Speaking of scurillous libel, THIS GUY at the Ottawa Citizen really doesn't like our blog buddy Salam, who writes from Baghdad. You can get an idea of the harshness of his critique from the headline:
'Salam Pax' plays Americans for fools in Iraq
The star of the blog 'Where is Raed?' is part of an anti-Western conspiracy
Interestingly, unlike some people this David Warren does not exactly question the authenticity of Salam. He doesn't claim that he's not real. Instead, he makes up a whole bunch of evil stuff apparently largely wholecloth to pile on top of the minimal personal details that this anonymous blogger Salam actually provides.
"Salam is the scion of a senior figure from Iraq's Baathist nomenclature. He was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the OPEC headquarters; his father was therefore an oilman, and possibly a former head of Iraq's OPEC mission. Another clue is a hint that his grandfather was an Iraqi tribal chief, from which I infer that his father was one of the Iraqi tribal chiefs that Saddam Hussein rewarded for loyalty, outside the Tikrit clan."
What? Where the hell did he get all that? He appears to be claiming to have deduced all this from reading between the lines of Salam's writings. To phrase it differently, Warren's just making most of this shit up. Apparently he's trying to set himself up as the frontrunner for the New York Times Jayson Blair Journalistic Integrity award.
For my attempt to qualify for this coveted award, I'd like to note that David Warren is a vicious homosexual pedophile whom we can assume has murdered at least several young boys during his criminal run. Now, granted I have no evidence of any of this, nor any good or even plausible reason to believe it.
However, I've got as much reason to make such accusations against Mr. Warren as he has for his nearly equally bad implication that Salam might be an Iraqi security goon. "Salam would never have known any "ordinary" Iraqis, unless he was interrogating one privately."
Article comments
1 - Steve Rhodes
That is one of the more fucked up columns I've read in a while. And people complain that bloggers don't have editors. That guy had an editor and it still was printed.
2 - Al Barger
Oh Jebus. This guy's so bad, even the New York Times wouldn't hire him- not even if he were a crippled black lesbian.
3 - Deano
Unfortunately stupidity knows no national boundaries...
I've been reading Salam for a time now. He may well have Ba'athist ties (I suspect that anyone and practically everyone in Iraq has some ties with the Ba'athists - as it was with the Soviet Union, for many things it is the Party or nothing) but anyone who reads his posts can see he has no particular ties to the Ba'athists, and I've read stronger anti-Americanisms in western media (looked at the BBC lately?).
Warren's trying to find a new story slant and get some attention by trashing Salam...he's an opportunist of the worst kind...