe. That's why I think it's too clever by half.

Roger L. Simon--a quick look at your blog reveals that we're both James Lileks fans. I'd only add that Lileks made at least one favorable mention of Pax in his blog (indicating his worry for Pax's safety at the start of the war), and didn't seem to betray any suspicion that Pax was a plant. And James Lileks is nobody's fool.

It wouldn't surprise me if Salam Pax was the son of some Baath party member, that might help explain his internet access. But, I sincerely doubt if he's part of some sort of plot.

There was no guarantee that the blog would get as big as it did and even so...what would the purpose have been? He seemed pretty torn about the whole thing before the war. I also remember him absolutely going off on the human shields. He called them "war tourists".

Maybe he doesn't like Chalabi and company, there are plenty of people in the state department who don't like him either.

Personally, I think people are giving Saddam's regime too much credit. They were more out of the "rip your tongue out or bribe you" school of intelligence. Coming up with something as brilliant and subtle as this (and if it were a plot, it would be), sounds way out of their league.

Paranoia is beginning to seep into this thread. As a frequent contributor to LGF, it's not a pretty sight. We should delete the entire discussion before the Indymedia moonbats get a hold of it. Speculating about the motives or shadowy intelligence connections of an inconsequential weblogger is silly.

A young girl from Bosnia a few years ago on the web during a war. Same book, different cover, chapter re-write?

For the record, the reference to Saddam leading the country into a dead end was from a New York Times article Salaam Pax was quoting (the bolded part of #44), as a prelude to his criticsm of Uday.

I can't say with any certainty what I feel about Salaam Pax--except confusion. After one of his recent posts I email him at both the Salaam Pax email address from his site and the "Where is Raed?" address; neither emails got through and I was surprised, since by this time the Baath Party was well and truly done and the US was in charge. Salaam Pax was already talking about conditions after the war; so where was he? Who or where is Raed, indeed?

trevalyan wrote:

How sure are you that Salam's blog can't be explained through a more mundane view?

I'm not sure. There's no way for any of us to be sure of anything about this guy. But my opinion is that he's either connected to Iraqi intelligence, or well-connected to higher-ups in the Ba'ath Party -- as David Warren wrote.

Even though I'm an anomic thirtysomething smartass you can find at any cafe in France, I f*n HATE Communist posters.

And Communist anything actually.

So maybe I can marry you anyway, silly girl?

I agree with Occasional Reader. Fine, it is possible that SP is part of some plot, but it doesn't seem likely. He is certainly the result of a privileged upbringing and he doesn't make any attempt to hide this, nor does he apologize about it. These days, he makes several references to his family's satellite phone and mentions how ridiculously expensive those are. Yes, his family is rich. He openly admits that his uncle runs some financial institution. It is very unlikely that his family is not connected to the Baathist party. That doesn't make SP evil. What should SP have done? What would any of us have done in the same situation? Launch a revolt? Speak up openly and get shoved feet first down a plastic shredder? He made several references that he wanted regime change. I wouldn't even condemn him for preferring a communist regime, as he has mentioned. Someone living in such a brutal state may be easily swayed to such things. I don't know, not having ever lived in such a society.

#35 Craig
First you chose to say:

People were happy to laud Pax while he was criticizing Saddam and his regime, overlooking his apprehension about the the U.S. invasion.

Then you chose to say:

You didn't look very hard. His posts after the war are very critical of Saddam's regime.

Think you may have spoke yourself into a hole on this. You insinuated that prior to the war our "tile salesman" spoke critically of saddam. Which he did not.
There are a few stupid people here, me being chief of stupid among them. But we arent that stupid.

As stupid as I am I never once "overlooked his apprehension about the U.S." . Hell its all I saw when I read his blog. A fool who never spoke one ill word toward saddam and hated that the U.S. was about to destroy saddam. The sanctions were wrong, the war is wrong, everything is wrong about hating saddam and batthists. What else was there? Oh, "I'm real, I'm real, ask Ms Moon over at Gotham, I'm real, I'm real." And the banker uncle, you think theres a non batthist banker in iraq? And where did uncle go to hide from the bombing, Salam Pax's house. Hmmm...

Quick psychology detour: I wonder if all the professions of ardour for silly girl (#30)--to which I'll add my own--have more to do with a) the viselike logic demonstrated in her post, or b) her casual use of the phrase "feel my stiletto heel grinding in your face"? Hmm...

