Recently in Personal Category

Me and Anthony in a Djibouti bar in March -- much better times.It just not bloody fair.

Earlier tonight, I found out that Anthony Mitchell, a reporter for the AP based in Nairobi and one of the most interesting and funny guys I've met in a long time, was on a plane that crashed in Cameroon on Saturday. In all, the Kenyan Airways flight was carrying 114 people.

It doesn't look good, and my heart is heavy tonight. As the report says:

Among the passengers of the Boeing 737-800 was a Nairobi-based Associated Press correspondent, Anthony Mitchell, one of five Britons on a passenger list released by the airline. Mitchell had been on assignment in the region.

Most of the passengers were apparently en route to Nairobi to transfer to other flights.

I met Anthony, who is 39, in March in Djibouti, when we both were onboard the FGS Bremen, a German frigate, for a story on maritime security operations in the area. Anthony was full of funny, self-deprecating stories about himself and Africa, stories that contained no small amount of hard-won wisdom, too. He talked about the clans of Somalia, the US military's actions in the Horn of Africa and constantly took the piss out of our military escort in the most good-natured way possible. (Anthony's from London while LCDR "Grassy" Meadows of the Royal Navy is from the north of England.)

I didn't know him long, but in the few days I knew him, he was a reporter's reporter, working constantly, cell phone seemingly glued to his head as he chased down reports of the kidnapped Britons in Ethiopia and set up an interview with the president of Djibouti.

He was kicked out of Ethiopia last year, he said, because he upset the government there. Apparently, they didn't like his reports on corruption and he was given just 24 hours to leave the country. While that was no doubt a huge inconvenience, I can't help but have a soft spot for reporters who tweak the powers-that-be as much as he did.

He loved Africa, he said. He liked small towns and eschewed most of the "mod-cons," as he called air conditioning and the like. He also carried around in his wallet a photo of his wife, Catherine, and his kids, Tom and Rose. They looked like a really nice family.

I wish the outlook looked better, but right now I'm left with hoping for the best for Anthony's family -- and for all the families of the people on that plane. For while this post is about Anthony -- only because I know him -- I know that he was just one person and that 114 families are anxiously awaiting word.

UPDATE 5/7/07 12:38:20 PM +0200 GMT: A grim update. Cameroon officials say there is "no chance" of survivors.

Some bad news of a personal nature out of Iraq today. A scientist friend of my former fixer in Iraq was shot and killed in traffic Monday:

BAGHDAD -- A leading Iraqi academic and prominent hardline Sunni political activist was fatally shot by three gunmen Monday as he was leaving his Baghdad home, police said.

The killers escaped in a car after gunning down Essam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union and a senior member of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, according to police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq.

The association is a Sunni organization believed to have links to the insurgency raging against U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. The group has boycotted elections and stood aside from the political process.

An association official confirmed the killing of al-Rawi, a geologist, saying he was behind the wheel of his car and had just left his home for the drive to work at Baghdad University accompanied by two bodyguards.

The gunmen drove in front of al-Rawi's car, forced it to stop, then sprayed it with automatic weapons fire, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal. One of al-Rawi's bodyguards was killed and the other was wounded, the official said.

I wrote about Dr. Al-Rawi in June 2004 for Seed Magazine, shortly after I got back to Iraq. I don't remember if the story ever ran or not as there was a payment dispute, but here's the story I wrote:

The scientists among the shell casings

BAGHDAD — Dr. Isam al-Rawi, a geologist at Baghdad University, sweeps his hand over a set of dog-eared journals. The arc of his gesture continues on to include a bare laboratory with a few slices of rock samples, a sagging chair and a dripping sink. The room is mean, long and narrow, with barely enough room for a colleague to squeeze past al-Rawi carrying a tray of glasses filled to their chipped rims with Sprite. Finally his hand returns to the journals and books, and he points an accusing finger at them.

"I am a university professor," he says. "I need books!"

Indeed, he needs a lot more than that, but few things sum up the current state of Iraq's scientific crisis more than its lack of books and journals. Al-Rawi's most recent acquisition is a photocopied version of the 1998 edition of the Atlas of Rock Forming Minerals, which he bought in Libya on his last trip outside Iraq. His most recent journal, a copy of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, dates to August 1985. To a one, his books and journals are old, out of date and falling apart, much like the country's scientific community itself.

Before the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq's scientists were some of the most respected in the region and they made a good living. The country's universities churned out engineers, technicians and Ph.D.s. They often did post-graduate work in the West and had access to the world's scientific literature. They traveled to scientific conferences all over the world.

