RiverSbend wrote:
Iraqis challenge 'Arabism'

I got a tour the other day of Baghdad's rebuilt airport, which is now quite beautiful, but still hasn't opened out of security concerns. Our tour guides even took us through passport control to show off their new computers that will check for incoming terrorists.

[..]

Root for them to succeed, for having such a state in the heart of the Arab world would be a very, very good thing.
- posted by river @ 6:36 AM

[Brian’s Comment: This, along with the US govt report supposedly posted before it was even written is another one of my favourite entries here. Chutzpah or extreme stupidity, it’s hard to say. An innocent naïf reading this might think “Oh interesting, but why is this “simple Iraqi woman worker” being given a tour of the airport”. A slightly less innocent naïf might add: And why did they get exactly the same tour as Thomas Friedman, one of the most world famous MidEast journalist, who described his airport tour in the New York Times thusly just a few days before:

Telling the Truth in Iraq,By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
“I got a tour the other day of Baghdad's rebuilt airport, which is now quite beautiful, but still hasn't opened out of security concerns. Our tour guides even took us through passport control to show off their new computers that will check for incoming terrorists.”
http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/extra/telling_the_truth_in_iraq.htm

[Brian’s Comment – note how our faker didn’t even bother to change in the last line that “them” to “us”. Thomas Friedman is not writing as an Iraqi. And of course, neither is our blogger]