FACT: The Salam Pax operation has led to a great deal of sympathy for Saddam Hussein's regime.

FACT: "Salam Pax" only has interest in communicating with a Western audience. He has no apparent interest at all in communicating with Iraqis or Arabs.

FACT: Sending a nice gift to an Israeli woman is an ingenious way of building credibility among Western audiences.

FACT: The Salam Pax operation has heavy criticism for the Iraq liberation campaign, and light criticism for the butcherous Saddam Hussein regime.

Adding these to David Warren's argument, we get:

CONCLUSION: "Salam Pax" should be considered hostile.

#77,

Yes, we're on the same page.

I have trouble believing that any of the current Arab regimes could figure out how to display such a western pop-cultural affect.

IT MUST HAVE BEEN MOSSAD!

If Salam Pax being a plant becomes enough of a conservative meme, how long will it take before some Nazimedia fool invokes Mossad? :)

RF #89: please provide some support for the first of your cited FACTS. Personally, I have never seen Pax's blog cited in support of the Saddam Hussein regime.

OR (#88)--Can't it be both? I mean, ain't nothing wrong with stiletto heels. Nothing at all.

Okay people, this is really getting stupid. These are not the words of a 'pro-Saddam propagandist'...

Besides asking for outrageous fares (you can’t blame them gas prices have gone up 10 times, if you can get it) but they start grumbling and mumbling and at a point they would say something like “well it wasn’t like the mess it is now when we had saddam”. This is usually my cue for going into rage-mode. We Iraqis seem to have very short memories, or we simply block the bad times out. I ask them how long it took for us to get the electricity back again after he last war? 2 years until things got to what they are now, after 2 months of war. I ask them how was the water? Bad. Gas for car? None existent. Work? Lots of sitting in street tea shops. And how did everything get back? Hussain Kamel used to literally beat and whip people to do the impossible task of rebuilding. Then the question that would shut them up, so, dear Mr. Taxi driver would you like to have your saddam back? Aren’t we just really glad that we can now at least have hope for a new Iraq? Or are we Iraqis just a bunch of impatient fools who do nothing better than grumble and whine? Patience, you have waited for 35 years for days like these so get to working instead of whining. End of conversation.

Hopefully that will end the conversation on this thread as well.

#91 Occasional Reader

I think someone reading Salam Pax could easily come away with the impression that yes, Saddam was bad, but there were many middle class Iraqis getting by, and given the harm caused by sanctions and war, as well as Iraqis' hatred of the U.S. regime change was not worth it. The "support" for the regime is kind of subtle.

"It strains credibility to the breaking point to believe that someone could be blogging from Baghdad without Iraqi intelligence being aware of every word he wrote."
It's strains your credibility for making a comment like this. Saddam had no working email police or internet cops. They were not as technologically advanced as us. This is a country with people still living in mud huts, they had no need to be as advanced as we are. Besides in a situation like this it would take me probably four days to research and impliment a bloging privacy standard.

So how exactly do you explain SP still working for Saddam? Oh I get it because SP hates Chicken Hawks! *smacks head*

Anyone reading his blog would've had to conclude that he was from a wealthy family, thus must have had some ties into the Baathist regime. However, he also critisized the regime; for instance, the 100% vote for Saddam. Long ago I concluded that he was a good on-the-ground source, abeit from one who lived a privaledged life under the regime. I think all the speculation about him being plant is just a little foaming at the mouth. Of course, you should take everything he writes with a bit-o-salt! I thought that was obvious, but a deep propaganda ploy? Well, that would not be unheard of from this regime, but I figured we would've heard about more dead civilians by now. Furthermore, his affect is nominal, at best. I'm still more worried about the ingrained bias of media sources such as BBC [or reporters being paid off by regimes], than some spoiled scion kvetching about how the trains ran better under Uncle Saddam.
Breath!

#93 Dirk Diggler

Under the Salam Pax "agent of influence" theory, that quote, like his attack on Uday, establishes the credibility of his anti-U.S. and anti-INC views.

I guess the other thing that bothers me about the whole Pax-as-Mukhabarat-agent thing is this; it reminds me too much of the sort of reasoning the hard left engages in. The personal becomes political. We take a blog that, on the face of it, certainly looks credibly like the musings of a spoiled teenager; and, based on the fact that he doesn't entirely support our position, conclude that he must be an enemy agent. This, well, bothers me.