But things started to get bad in the mid-1980s when the Iran-Iraq war was raging; Saddam Hussein began restricting access to scientific journals. After the disastrous 1991 war and the impositions of sanctions, things took an even graver turn. Salaries plummeted. Al-Rawi's monthly income went from about $2,000 a month before the 1991 war to about $400 a month. New scientists and professors earned about $100 a month. They could not travel; they could not subscribe to periodicals, as they were forbidden by the sanctions regime. New books were too expensive. Much needed equipment, which was often marked as "dual use," was prevented from entering the country. The Middle East's most advanced scientific community was effectively sealed up in a time capsule.

But now, even with most of the restrictions gone, things are still hard 15 months after Saddam Hussein was removed from power. While scientists are no longer prevented from ordering new books and journals and are allowed to leave the country, they often can't for the simple reason that they have no money to do so. And a sinister series of killings has terrified and decimated the scientific community. In mid-June, Sabri Al-Bayati, professor of telecommunications at the college of Science and Education at Baghdad University was shot dead near his home in the Bab Al-Athamiya area in central Baghdad.‏ A few days previously, a physician, Dr. Mohammed Abdullah Faleh al-Rawi (no relation), was killed while sitting in traffic. Their deaths are just two of about 250 university professors, medical doctors and engineers who have been killed since May 1, 2003.

"No one knows why, no one knows who," al-Rawi says, and flicked his prayer beads back and forth.

In such an environment, there is no work on new research, says Dr. Nuhad Ali, a mechanical engineer at the university. The only money being spent is to keep up the salaries of the professors, and the only new equipment are some computers paid for with the now-defunct oil-for-food program. The universities aren't even accepting new graduate students, Ali says. All current graduate students, who used to receive a monthly stipend, were enrolled before the war.

But not all is hopeless, two solid state physicists, Dr. Izzat al-Essa and Dr. Raed al-Haddend, says they had been able to attend the Saudi Solid State Physics conference in Riyadh in March. The praised the lifting of travel restrictions, but says it was still very expensive.

Baghdad University was also lucky. Almost every other university in the country was looted in the civil unrest following the fall of Baghdad. But American troops decided to bivouac on the campuses of Baghdad University and the nearby Al-Nahrain University neé Saddam Hussein University. Their presence prevented the wholesale looting of everything down to electrical fixtures that was going on just across town at al-Mustansiriya University.

So now the scientific community must rebuild with limited financial resources in a security vacuum. It's no wonder there's an abiding sense of hopelessness among the professors. Al-Essa and al-Haddend dream of X-ray machines, electron microscopes and FT-IR spectrometers. Al-Rawi wants to replace his 1974 X-ray fluorescence machine so he can analyze some rock sections he recently took near Perispike in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. Dr. Emad T. Bakir, an industrial chemist with a specialty in polymers, hopes for research assistants, catalysts and solvents.

But the money is simply not there. The former administrator for the now-dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority L. Paul Bremer III was found of saying, "Iraq is a rich country that is temporarily poor." The new government is inheriting many of Iraq's old debts, including $29.8 billion for war reparations to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but the Transitional Administrative Law, which is the working constitution for the interim government, forbids deficit spending. All ministries, including the Ministry of Higher Education, headed by Dr. Taher Khalaf Jabur al-Bakaa, are feeling the vice grip of national poverty. The minister doesn't even have a bullet-proof vest; he can't afford one.

But if Iraqis are good at anything, it's hoping. The scientific community is no exception. Fueling this hope is a promise promise from Bremer. Before he left June 28, he said he would attempt to increase communications between American scientists at universities and their Iraqi counterparts. An Iraqi delegation recently returned from the University of Oklahoma whose president Bremer went to school with.

"We hope our friends in America and England will come to see what has happened to us," says al-Rawi.

It should be noted that almost all of the murders of university professors have gone unsolved. Al-Rawi was working to change that when he became a victim himself.

BAGHDAD -- So. I filed a FOIA request on myself a while back with the CIA. Yesterday my brother received a letter that says that after an exhaustive search they found "one document that we have determined must be withheld in its entirety" based on exemptions to the FOIA and Privacy Act laws. The exemptions cover disclosure of CIA "intelligence sources and methods, as well as the organization functions, names" etc of personnel employed by "the Agency" and "material which is properly classified pursuant to an Executive order in the interest of national defense or foreign policy."

On the one hand, I think, "Hm. What the hell does the CIA have on me, anyway?" On the other, I think, "Bitchin'! The CIA has spook stuff on me! Who's the spy in my circle of friends?" Looks like someone in Langley's getting another FOIA-gram from me...

Seriously, how common is it for a journalist to have a document about him that can't be released for "national security reasons"? Anyone from the CIA reading this site -- and server logs don't lie, yo -- want to chime in and explain? And don't worry about me blowing your cover. I don't work for the Bush administration.

