BEIRUT — To all donors and con­trib­u­tors: A while back I sought dona­tions for a report­ing trip to Iran, and raised about $2,000. I was in the process of get­ting visa appli­ca­tions together and mak­ing other plans when the new war here broke out. Now, I’m run­ning into a cash crunch because there are no dol­lars to be had in Lebanon (you can only with­draw Lebanese pounds) and rates for dri­vers and trans­la­tors have gone up to about $300 per day. I am get­ting reim­bursed for some — not all — of these expenses from my free­lanc­ing, but at the moment I need to pay these guys work­ing for me.
So the Iran trip is, obvi­ously, off. In the next day or so I will move the funds for the Iran trip into my check­ing account so I can con­tinue to cover this war. If any­one who donated does not wish their dona­tion to be used for this pur­pose, please let me know either in the com­ments or via email and I will refund your dona­tion. I will wait a cou­ple of days for responses to this post, but after that, I will be trans­fer­ring the funds so they’ll be avail­able to me here in Beirut. (ATMs still work.)
Also, if you want to donate to sup­port the cov­er­age of the Lebanese war, feel free! (Dona­tion but­ton to the right and at the bot­tom.) I’d be most grate­ful. I’ll also be rebrand­ing this site in the com­ing days. assum­ing I have time. Yes, Back​-to​-Iraq​.com likely will be no more. My orig­i­nal idea, “War​chaser​.com,” is catchy, but doesn’t cap­ture the mood I want. I’m still think­ing about it.
Above all, sorry for the change of plans, folks. Israel threw a curve­ball at us.

The B2I fund has been lan­guish­ing in Pay­Pal limbo for some time, so I was sur­prised today when I checked it to see there is $800+ in there. My apolo­gies for not acknowl­edg­ing the dona­tions. But what I’ve decided to do is donate the entire amount in the account to one of the aid agen­cies for tsunami vic­tims. (Prob­a­bly ICRC or MSF.) Since I’m not actively solic­it­ing dona­tions any­more, nor blog­ging as much, I think this is a much bet­ter use of the donated funds than wast­ing them on my sorry ass in Bagh­dad.
I just wanted to let every­one know that that’s what their dona­tions have gone to.
UPDATE: Just to let you all know… I’ve sent in $885.40 to Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders and marked it for spe­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion to the tsunami vic­tims. I hope it can do some good.
Please, if you feel the need to donate, do it to some­one who can help those folks and not me. I don’t need the cash, but thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple do. Try the fol­low­ing aid agen­cies:
* “Amer­i­can Red Cross”:https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp
* “UNICEF”:http://www.unicefusa.org/tsunami
* “Médecins Sans Frontières International”:http://www.msf.org/donations/index.cfm
* “Oxfam”:https://secure.ga3.org/02/asia_earthquake04
* “Direct Relief International”:https://www.directrelief.org/sections/support_us/d_donate_now.html
I hope that peo­ple will help through these agencies.