I would like to thank my great American friend, Michael Richardson, a writer and graphic designer from Northampton, MA, USA, for his huge effort, and for the time he spent designing the IRAQI CIVILIAN WAR CASUALTIES website. Michael emailed me some weeks ago offering to help me complete this small humanitarian job that started one year ago.

Thousands were killed and injured.

Each one of these thousands has a life, memories, hopes. Each one had his moments of sadness, moments of joy and moments of love.

In respect to their sacred memory, I would appreciate it if you could spend some minutes reading the database file when I publish them, read their names, and their personal details, and think about them as human beings, friends, and relatives -- not mere figures and numbers.

Question of the Day

is the bush administration going to change the name of the de-baathification committee, and start calling it the baathification office?

or maybe the De-De-Baathification club
(cheb khalid will be happy to hear this remix of his didi song)

today, the National De-Baathification Committee decides to reintegrate more than 12,000 former Baath members to public service.

why don't they act in a brave way, just once, and admit that they were wrong?
when people like me said that the debaathification is wrong, more than a year ago, I was called a Baathist and Saddamist.

Iraqis, Americans, and the rest of the world need to hear a public apology from the stupid irresponsible administration.

Spending most of my time staring at the calendar, feeling like someone driving his car towards a wall. Deadline for submitting the thesis, deadline deadline... deathline… (inventing new mixes, like my brand new Rum-Tequila mix: “Falluja”, during this freaking out attacks)

And spending the rest of my time trying to prevent myself from writing more blogs and love letters to niki.

So yeah,
I had this polite gentleman emailing me the other day, saying that he will stop reading my blog because I sound like a broken record, going on and on cursing bush and his gang, some other small websites spending their time recycling my words started calling me the Booooooosh Booooooooooosh train!
:*)
haha

so, trying to pay more attention and respect to my dear spectators, and trying to prove that I am not missing the “democracy lessons” of small bush, I will not say anything bad about him today.

BUT

I will let one of my friends do that
:*)
sneaky, haa?

Clair is my Vietnamese/French friend working in Iraq now,
(no, I don’t know anyone with a pure nationality)
we were having this online discussion yesterday about bush and his visit to France, and I was telling her how miserable was the idea of going back to France every now and then to remind them of the Great Favor of WWII, and that in our eastern culture it is so rude and impolite to remind anyone with favors you did for him. And it seems that my Booosh booosh train impressed Clair in a way or another, so she decided to send this email, weighing in on the neo-cons leader, the not-very-funny guy with a gun.

Ladies and gentleman, please welcome the new member of the axis of evil
Clair
:*)

Dear Raed

Sorry to be French, and not being as credible as any other in a critic on W. (I remember my first hour in Baghdad, met the first GI, asked me his first question “Why do you French hate us American?” - what can you answer to that kid ??? Ok just went off that stupid plane, I'm in a stupid airport, waiting for 4 hours for a stupid car blocked 100 meters away by a stupid CF checkpoint, it is 50 degrees and there are no AC!!! Please give me a break you've never met French before anyway.

So France is le moulin rouge, what is Iraq ? Saddam ? Well I should admit that Saddam's moustache is quite popular over here. ;-)

Something still bothering me
So the UN are non-existent in Iraq. they left.
There are several Palestinians here and the Palestinian case is well known among Arabs in this area.
How can we even believe in anything that is supposed to be solved by a UN resolution?
How can we ever believe that human rights or democracy are a stake?
How can we ever believe that international law would be respected?
I know hope it is quite important, and I should be probably the first to believe in peace and reconstruction (after all it is kind of my job here), but, I suddenly realised what 'occupying power' means, and how neo-colonial was that.

How long is the occupation gonna last ? From here it looks and seems forever (tension rise again in Falloujah lately). Who believes in Iraqi sovereignty anymore in Iraq? How is that going to end?
Is there any reason for peace to be restored under the (unfair) rules of an (officially called) 'occupying power'?
The more the Bush administration talks about Iraq the less credible they are.
How can they seriously say 'OK we didn't find any WMD but we liberated the Iraqi people from this awful dictator'? Why didn't you say you wanted to overthrow Saddam in the first place? because you have no right to do so? because nobody would follow you? because people would have asked you why him especially, isn't there also other bad guys that we should get rid of?
Oh I see no petrol there. mmh difficult.
I mean there are some companies that need to work you know, big ones. Between Iraq and, let's say North Korea, where is it quicker to make huge profit?
Even worse, doesn't that mean that you can do whatever you want on whatever false pretext as long as a 'side effect' is positive? it's kind of scary, hein?

The terrible things is that most of the people here in Baghdad are happy to get rid of Saddam whatever means it has took, and now all of them dream of getting rid of the Americans.
What I really don't understand is how American tax payer can stand this. Come on, it is your money that is wasted on a useless occupation.
Or maybe is it Iraq money!
what?
shame on you, you super-[democratic(!)]power.

Although, I'm national from the soon to be 4th member of the 'axis of evil' club, my arms are falling down (mmmh not sure this could be translated into English) each time I hear a new statement from 'ladies and gentlemen the president of the United States'.
I mean, how can the first super power of the world pretend not to be laughed at with such a president. What are his 'sherpas' doing? What kind of consistency is that? How rude can you be when you are a 'W'?

Ok there was some fun while seeing 'W' on TV bullshitting the world. Lots of amazement when understanding the strong support from the American people. Hey Americans, how can you believe what that guy says? Aren't you supposed to be more educated? I fully support electing a president because he is so much fun (let say I did that myself sometime) but hey it is not anymore, the guy has a gun, somebody do something, please.

Ok I'll stick to the political side (no talking about the enormous amount of dollars at stake) although I disagree with you on the roman empire thing. Well, at least the roman empire was coherent and understandable. What kind of message is delivered here apart from 'me-strong-you-weak-I-crush-you' in the name of democracy???? (come on let's play democracy over there.)
I had this so strange conversation with that well educated Iraqi woman, English teacher, asking me about democracy (well you know the greeks blabla), and 2 days later this kid warning us against 'democracy checkpoint', that says nothing and so much about what the Americans are here for.

I'm sorry Raed I'd look quite pessimistic but until now I really don't see an issue. Although I'm quite attached to all those 'democratic' value, the country seems more and more destroyed. Do you really think the Iraqi people are willing to forgive again the Americans for what they've done this year? I mean America is although representing freedom and democracy, but it is precisely in the name of these that they are being colonialist? What is to be expected from that? Freedom for us means tanks for you? How can we ever imagine to impose 'democracy' and 'freedom' by military force, come on.
OK Europe has been liberated from evil once, but history doesn't repeat itself (oh my god, I am quoting Chirac now, I should really do something) 'as the beloved president said, long live for him'.

Ok too late now
I'll finish this later in the week...
some people have to reconstruct this country during the day ;-)
take this as the first part of my contribution to the anti bush struggle

keep in touch
Claire