UPDATE 23 March 2006 at 1231 +0200 GMT: A copy of the two page letter is available here (page 1) and here (page 2). I wonder if this is part of President Bush's wiretapping scheme or if the CIA has been employing journalists again, which is supposed to be a no-no.

BAGHDAD -- And no, I'm not talking about WMDs or anything like that. More in my quixotic feud with noted fiction writer Ralph Peters, who came here for a little while and declared All is Well, and "the media" are aiming to undermine the heroic mission here in Iraq with all that bad news. Why, he himself saw Iraqis cheering his patrol as he rumbled through Baghdad atop an up-armored humvee.

Let's conduct a little thought experiment. "The media" here are fiercely competitive. Everyone of us is looking for any angle -- any! -- that will break news, make our stories stand out or otherwise distinguish ourselves. That's what journalists do, and the corps here comes from the entire ideological spectrum, from the conservative to the socialist. But weirdly, this herd of cats -- which is what we could be best be compared to -- have all come to the same conclusion: Iraq is a mess.

I would argue that this prevailing view is the aggregate of a lot of professional reporting, mine but a small bit. If it gravitates toward a single viewpoint, well, that's the way it is. Sorry, truth hurts. But a guy who writes exclusively for publications that supported the war before it went down comes here and says things are fine, and somehow I'm supposed to suddenly doubt my own observations and experience? Pardon me if I believe my lyin' eyes instead of him.

But more unforgivably, Peters also continues his libel against Iraqi stringers/journalists by saying the "The Iraqi leg-men earn blood money for unbalanced, often-hysterical claims." (emphasis added.)

Mr. Peters, you should be ashamed of yourself. Three Iraqi journalists have been killed this week alone trying to report the news, and the stringer who work for us are no less the journalists than the guys at the Iraqi networks. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Muhsin Khudhair, editor of the news magazine Alef Ba, was killed by unidentified gunmen near his home in Baghdad Monday night, becoming the third journalist killed in Iraq in the last week, Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported. The shooting took place just hours after Khudair attended a meeting of the Iraqi Journalists Union, which discussed the targeting of local journalists in Iraq, Reuters said.

The killing punctuated a deadly week for the press. Amjad Hameed, head of programming for Iraq’s national television channel Al-Iraqiya, and driver Anwar Turki were killed on Saturday by gunmen apparently affiliated with al-Qaeda. Munsuf Abdallah al-Khaldi, a presenter for Baghdad TV, was killed by unidentified gunmen last Tuesday as he was driving from Baghdad to the northern city of Mosul.

At least 67 journalists and 24 media support workers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003, making it the deadliest conflict for the media in recent history. The killings continue two trends in Iraq: the vast majority of victims have been Iraqi citizens; and most cases have been targeted assassinations rather than crossfire. CPJ research shows that Iraqis constitute nearly 80 percent of journalists and support staffers killed for their work in Iraq. Overall, sixty percent of journalist deaths were murders.

Maybe Mr. Peters would like a nice chat with "Salih" from the Washington Post, who reported a story about the looting of Saddam's palaces in Tikrit after the U.S. military turned it over to the Iraqi security forces. His reward? A $50,000 bounty put on his head by the head of security in Tikrit, Jassam Jabara.

Perhaps he'd like to talk to the family of Allan Enwiyah, the translator for the Christian Science Monitor's Jill Carroll. He was killed when Jill was kidnapped Jan. 7, unprotected by American firepower. She is still captive, by the way.

Or perhaps he'd like to discuss "blood money" with the widow of Yasser Salihee, a careful and conscientious reporter for Knight-Ridder who was killed by American soldiers at a checkpoint when the car in front of him blocked his view of the troops, who opened fire and killed him. Did I know him? Yes, but not well. I found out about his death when Hannah Allam, then bureau chief for Knight-Ridder called me in hysterics.

You want to know what the Iraqis -- who frankly do a better job that we do -- feel and think? Read this. Highlight:

"To get a story you have to risk your life," [said Salima] matter-of-factly. "Sometimes I wonder if the people in the U.S. really understand how much we go through in order to write the story." To underscore that, she told of being pushed from behind by an Iraqi man while covering a story with a Western reporter, of being caught in a firefight in Sadr City, Baghdad's sprawling and violent slum, and of being threatened by a group of insurgents while out reporting. Yet in a country with few opportunities, journalism is a way to make a living, and to stay involved. "We never know when something could happen to us," she said. "But then at the same time, I cannot stop living."

