He was the famous 'blogger in Baghdad' describing the build up to the war from an Iraqi's point of view. There was a great deal of speculation as to whether he was a plant (not that kind of plant) or if we were witnessing a new phenomenon - reporting by the people for the people, powered by simple blog software. Anyway, it appears he turned up when the Guardian signed him up as their new reporter, claiming he was a 29 year old architect (no doubt despairing as the final remains of Baghdad's architecture was blasted to pieces).
I wanted to include details of his site for a presentation and the site was down. OK, could be a local problem I thought, so I asked a friend to check out the url. Nope. I searched on the net and double checked the url http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/. Hmm, so I went to the Guardian's website above and followed the link, still getting the invalid url error. All the links were pointing at my url, but still there was the invalid '_' character. OK, then, time to go back to good old trial and error and I reached a site this time that certainly looked right at http://dearraed.blogspot.com/. I'm pretty sure it's the right guy, but why does Salam Pax have a nme.com email address and near perfect command of English? You could form a rational argument to explain each of these oddities and either way it's still a fascinating read. You wonder whether we'll ever know the truth.