#93

I am very skeptical that someone who grew up in Iraq would use the nuances and slang meanings of english words and phrases that are displayed in the quote you reference. This same nuanced understanding of 'American English' is endimic throught his writing. Whatever or whoever Salman Pax is, Pax spent alot of time in the good ol' US of A.

#54 Craig,

My resonse to you, sir, is on my blog because it necessitated a rather more lengthy comment.

www.rogerlsimon.com

#95,

Judging from the video shots of downtown Baghdad during "Shock and Awe", significant parts of Iraq are past the "mud huts" stage.

My understanding is that the post-sanctions vestiges of Iraq's former, comparatively established middle class were strong enough to support the existence of a blogger or two.

NYer #97:

Under the Salam Pax "agent of influence" theory, that quote, like his attack on Uday, establishes the credibility of his anti-U.S. and anti-INC views.

I think that argument "proves too much", as the logicians say. By the same reasoning, the editorial board of The New Republic could be shown to be Mukhabarat agents.

OR--I hear you, but you have to admit there is something awfully strange about SP being able to post criticisms of Saddam and the boys without him being tossed in the wood chipper. There's gotta be something going on there. I agree that that fact alone doesn't make him an enemy agent, but I don't think it's as off the wall as you suggest.

Under the Salam Pax "agent of influence" theory, that quote, like his attack on Uday, establishes the credibility of his anti-U.S. and anti-INC views.

I give up. You're begining to sound as nutty as the Egyptian guy (Post #55) I got into an argument Friday night. Nothing personal, but "allow me to inform you that you are too far removed from reality".

I agree with Charles. I think it's a terrible mistake to believe (as the CIA seems to) that the Mukhabarat was a bunch of ham-fisted amateurs who didn't really know how to do anything. They were a professional Soviet Bloc trained service, and clearly had all of the capabilities of the old Soviet Bloc services. They knew how to bribe enemy politicians and commission agitprop (see George Galloway and Scott Ritter). Creating a Salam Pax figure fits into that same mold of attempting to undermine the West by preying on its wishful thinking and indecision. Sometimes that doesn't work. But if anyone other than George Bush had been President, it would have.

Roger L. Simon: looking at your blog--

(As for the poster on LGF who said I should agree with him because Lileks allegedly does or did -- what kind of an argument is that?)

A bit of cheap shot, Mr. Simon. It's not as if I, and others, have not been making plenty of other reasoned arguments in defense of our position, aside from my observation in #78.

Those who most vociferously believed SP's bonafides (Diana Moon of Letter from Gotham, et. al.) cited both receiving snail mail and a post-war phone call from Mr. Pax.

Of course, neither IP address, postmarks on an envelope, or even a voice at the other end of a phone call are sufficient for establishing one's identity.

I am surprised that the hordes of media still resident in Baghdad have not tracked Pax down - -

yet.

"Creating a Salam Pax figure fits into that same mold of attempting to undermine the West by preying on its wishful thinking and indecision. Sometimes that doesn't work. But if anyone other than George Bush had been President, it would have."

Are you saying that one of the most significant foreign policy decisions of the last hundred years might have been precluded by the existence of a blog??

#102 Occasional Reader

Of course it doesn't prove he's an agent. I've said I'm an agnostic on that issue. You're the one who said that the fact that he said such a thing proves that he isn't, and I think that's wrong.

By the way, the New Republic (which at one point was a Stalinist apologist publication), was pro-war, so a different example might be in order.

If Salam is smart, he will accuse anyone who suggests he might be an agent of being a McCarthyist.

It was damn near precluded by the veto of France...

... so yeah, in an alternate reality, one sad-sounding voice against America might have been enough to turn America.

NC #106 -- I agree that it seems strange that he would be able to write what he did without reprisals, and as I've indicated before, I don't even pretend to know anything about the technicalities of it.

But I can't get away from the basic problem with the "secret agent" theory; what agenda does his blog serve? It's filled mostly with musings about day-to-day life. As you yourself pointed out--if this is some sort of highly subtle pro-Saddam propaganda, well, it's TOO damn subtle, it won't actually accomplish anything. So reading this and concluding that Pax is an active Mukhabart agent seems to me like reading Samuel Pepys diary, and concluding that he was a French secret agent agitating for the violent overthrow of the British government.

If Pax were taking a "things were better under Saddam" line, I might be more inclined to take Charles' view. But the one time that such thinking is mentioned in the blog (that I can see), Pax tears the suggestion apart (his Taxi driver conversation).