How dare you, Ralph. How dare you question these men and women's intentions and honesty. I've worked with our staff in the TIME house for two years and I've never seen a more dedicated, careful group of journalists. They're not in this for the money. We pay them well, yes, but they could make more money doing other work. Lord knows they'd be safer, and their families would be, too. But they come in to work every day and do their level best to get us every scrap of information and to get it right. Anyone of them is a better journalist than Ralph Peters, who feels his view from the back of humvee is the only valid one. It's a viewpoint, yes, but hardly the whole story. You come talk with me, Ralph, we'll go walk the streets of Karradah, drive without armor, feel the copper in your mouth when the fear and adrenaline comes to you in wave after wave and you realize the L-T from the 320th hasn't got your six for you, man. You come talk to me then.

Finally, I'll let a former Army guy have the last word. This from a buddy of mine who was a Public Affairs Officer just a few short months ago:

Oh my god, dude. [Peters] is completely full of sh*t. That's all I can say. Apparently that f**k hasn't spent enough time down in the trenches here to understad the little bastards will run out and wave at any patrol for one reason -- begging for choclate or soccer balls. They don't care the Grunts are valiently coming to save the day. ... He's not aware of how f**king dangerous it is for gringos to roam the streets here.

BAGHDAD -- Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been on deadline working on a project and haven't had time. There's much going on here in Baghdad, both politically and in the streets (where the real politics take place.) I hope to have some more analysis and reporting up soon. My apologies.

In the meantime, more than 70 85 bodies have been found around Baghdad in the last 24 hours, most of them bearing signs of torture. One of the victims still had his identity papers on him, which identified him as a 22-year-old Sunni student. However, Iraqi authorities are refusing to identify the other victims found around the capital because they fear fueling (more) sectarian violence. Based on my experience here, it's likely most of these bodies are of Sunni men, killed in reprisal for Sunday's car bomb attacks in Sadr City that killed 58 and wounded more than 200. The culprits are probably members of the Shi'ite-led security forces or members of the Mahdi Militia, based in Sadr City.

Or, heck, there's no reason the killers couldn't be both, considering how deeply the Iraqi security forces have been integrated into the Shi'ite militias.

No civil war here, though. Nope. Just a slaughter.

Elsewhere, in Palestine, militants rioted across Gaza after the Israelis stormed a prison holding Ahmad Saadat, one of the leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In Lebanon, today is the first anniversary of the massive March 14 demonstrations that many hoped would establish a new Lebanese politics.

BAGHDAD -- I will be appearing on WBUR, the NPR affiliate in Boston for the show, "On Point" with Tom Ashbrook at 10 a.m. EST today if anyone wants to listen in. The topic will be Iraq, civil war, etc. It will be syndicated in New York and in many other markets.

In an hour, the daytime curfew will be over, and already I can hear the chants from Shi'ite mosque down the streets. The faint rat-a-tat of automatic weapon fire is clearly audible. This could be a bad night. Let's hope not.

UPDATE 4:24 p.m. +0300 GMT: There's a report, unconfirmed, that a crowd of 100-700 Iraqis have gathered and are marching toward the Ministry of Interior. Approximately 50 of the crowd are armed, but so far the march has been peaceful.

UPDATE 6:10 p.m. +0300 GMT: Well, damn. Cancelled radio spot.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, did the operation in the name of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheikh" currently in prison for his role in a plot to blow up New York City landmarks. Early in the morning on Nov. 18, two white vans laden with explosives approached the back wall of the Hamra compound. The first one, driven by Abu Ayub al-Iraqi, was to clear a path for the second van. In the video, the bomb-makers claim to have loaded the second van with 2.5 tons of explosives, but I find this doubtful. You can see, however, that they used a number of 155mm artillery shells.

Abu Abdul Malik al-Najdi, a Saudi, drove the second van. Alongside him was Abu Samain al-Tunisi, from Tunisia, who carried a Russian machine gun to shoot any guards who arrived at the scene of the first bombing and tried to prevent the second bomb from getting to the heart of the compound. This means they learned from the unsuccessful Palestine Bombing in October, when the van carrying the main payload came under fire and was, possibly, stopped because the driver was shot.

Also, you can see that they make use of the latest open-source intelligence, mainly Google maps. In one part of the video, the plotters are shown poring over printouts of the neighborhood, marking routes of access. They look exactly like Google maps. The maps are also later used to show the planned points of attack.

Why attack the compound? The video claims it was in retaliation for the torture of Sunnis at the hands of the Shi'ite-led Ministry of Interior as well as for the deaths of Iraqi officers by Americans interrogators. They also saw the compound as a den of foreign intelligence, the Badr Brigade and housing for Kurdish pesh merga and Western security companies. The attack also was billed a success in the video: "It was the anger of God to heal the hearts of believers," the video proclaims. It ends with a recording of someone who is claimed to be Zarqawi himself: "To the Islamic nation, we promise you we will continue fighting until the last drop of blood."

