Raed in the Middle

Raed in the Middle

Here's another interesting blog I came across today. It's from Raed Jarrad (and his family) in Bagdhad. Raed and his family look like a normal middle class family in some pictures. There's some photos of his sitting room which is similar to friends of mine whose families have emigrated from the middle east. A cool hard floor for those unbearably hot summers and some nice furniture. Go to any middle eastern immigrant's place and there's sure to be tiles on the floor throughout the house (bed rooms included) and in some instances up the walls.

The difference between Raed's living room and a normal middle class sitting room is that the place is full of medical supplies.

Raed has been appealing for money to provide medical supplies to victims of the war in Iraq. His accounting seems open and frank. Full records from his last venture are on his blog. It makes a nice change from all those "classified" and "security sensitive information" black holes that the US seems to have. More on SSI later. BTW Canadians seem to have the deepest pockets.

The cynic in me has a small doubt that Raed may be profiting from this, the optimist hopes his blog is 100% honorable. Honorable people these days are difficult to come across. I'll let you decide.

Raed is also doing an "at the coalface" survey on casualties in Iraq

Another interesting thing is that he reports the death of Marla Ruzicka. Ruzicka was doing a casualty count too and got killed in the process. Raed actually knew her. Her website at CIVIC was assembling the cost of the war in people in Iraq. For a alternative rather horrid opinion, view on her activities see this article from a "patriotic American" (TM).

An early report to Raed states:

Sometime between 3-6pm Baghdad time Marla died in a car crash. My current information is poor, but the accident may have happened on the Baghdad Airport road as she travelled to visit an Iraqi kid injured by a bomb, part of her daily work of identifying and supporting innocent victims of this conflict.

A US military convoy was involved in the event, but it is not clear at this stage in what way precisely.

Later reports around the web attribute Marla's death to "suicide bomber" in a car. I actually asked an Iraqi who managed to get out and become an Australian citizen about these suicide bombers and it appears it never happened during the Iraq/Iran war. It seems to have occurred with the involvement of US/Israel, so do your own guesswork on that one.

There's also some interesting commentaries as the various factions try to piece together a constitution, some inconsistencies about the "50 bodies found in the river" and some photos of some really big protests trying to get the USA out.

Seems as if the Iraquis are understandably sick and tired of this freedom and democracy.