Where's Diane E. (of the now defunct Letter From Gotham) on this thread? She probably knows more about "Salam" than anyone outside of Iraq.

i have to say, i'm in the pro-salam camp. sure, it's possible that it's a hoax. a hoax saying what? that it's not good to see cruise missiles land in your neighborhood, even if it's true you didn't like that ruler? he goes off on the fedayeen, doesn't want islamic rule, and yes, has some criticism of the americans... what kind of country HAS that worldview?

well, maybe britain. :)

anyway, salam himself has addressed these concerns, and said, if you think he's a propagandist, then simply don't read him. amen.

He didn't grow up in Iraq.

"One more correction, neither I nor Raed are "regular joes". Actually most regular joes would look at us suspiciously. I have spent half of my life out of this country and had to be taught how to re-grow my roots by someone who isn't even Iraqi by nationality, he just loves the place (thank you Raed). "

From his old blog (talking about the dossier on Iraq):

The whole region is a cesspool. dictatorships are all around the arab region. Turkey and Iran fair just as bad as the rest of the lot. But the benevolent western eye looks at Iraq only.
Thank you for your keen interest in the human rights situation in my country,
thank you turning a blind eye for thirty years,
thank you for providing the support for my government to send 2 million Iraqis to war with Iran and getting them killed,
thank you for not minding the development of chemical weapons by a nut case when you knew he was a nut case,
thank you for not minding that members of the Iraqi communist party get acid baths (you don't think that this was used for the first time in Kuwait do you?, the government used these baths since the late 70's),

He's obviously not pleased with the west, but somehow I don't think even a "secret agent man" would get away with calling Saddam Hussein a "nutcase".

#109 NYer:

By the way, the New Republic (which at one point was a Stalinist apologist publication), was pro-war, so a different example might be in order.

Under the "Mukhabarat-controlled New Republic" theory, the NR took the line of being pro-war in order to establish their credentials; and are now furthering a highly subtle, pro-Saddam propaganda campaign, by starting to seemingly "nitpick" at post-war administration.

See how easy that was? Well, that's my problem with the "counterfactual evidence only proves the conspiracy" angle to the Salam-as-agent argument.

Put that last sentence in past tense. (Even preview doesn't save me from dumb errors...)

SJ

You said in #15:

"Riverdance" wrote in exactly the same style and voice as Salam! I posted this in comments on the site, but no one seemed bothered by this or suspicious.

Believe it or not, I bookmarked that comment thread.
Does this sound familiar?:

How come Riverbend writes/sounds exactly like Salam?

Get real, folks / 03.12.03 - 2:24 am / #

# 108 -

What I am saying is that Saddam's regime clearly had a campaign to undermine Western support for the war by playing on Western indecision and reluctance to use force. Why else pay George Galloway millions of dollars? Or bride journalists to print favorable stories or bury the truth? The only question here is whether SP was part of it. There are reasons to think he was.

#118,

Gotcha. Fair enough.

#111 Occasional Reader

I'm mostly having fun playing around with this idea, but I don't really agree with you.

If Salam Pax said "things were better under Saddam" he'd lose all credibility with much of his audience, in light of the many horror stories that have emerged from Iraq. The only plausible account of his motivation at this point would be not to bring back Saddam, who's clearly history, but to shape the post-war situation situation so that Baathist elements might eventually return to power. He might do this by stigmatizing the U.S. occupation (without going so far as to say that it's worse than Saddam), and particularly the INC and other pro-western forces in Iraq.

According to David Warren, many of the current instances of violence and disorder in Iraq are part of this type of campaign by Baathists. On the other hand, there clearly have been huge problems with the U.S.'s administration of Iraq thus far.

Believe me, I take all of this with a good deal of salt.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the real question is: as someone who almost never reads Salam Pax, do I particularly give a shit who he is? And the answer is: No. No, I do not.

#115 Occasional Reader

Yes, at a certain point it can become like Colonel Flagg's logic, but I think it's far less plausible that a pro-Saddam magazine would have advocated a war to remove him from power, than that a Baathist trying to influence a western audience would throw in some criticisms of Saddam on occasion.

If "silly girl" doesn't get back in here and start talking about her stiletto heels again pretty damn soon, I'm outta here.

Yeah, where's silly girl? Are there pictures of her in the stilettos? Can there be?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall him making the observation that the police were lighting some of the oil fields, or something along those lines, not the U.S.