This claim of responsibility is unusual in that it came in January, two months after the attack. It's possible the delay is because of the relative failure of the attack. Only Iraqi civilians were killed or injured and the second bomb didn't make it to its intended target. Whether that means al Qaeda will come back as they usually do after initial failures is still unclear.

Bloodstains on the Hamra walls

(Originally uploaded by Baghdad Chris).

BAGHDAD -- I finally made it over to where the bombing of the Hamra Hotel occurred in November. The building is being repaired, but it's still grim inside. Bloodstains still adorn the walls where fleeing residents pressed their hands against the wall for support as they tumbled down the stairs. Ceilings are still caved in. And the house that bore the brunt of the blast is simply gone, with nothing more to mark it but a gap and a pile of bricks. Surrounding homes had their facades sheared off.

All those people died.

It's a grim reminder of what dangers exist for us in Iraq every day. And by "us" I don't mean just journalists or foreigners, but I mean every person in Iraq. (More photos here)

BAGHDAD -- Ehlen w'sehlehn, as they say here. ("Welcome.") To which I should probably reply, "Thanks... I think." I'm back in Iraq's capital after two and a half months away, and in that time I faced upheavals in my personal life, and three weeks in Beirut. The two are more or less unrelated. But Baghdad is almost exactly the same as when I left, despite the fact that there's been a monumental election here -- the full import of which has yet to be felt.

Well, it's not exactly the same. I've been back a day and I've already received an earful on the high price of petrol: 250 dinars for a liter as opposed to 20 dinars it was in the summer of 2003 and the 30 dinar or so it was when I left in mid-November. Fuel subsidies are being lifted and people are feeling the squeeze.

If only there were fuel for the city's power stations. Electricity is down to about two hours a day in Baghdad, doled out in fits and spurts of 15 mins or so at a time. Sometimes, gloriously, we get a solid hour, but it's rare. Generators pick up the slack, and since you have rising fuel costs, you start to see the double squeeze that poor Iraqis are feeling.

Add on to that incessant guerilla attacks on the country's oil infrastructure that has left exports below pre-war levels and there's no money coming into the government. Insurgents have hit upon pipeline sabotage as a means to cut off Baghdad's funding, so no matter what the composition of the government -- when it's finally done -- it won't be able to do much. So the new government, which is still being negotiated, will probably be viewed with the same resentment as the current Jaafari government does, except we'll be stuck with these guys for four years now.

Speaking of the government, word is that the United Iraqi Alliance list, dominated by Shi'ite religious parties and thought to have the blessings of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is deadlocked over who will be their candidate for the prime minister's office. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Da'wa Party, wants to keep the job, but current vice president Adel Abdul Mahdi (of the rival SCIRI party) is favored by others in the coalition. The Kurds are willing to support whoever will legalize their hold on Kirkuk.

The question is what will the Sunni groups do. Ally with the UIA in a national unity government? Cleave to Iyad Allawi's rump bloc in the hopes of creating a viable opposition? We'll see.

The mood here among reporters, I think, is grim. Jill Carroll's kidnapping is still unresolved, despite hopeful rumors of her release soon. Those, so far, have gone unrealized.

I arrived yesterday and today did little other than get my bearings and plan some stories with the other reporters. Tomorrow will be taken up with more logistics and media credentialling business. Wednesday, I sit down in the Saddam Circus, or should I say, "Trial."

On the way in from the airport yesterday, I counted more marriage convoys than I had in months (three.) Why? Because tomorrow is the start of the Islamic new year and the beginning of Muharram ul Haram, the month in which religious Shi'ites refrain from marriage or other celebrations. (It must suck to have your birthday this month.) So, everyone was trying to get their last-minute wedding plans in. In 10 days, we'll be faced with Ashurah, the marking of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. Iraq's Shi'ites in Najaf and, especially, Karbala, mark it with bloody parades in which they beat, cut and flagellate themselves in a sign of grief for the death of Hussein. It's going to be a tense month, for while fighting is generally frowned upon during this month, Salafist/Wahabi Muslims consider the Umayyed Caliph Yazid, who sent the army that killed Hussein and his followers, a righteous figure while Shi'ites naturally detest him. In other words, the potential for violence is high.

Yes, Baghdad is the same as always. As the tagline to "Jarhead" goes, "Welcome to the Suck."

NEW YORK -- I'll be on the Bob Edwards show on XM satellite radio at 8 a.m. EST today, so tune in for my usual upbeat assessment of Iraq. Further details: XMPR – XM channel 133. The show will repeat five (!) times a day.