Whatever his affiliations, this doesn't strike me as something the Ba'ath Party would admit.

I agree with those like Occasional Reader who believe Salaam Pax is for real. It just seems too indirect with no real propganda being slipped in for him to be a Mukhabarat Agent, given what he says in his blog. I have wondered if Salaam is some sort of con artist who is secretly posting from some place like Beirut or Amman or even in some place in Western Europe and is relying on conversations with family and friends back in Baghdad and his own immagenation to give his postings authenticity.
If Salaam is real, how did he get his postings past the secret police. I think there several reasons for his sucess. One, the Mukhabarat are not that technically profecient with things like the internet and Salaam was able to outwit them. Second, Salaam's family is wealthy and well connected. Yes his Uncle, a leading banker and perhaps other members of his family are Bathists. This would give Salaam a good deal of protection and barring anything balant like trying to organize resistance to Saddam, rather difficult for even the Iraqi Secret Police to grab and tortue. Third, Salaam's blogging started, I believe after Bush's UN Address last September when Bush made clear that with or without the UN, we would be invading Iraq before the next Summer. The result of that speech was to let the Iraqi people know that Saddam would soon be gone. For those who supported the regime, particularly those like the Secret Police and others who might be considered war criminals, this was to have them A) make desparate plans to fight the Allied invasion and B) equally desparate plans to save their own necks by fleeing or hiding. In this atmosphere a son of a wealthy Iragi family, who is using the internet to talk to the outside world would not be a high priority to say the least!.
Some folks seem to be upset that Salaam is not overjoyed at being liberated, said unkind things on what we call, Liberation Day, and does not like some of the pro-American Exiles like Chalabi who returned on the heels of the American military. Well, I have news for them, I am pretty sure that a lot of Iraqis felt the same way, yes they are glad that Saddam is gone, but they mourn the Iraqi lives lost in this war, particularly the civilans, and the destruction done to their country,they do not like the idea of being occupied by American and (once again) British troops as any self respecting patriotic person would, and yeah, Chalabi and other exiles who have not been in Iraq for anywhere from 35 to in Chalabi's case almost fifty years are not very popular. Particularly in Chalabi's case since he and his group, the Iraqi National Congress, is a favorite of the US Defense Department and has apparently little support even among their fellow exiles, let alone folks in Iraq. I will pass on a piece of advice that my fellow psiano, Miachevalli gave to his Prince about how to find out what is happening in an enemy country: "Never take the advice of emeges (exiles)!" because they have not been in that country usually for some year, what they know is often times out of date and they advice will be heavly influenced by their desire to return. This combination can lead to disaster, i.e. Bay of Pigs in 1961. In closing, the easy part of the Iraqi operation, overthrowing Saddam is done, the hard part of reconstructing Iraq has just began. Good luck to everybody involved.

#125 He did mention the oil filled trenches.

I think some posters here need to check their tin foil hats to make sure that the shiney side is showing.

#87 justdanny,

Think you may have spoke yourself into a hole on this. You insinuated that prior to the war our "tile salesman" spoke critically of saddam. Which he did not.

I haven’t insinuated it. In post #44, NYer provides a link to Pax’s blog dated 12/25/02 in which he writes, “He [Uday] has already driven himself into a dead end before his father did. Families walk out quietly when he enters a restaurant, he is known to send one of his boys to bring him the women sitting at the closest tables to ““join”” him. People hate him, as much as they fear his father. So no one is looking for him to lead them anywhere. What a pointless thing to write.”

Look, I’m no expert on Salaam Pax, and I’ll say it loud and proud. The first I heard of him was on “Blogs of War” maybe a week before the tanks rolled in from Kuwait, and the only value I ever got from him was in his descriptions of life in Baghdad. I haven’t gone back through his archives to read all his writings, though I have read what he’s posted since the phones were turned back on this month. Personally, I don’t care all that much what his political opionions are, but he did and does provide some local flavor that’s missing from a lot of the reporting coming from western journalists.

Are members of his family in the Ba’ath party? Well judging by his own descriptions of his family, they’re not poor Shi’ites living in Saddam City. Does that mean that he, and members of his family, loved Saddam if they were in the party? How many people here stay in their jobs because they need the money and the benefits even though they hate the boss and the company? I think it’s possible for someone to have been in the party even though they hated the leadership, as many in the Iraqi middle class were and did.

I think the idea that Salaam Pax's weblog is a dangerous influence is ludicrous. If he is a figment of a Mukhabarat agent’s mind, then as one person said here earlier, that agent isn’t going to win the employee of the month award. If his family was in the party, then we get the perspective of a middle class kid who’s family had connections in the Ba'ath party, and I can accept it as that. We're going to have to take the opinions of those people into account, along with the Shi'ites and Kurds.

One more thing, if you really want to see some nasty comments by Salaam, check out his remarks about the Western "human shields". They are stinging and as savage as anything you have read on LGF!

It took only a few readings of his cleverly disguised sarcasm and disdain of the West for me to stop reading that tripe.

He had me fooled for a couple of weeks at least...

It took only a few readings of his cleverly disguised sarcasm and disdain of the West for me to stop reading that tripe.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

I know, too much has been said on this already...

But I'll toss in anyway.

First off, I agree with Occassional Reader and others.

For all of you reading anti-this, pro-that...

I'm as gungho pro-American as the next flag waver, but I don't even read anti-Americanism in his blog. Nor do I read any Pro-Saddam in his blog. I read a blog by a young man who is in the middle of huge changes and has some apprehensions about it.

Was he pissed at the US from time to time? Yes.
Well, we all get pissed at the US from time to time. So what? That doesn't make up anti-American.

And truly, he has a right to be pissed. We let him and many others down in 91.

And we've let other people down before too. Our track record is not impeccable. He has every reason and right to wonder about our motives and the outcomes of our interactions.

I fully supported our interactions. But that easy for me to do when I'm not the one being on the receiving end of the decision.

From his March 16th Rant:

-----
The entities that call themselves “the international community” should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight.

....

The situation in Iraq could have been solved in other ways than what the world will be going thru the next couple of weeks. It can’t have been that impossible. Look at the northern parts of Iraq, that is a model that has worked quite well, why wasn’t anybody interested in doing that in the south. Just like the US/UK UN created a protected area there why couldn’t the model be tried in the south. It would have cut off the regimes arms and legs. And once the people see what they have been deprived off they will not be willing to go back, just ask any Iraqi from the Kurdish areas. Instead the world watched while after the war the Shias were crushed by Saddam’s army in a manner that really didn’t happen before the Gulf War. Does anyone else see the words (Iran/not in the US interest) floating or is it me hallucinating?

------

If I were he, I'd be pissed and scared too. None of us truly realized how precise this battle would be.

He's not the only Iraqi who was apprehensive about the war. Those outside of Iraq were all for it. I doubt those inside Iraq had as much confidence in the outcome.

Bottom line...I accept his blog for exactly what it appears to be. And until Simon and Warren and others can provide something besides sleuthian conjecture, I'll continue to accept it on those terms.

And since I'm more confident than Salam is about the end result, I look forward to reading his future postings on the developments.
CBK

If "silly girl" doesn't get back in here and start talking about her stiletto heels again pretty damn soon, I'm outta here.

you guys are too funny. I said the exact same things on buzzmachine and got lambasted.

Well, actually, on buzzmachine I didn't talk about fetish footwar. Guess that made the difference ;) .

fetish footwar? oh dear, I meant footwear.

My foil cap theory is there's some low profile bloggers climbing up on Salam Pax's shoulders trying to get their heads above the crowd. I don't doubt SP's family had Ba'athist connections; he clearly has benefited from a privileged life. So what?

This is what: somebody fishing for an InstaLunch any way they can get it.

For those concerned with the edits on Salams most recent post...

Diane writes

to Junkyard Blog that she made those edits for Salam's privacy.

CBK

et #131
Yes.
And I'm glad I stopped wasting mine.

If he is an agent he must be deep undercover...perhaps he will continue on his path to fame and fortune and get linked to blogs worldwide before he reveals his true "agenda" if he has one. Will the US be the hero or the

And who would expect anyone in Iraq would be a huge USA fan when it has been drilled into them that we are infidel pigs out to steal their oil since they were tiny children? This will image will be impossible to erase since they are a society that is worse about stupid conspiracies than the the looney leftists right here at home. No matter how hard we try it won't be good enough and they will be sure that we "stole oil" somehow....sigh.

It will be interesting to see what our Iraqi friend thinks as things unfold in the coming months...

He might also have parents who were Baathists, but he might disagree with them, or at least take a more pragmatic view.

I find it unlikely that there wasn't a Baathist connection, but if there is, I still won't consider him subhuman.