UPDATE 12/21/05 5:58:33 AM: Upon further thought on this matter, I'm going to publicly reverse myself and rescind my call for the list to be public. It was a poorly thought out decision on my part and I was wrong. People on the list should have access to it through FOIA or some other method, but they should have the right and the opportunity to do what they want with that information in private. I understand why people would want the list published, but I think now those reasons -- embarrassing the Bush administration, among them -- are outweighed by the right of people on the list to maintain some privacy. Lord knows they've had that violated enough already. Anyway, I will keep the original post available for archival purposes.

NEW YORK -- I fully agree with Steve's idea that the list of names of people who have been monitored under the NSA's program to spy on people in the United States should be made public.

If there are specific individuals or numbers that a judge wishes to give ex post facto protection, I can accept that.

But this invasion of privacy in the case of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American citizens must be challenged in the courts. What Bush did is engage in an extra-legal act against the citizens he is paid to represent -- and this is criminal.

Post the list. It should be made public because at this point there is NO NATIONAL SECURITY rationale to justify the monitoring of citizens in cases that have not been approved by a court. That means that all of those citizens monitored are innocent -- and unwitting victims of this domestic spy campaign launched by George W. Bush.

Perhaps I'm indulging in paranoia, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable. I'm a reporter. In Baghdad. I have dealth with sources in the insurgency and the Mahdi Army. This administration and its agents in the embassy in Baghdad have long been hostile to the press and our work in Baghdad, especially when we try to tell the whole story of the insurgency -- by talking with insurgents. And TIME has long had an aggressive approach to covering the insurgency.

Now, I don't want to pump up my sourcing more than it is. My bureau chief, Michael Ware, deserves far more credit for his work on insurgents than I ever do. But because of my association with the magazine, I can only assume that my brother, mother, friends and others have been potentially monitored because of my activities. And based on my traffic logs, I know military and CIA people read this blog. Thus, anyone who has sent me email in the past two years is potentially on President Bush's list. So pardon me if I take this a little personally.

Make the list public. Let my loved ones and friends see if they're on it, and let them then be able to make the decision of what to do then. Because I can tell you truthfully that my brother et al. are not national security risks, and invading their privacy is doing nothing to make America safer.

UPDATE 12/18/05 11:32:58 AM: A good friend of mine, who's very smart, makes the following, dissenting points:

Sorry, dude, not with you on this one. If I'm on that list, I want to be informed of the fact and the reason -- and then to have the list utterly destroyed without the public ever seeing it. I have no interest in bearing a scarlet T for Terrorist, thank you very much.

Seriously, can you imagine the impact on some midwest Muslim if the White House put out a list saying that they had monitored his e-mail for possible terrorist activity? No official assurance of innocence would ever take away the smear. Indeed, I would expect some people on that list to end up dead.

Notify the people on the list, yes. Then, if they want to make the fact public, or to sue in open court, their call.

Points to think about. Discuss below...

BEIRUT -- I've always been a fan of free speech. I rarely moderate comments, except for spam, and I've banned very few people. Only once was I raised to rage when a commenter made my mother cry by calling for my death at the hands of Marines because I was allegedly too friendly to the insurgents. He also, weirdly, thought I was a Sunni Arab who was born in Iraq and had immigrated to the U.S. for the purposes of ... well, I'm not sure. He was mad. I banned him, mainly on the basis that my embrace of personal expression stops when you make my mom cry.

So I have a lot of patience for rollicking debate. But that's not what has happened here. Recent comments have been vile, vengeful and more than a little disturbing -- and all of them have come from people who allegedly want peace and are antiwar. Che_Guerilla has called for me to be beheaded on the Internet; da_ali_truth_show says: "I’ll fight you. Please come back to the States I’ll fucking smash that smug 'objective' bullshit through your stupid face. Bring friends you pussy. Your Time Warner corporate Blackwater mercenaries won’t be protecting you from me, dickhead." (We've never employed Blackwater mercenaries, for the record. Our security staff is made up of Iraqis who have proven themselves truly loyal and good friends in the face of terrible risk to themselves.)

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that you will no longer be allowed to comment unless you've registered with TypeKey. I tried this once before and it really cut down on the people leaving comments. I didn't like it. But I feel the barrage of threats of death and violence against me and my family is too much. No one should have to put up with that. I've had friends die and be kidnapped; I've been shot at by all sides in this conflict. I frankly don't need juvenile ranting cluttering my site and intruding on my thoughts. You folks who do this are finished. (Which is what khaalas means: "enough, finished, ended, done.") It should also cut down on comment spam which is still a scourge that is difficult to combat.

So, to my regular readers and commenters, such as Trish and Niall, who have left thoughtful notes through the years, I'm sorry for this step and grateful to you all. I hope you stick around. You guys are always welcome. For the che_guerillas of the world, go to hell. You care for nothing more than scoring cheap points off dead bodies of Iraqis and Americans. You're just as bad as the National Review crowd who say "2,000 deaths is nothing when you look at how many died in World War II." You deserve nothing but contempt and you undermine the very antiwar cause you claim to support.