SDB posted about this earlier, postulating that Salam Pax may not only have been a Baathist, but an actual Iraqi spy living in the US and routing through a shell on a Middle-Eastern server.

Whatever the case, though, the fact is that, until he makes his actual identity known, there will always be questions like this. I don't hold a grudge against either Salam, or his critics, until the truth finally is known.

#91 Occasional Reader, that's not the issue. It doesn't matter that "Salam Pax" has criticized Saddam. They have to criticize him a little to establish credibility.

What matters is that "Salam Pax" hasn't strongly criticized Saddam. There are no stories of "Salam's" family members being tortured or imprisoned. The larger point of "Salam's" blog is best explained as an attack on the liberation of Iraq and a bulwark for the Ba'ath Party in power and in exile.

If Salam was an Iraqi plant, his last post would have been in mid-March.

Stupid.

#137

Yes.And I'm glad I stopped wasting mine.

You can't waste something you don't have!

Why has nobody mentioned the fact that Salam's "tone", in addition to being reminiscent of the tone of the affluent Germans after WWII, is also very indicative of that "half" of his life spent in Europe (Vienna, as stated in the cited article)?

Not only would he have had free access to history and information during that time, but I'm sure he would also have been offered a steady diet of anti-Americanism well seasoned with disregard for "the lower classes" as only old Europe can offer it. That's the sort of attitude I mainly interpret from his blog. It's only subtle because you don't expect it from an Iraqi, "connected" or otherwise.

It's very possible that Salam views Baghdad with the same multicultural fetishism that you find in reporters from the BBC. But that hardly makes him a spy.

Whatever the true story about him is, it's probably more interesting than anything we can come up with at the moment. Personally, though, I think this is all going to turn out to be a Kaycee-Nicole type thing... Salam will turn out to be something slightly different from what he appeared to be, but the only damage will be the hurt feelings of the people who trusted him.

To believe that SP is legit, just a rich Iraqi kid in Baghdad, you must believe that he's willing to risk death and torture to post things online (crack that saddam is a nut, and other stuff about Uday) but he's not motivated enough to actually have a strong opinion one way or the other. Pretty ballsy with no real upside.

I'm disinclined to rush to condemn Salam Pax as a Baathist. Yes, he was clearly a person w/ some wealth and connections in Iraq. However, that does not make him a Baathist propaganda tool.

I can easily see how someone who truly opposed Hussein would also be leery of a war waged over and w/in his home city. I've read Salam for quite some time. He was never pro-Hussein. I've no doubt that Hussein wouldn't have wanted his views known.

But I can also understand how someone might not want to see bombs dropping over his head. If he was educated, I'm sure his idea of a war was much like the Kosovo example: a LOT of ordnance dropped over his head to flatten his city and then months of street fighting.

His later posts seem to be much relieved w/ the end of the war, pointing out that civilian casualties were lower than he had expected or that Iraq's propaganda had implied. He also seems to be committed to some form of democracy. He just doesn't want his country turned into an American colony. I can understand the aprehension.

People who grew up in totalitarian regimes -- or in the third world in general (and I'm one such person) -- have a very difficult time believing that anyone would voluntarily give power back to legitimate sources. Power, in such societies, is taken and abused for all its worth. That's the nature of any dictatorship, let alone a totalitarian one.

I have suspected that Salam was a fraud for quite a while. Before the war, his blog was far too well-known for Baath intelligence to have possibly been unaware of it.

If you remember, his basic argument before the war was always, "Democracy in Iraq would be nice, but I don't think anybody should actually lift a finger to do anything about it".

Of course, this was pretty much the exact same argument used by those Westerners who were actually on the take from the Baath party (Galloway, Ritter, France), and who in reality didn't want Saddam removed at all. Like those people, Pax probably didn't genuinely want the status quo to go anywhere, because he benefited from it. Like them, he was a Saddam supporter whose claims of desire for change were simply meant to distract.

#30 silly girl: LOL that's so spot on: a whiney anemic smartass. Or, "anemic royalty"... that post about the antacids and the Pennoroyal Tea quote put me off even more than the general smugness. It's not the situation I find ridiculous (is it even ascertained he is in Baghdad?) but the way he tells about it.

David Warren surely has picked up a lot of clues, but who knows. Maybe he's really writing for the enemy. My even wilder theory is he's writing for the NME, the magazine ;)

(OR, more likely, he just read way too much of it. )

I didn't know he'd been quoted in the press as some authoritative source! Oh my. I thought the general shock-and-awe effect was limited to bloggers. But it so figures he'd get special mentions in the Guardian.