BAGHDAD -- No, the title doesn't refer to a body count. It's what I'm feeling in my soul. The more I think about this place and yesterday's attack on the Palestine/Sheraton compound, the more I feel that it's time to leave here -- and that I'm a coward for thinking that.

I don't want to desert this story. I don't want to let my friends down. I don't want to leave my staff, who have bravely stuck by us and who can't leave like I can. But I also don't want to die for this story. I'm torn in half over this. I have a macho, "tough it out" mentality about this place while also wondering, "Have I worried my family and friends enough on this?"

I don't know for sure if yesterday's attack was aimed specifically at journalists, but if that cement truck had gotten 20-30 feet further in, it might have been powerful enough to bring down a good part of the Palestine Hotel. For sure, westerners were the targets, and whether journalists were just lumped in for good measure is cold comfort.

Just now, about five minutes ago, there has been another huge boom that rolled over the house. We're not sure where it is, but we'll know soon. We always do.

I don't think it's as big as yesterday's cement-truck bomb, which was so large that I didn't even register the sound of the explosion. It was almost a sub-sonic rumble, and then my windows rattled. Everyone here in the house thought it was the wind.

So I don't know what I'm going to do, but decamping to someplace less hostile is looking more and more necessary. And that just kills me.

A woman exits the Ayoon al-Maha Nursery School, in the Jadhriyah neighborhood, a mostly Shi’ite area in Baghdad. Copyright 2005 Yassar al-Ali

If you're a regular reader of this blog, both of you, that means you know (from other sources) there was a referendum yesterday. With none of the giddiness of January, but all the security, Iraqis voted for the second time this year, this time on the proposed permanent Iraqi constitution. It's a document supporters say will secure the country's future and unite the country while opponents say it will lead to dissolution and civil war.

Considering the sectarian divisions on display between Iraq's Shi'ites and Sunnis, it's unsurprising issues of religion and national identity are what decides people's vote. What is surprising is the numbers that Sunnis showed up.

Shi'ites overwhelmingly support the document, in part because of the instructions from the powerful Shi'ite clerical body, the merjariya, led by the venerated Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He called for a "yes" vote on the document. Most Sunnis, however, say it's a terrible constitution and bad for Iraq.

"We are following our supreme merja, Sistani," said Jafar al-Khazali, a 29-year-old day laborer as his daughter, Sou'ad, clung to his leg. "I will not lose my rights again like before."

"This is bad for the Iraqis," counters Saleh Mutlaq, an influential member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group which includes many former Ba'athists. "This constitution will break up this country."

Under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, Shi'ites were often discriminated against and oppressed while Sistani was under virtual house arrest. The constitution, written largely by Shi'ites installed in power by the United States, would securing their place as the country's new rulers. With 60 percent of the population, demographics translate into political destiny.

Further cementing their power, the document's federalism provisions, bitterly opposed by most Sunni politicians, would allow the formation of powerful regions – mini-states, in effect – with control of Iraq's future oil wealth and the ability to ignore the central government in Baghdad. Sunnis say this will lead to the breakup of Iraq, with oil-rich regions in the Kurdish north and Shi'ite south and a barren desert for Sunnis in the middle.

But back to yesterday. The giddy enthusiasm of the January elections, in which Iraqis voted in relatively free elections for the first time in their history, was absent, and instead an air of resignation was felt. Rather than hang around the polling places gossiping, as they did nine months ago, Iraqis came, voted and left quickly. There were fewer children out with parents, too, indicating a heightened sense of the dangers present on the empty streets.

Baghdad was relatively calm, despite violence in the last 19 days that killed more than 450 Iraqi civilians. Saturday's quiet could indicate that the draconian security measures that banned almost all vehicular traffic, international travel and movement between provinces were effective in curbing insurgents' attacks. Or it might mean the insurgents just decided to keep their powder dry until a more politically opportune time. The night before the vote, insurgents sabotaged an electrical tower, plunging the city and northern towns into darkness, and there were reports of gun battles between insurgents and combined U.S. and Iraqi troops in Ramadi. In Abu Ghraib, police sources said insurgents had attacked a polling place, killed the supervisor and made off with five ballot boxes. Despite all that, the violence was much less intense than on Jan. 30, which saw more than 100 attacks, including suicide bombings, killing at least 40 people.

Because of the security restrictions,I was unable to visit Sunni neighborhoods where attitudes toward the constitution differed. Residents of these areas, reached by phone said there were many people in the streets all ready to vote against the constitution, but this could not be independently confirmed. I was able to walk to nearby polling areas with no problem, but they're all Shi'ite neighborhoods, and the response is pretty much what you'd expect: They love the constitution, love Sistani and believe all Iraqis are brothers and love one another.