Occasional Reader (106):

What argument? All you've said is you don't believe that Salam Pax is a phony. Fine - but that is not an argument. Try again.

I don't agree. The two prevailing points his posts bring out are
1) Saddam sucks
2) War sucks

At no point has he said anything in support of Saddam's regime, quite the opposite. So if the blog is a Ba'athist hoax, what possible purpose could it serve?

Sure, he is frustrated with the US and the situation in Iraq. Who wouldn't be? But every now and then he reminds us that it is better now than it was before.

Aren’t we just really glad that we can now at least have hope for a new Iraq?

He thinks the war should never have taken place (but is also relieved it did at the same time) because Saddam should have been taken care of 12 years ago.

If he were a Baathist, he wouldn't be expressing sympathy for the communists in Iraq. That's his latest position: the Baath party was horrible, Chalabi is a toad, but the communists have their heart in the right place (but he would prefer that they call themselves something else).

Geez, take a day off from the net and what happens? Missed all the Salam Pax outing. Remember, John© who posts at all the 'right' places, including LGF, of course, has been saying since day one that Raed was a phony construction. I followed this blogger with amusement as people like John who writes fascinating stuff at Daily P, Command Post, LGF etc from intelligence perspective of 20 years in Afghanistan and the middle east destroyed Pax. Left wing and even centrists suckers refused to listen, so take a bow John, and thanks David Warren for a brilliant takedown of Raed. Well done.

Hello; if this is a real person where is he? Why doesn't he show himself?

Quick techinical note since no one here seems to understand this internet thing:

If 'Salam' has an internet connection, he could encrypt and send messages. I don't know what method he did use, but if he has his own machine every browser has https built in. Yes, the Iraqi gov't could block it, but there are ways around that too. Then no one can snoop. Maybe only a few foreign-educated young guys figured out the right set of loopholes to not end up dead.

Or are you saying all the Iranian bloggers are plants of their gov't too?

Another reason there are very few Iraqi bloggers is presumably because the recent (last decade's) political and economic situation didn't allow an internet cafe boom. (anyone know?) It might have arrived in another year, and certainly will now. There were also news reports of Americans phoning relatives in Bagdad for much of this year and being surprised and how their relatives no longer feared the secret police so much, even before the start of the war. Those relatives must have all joined the intelligence services too.

#149 dr. dna

He thinks the war should never have taken place (but is also relieved it did at the same time) because Saddam should have been taken care of 12 years ago

Yeah. In other words, he wants his to have his cake and eat it too. It's the exact same position as was held by many of the Iraqi Communist Party. A non-argument.

Imagine someone in the 1930's saying, I'm against war on Hitler because he should have been taken care of 12 years ago. Or, today, being against war on terrorism because terrorism should have been taken care of... forty years ago. Wtf does it mean?

No one is exactly enthusiastic about his neighbourhood getting bombed. But if taking a political position you gotta have more than distaste for war to argue on.

Sure, he is frustrated with the US and the situation in Iraq. Who wouldn't be?

Perhaps, just perhaps, those who didn't place the blame for the results of 34 years of dictatorship on the US?

Why does it shock everyone that an upper/middle class 20something in Iraq would speak English, have access to the internet, be anti-Saddam and at the same time anti/wary of the US, be unsure of some of the Iraqi exiles, and also have ties to the Ba'athist Party?

Many middle class people had ties to the BP - it was part of being a teacher, a doctor, a journalist, a lawyer, a civil servant - that doesn't mean that every single person in the BP or with ties to them was a rabid Saddam supporter. You don't even know what his ties to the BP are, you're just going on supposition and speculation which is fair enough but could be wildly wrong (for example, one of the skeptics suggests that because he schooled in Vienna, and OPEC is in Vienna, his family must be in oil. What if his reason for being in Vienna had nothing to do with OPEC or oil?). If, however, the guy is upper/middle class, it makes sense that there are some ties to the BP or ruling class - to stay upper/middle class it looks like you had to swear allegience to the regime whether you meant it or not. Those who didn't either left the country or were killed, jailed, or otherwise.

What it seems to me is that his politics are the politics of the privileged class. That it comes as a surprise to anyone is what is shocking. Yes, it is possible for an Iraqi to speak English and have access to the internet without being someone's spy.