Excuse me while I sing "Kumbaya" with my Iraqi hippie brothers.

The Sunnis I reached, however, say -- again -- exactly what you'd expect them to: This is terrible and bad for Iraq. Oh, and by the way, screw the Iranians, er, Shi'ites. Brothers, our collective asses.

Thafir Aga, 38, a taxi driver and Sunni in the Sadiya neighborhood, said he voted against the constitution because "This constitution is dividing Iraq," he said. "The government is only Kurdish and Iranian, it is not a Sunni or Shi'ite government." Many Sunnis, who benefited under Saddam's reign, regard the Shi'ites in government as pawns of Iran because politicians such as Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari spent the war in exile there.

Aga also had little faith in a fair vote and said the government would fix the election in its favor. "They just want to let the people feel they are practicing democracy," he said. "People in the government are just instruments for America and Israel. If I accept this constitution, then I will be like them." He added that the constitution was un-Islamic and against Iraq traditions because it was created under foreign occupation.

A neighbor, Mustafa Hamdi, a 35-year-old barber also rejected he document. "They imported this constitution from abroad," he said. "This is only for Kurds and other parties," meaning Iran.

However, the Sunnis seem to have come out in droves in several swing provinces, such as Nineveh, and there's a real chance this might go down to the wire. Anbar and Salahadin provinces -- containing the cities of Fallujah and Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, respectively -- will almost certainly vote against the document. But Ninevah is home to Mosul, a mixed city of about 2 million Sunni Arabs and Kurds. If the Kurds stayed home out of complacency -- and I'm hearing that Kurdish and Shi'ite participation was lower than expected -- the Sunnis might just pull off a huge upset.

That will change everything. The Sistani coalition, made up of mainly of religious Shi'ite parties, will be crack apart. The secular parties involved, including Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, will split off. One possibility is to see them ally with former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the National Dialogue Council, who are seeking an alliance to run for elections in December. The religious parties will be unable to go to the voters with a single accomplishment. They haven't delivered power, water or security. The economy is still in shambles and unemployment is high. If the constitution passes, at least they'll be able to say to their constituents, "At least we secured our seat of power and put the Sunnis in their place." If it doesn't, what can they offer?

On the Sunnis side, you'll see newly resurgent political groups -- and the end of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which supported a last-minute deal to amend the constitution after the election of a permanent Assembly in December. Formerly united with the National Dialogue Council and the Association of Muslim Scholars opposed it, the IIP switched last week with the announcement of the deal and called for its people to support it. If the constitution fails because of Sunni "no" votes, that will show the IIP to be toothless and it will lose support. The Association of Muslim Scholars, at the same time, will be shown to have the real juice among the Sunnis, as it has been a long-time opponent of the invasion, the occupation, the Iraqi government and the constitution. The National Dialogue Council is fairly new, and will also benefit, but from what I'm hearing it was the Sunni mosques, not the secularists of the NDC, that got the vote out.

As for the Americans, they'll have a a new political reality to deal with. The AMS has deep ties to the insurgency, and a no vote and infusion of political capital will, ironically, allow the Americans to start dealing seriously with the Association -- and thus, the insurgency. That could actually be the start of peace talks.

If the constitution wins decisively, however, the Sunnis will grumble but likely work within the system. Sunni members of the constitutional committee, from Fallujah no less, have said as such. They promised to run a slate of candidates that can actively shape the constitution when it's up for amendments in April.

The absolute worst-case scenario is if the Sunnis come close to defeating the constitution, but fail. There will be accusations of vote-rigging and any political momentum the Sunnis felt was moving their way will be spent. The Shi'ites will have consolidated their power and those Sunnis on the fence might be moved into active opposition. The insurgency might even worsen, if such things are possible, or a close vote might be the trigger for open civil war.

So, it will definitely be interesting to watch the results come in. So far, we're hearing nothing but rumors. They range from the intriguing -- I heard that the polling stations in the Green Zone, the seat the Iraqi Government, went overwhelmingly against the constitution; make of that what you will -- to the absurd: Al-Firat, an Iranian channel, is reporting that instead of voting "no," Salahadin province, containing Tikrit, voted 75 percent in favor of the constitution. If that result turns out to be true, there will be no doubt the vote was fixed, and in a stupidly clumsy manner.

I do think that defeating the constitution might be best in the long run. It will embolden the Sunnis and give them a political win, motivating them to further involve themselves in the political process. This will force the Shi'ites and Kurds to deal with real elected representatives instead of appointed ones. Will this spell and end to violence? Of course not, but anything that allows the Sunnis to claim victory instead of forcing them to eat political table scraps is a big step in ending the Sunni-led insurgency.