Mission Accomplished?

From the Washington Post (Jan-13, 2009):

President George W. Bush says history will be the final judge of the success, or lack thereof, of the Iraq War.

Bob Woodward, the investigative reporter who has authored four books on Bush's presidency, agrees that the legacy of the war has yet to be determined. He calls the conflict a "war of choice" that hasn't come to a conclusion.

"As we know the war is not over, 146,000 troops there, almost the same number of civilian contractors," Woodward said. "It is a massive land army presence in the heart of the Middle East. Gen. (David) Petraeus is keeping that large force there because he know it's not over, it's not stabilized."

Woodward said Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 was part of his "freedom agenda" and that the president believed he had "really pulled something off that was going to be important."

Now, I believe that history will be the judge of this whole thing. I just hope this war comes to a conclusion sooner rather than later. Maybe Obama can help with that.

It's been a long time since I updated this blog.  As it probably will be again but I was correcting a typo pointed out to me by a reader so I thought I might as well publish this email I received recently from William Boyd - one of the people I previously named as prime movers behind the riverSbend smearblog.  This is probably about as close to a mea culpa from TeamTroy as we're ever going to get:
 
William Boyd writes:
Now I understand that the Iraqi Girl is said she will bend the truth as was her latest post about the power being off so much. Does she not know that there are web cams all around and open to the world and one can see the lights burning most all of the time. She is part of the terrorist organization with a mission to prevent a free Iraq. They must like the Americans to stay around, for if they did not they would help settle theturmoil in their country so the Americans can leave. Feel sorry for herkind.
 
Perhaps William's argument here - that people who perpetrate violence in Iraq are doing so as a sign of love for the American occupation - is one we'll be hearing from the more mainstream Bush supporters as the election looms closer?

Evil Genius

Obviously I have greatly underestimated my foes. I would never have guessed the truth - that Troy and pals are geniuses at psychological warfare.

When I logged on today I discovered that someone had ingeniously subscribed the bendingtruth hotmail address to the mailing list for Newsmax - for anyone who doesn't know this is an extremely conservative leaning news service.

What devilish cunning! Because in just a few short minutes of glancing over recent Newsmax headlines like "ABC News Admits Liberal Bias, Hates Bush", "More On Kerry-Fonda Connection" and "Get Sean Hannity's New Book" I suddenly realised that Riverbend and BendingTruth were wrong, Troy was right and I had been a fool not to realise it.

Already I have taken my new instructions to heart, and within the last few minutes I have quite literally taken steps to "Get Sean Hannity's New Book". Now I have surely seen the light!

OK seriously guys - I thought after the fake legal threats it couldn't get any worse. But once again you have shown me the folly in attempting to over-estimate you. Once again I must remind you that you are in the region of 70 and not 7 years old. Why not act it?

***

And while we're on the subject of fake legal threats here's something another reader sent me suggesting that I might be able to get TeamTroyAndWill into a lot of trouble were I to contact the construction company whose employees they have been impersonating:

Several posters in [a newsgroup were] threatened with legal action by someone pretending to be a lawyer some time ago. The idiot was obviously no lawyer (he couldn't spell and didn't know anything about the law). The idiot also gave the company's name where he said he worked.

We contacted the law firm and they were very interested in receiving copies of the posts where he misrepresented himself. They said they would consider suing for false representation, illegal use of the company's trademark ... and defamation of the firm's reputation.

I don't know what came of it, but the idiot disappeared for a while and when he came back he stopped pretending to be a lawyer.

Now thus far I haven't made direct contact with TeamTroy construction to let them know of this misuse of their companies name. And it's certainly going to take something a little more extreme from the boys than signing me up to conservative mailing lists to get me to do so, but just so you know Troy and company, it's always an option...

Brief Update on Fake Threats

Just as a brief follow up to the last piece in which I suggested that Troy, William or another of the team had posted comments here misrepresenting themselves as staff of the company TeamTroy www.teamtroy.com, and suggesting I was "slandering" them.

As I strongly suspected no individual from the company has responded to mails I sent to the addresses these individuals provided.

Now I am no expert on US defamation law (though I did study the UK equivalent roughly a decade ago), but wouldn't it be rather ironic if:

a) I were to contact TeamTroyConstruction and tell them that...
b) a couple of very silly old men had posed as representatives of their company and issued threats in their name; and
c) TeamTroyConstruction were to sue TeamTroyAndWill for defaming their good name by suggesting they would act in the invidious manner as described in my previous entry.

Just a thought...

Any Similarity To Persons Living Or Dead...

This is kind of funny. As regular readers will know to save time on trying to identify individual members of Troy's cohorts - his pals from soc.retirement who helped him with the riverSbend smearblog - I have named them collectively as TeamTroy for some time. So when one of them writes a silly comment on this blog I can just write "TeamTroy" wrote as opposed to needlessly guessing whether it was Troy himself, William or another team member.


http://www.teamtroy.com
Факс +7 (095) 956-24-16
Мурат Арзуман
Менеджер по Развитию Бизнеса Группы Трой

Компания "Европром Трейд", входящая в группу "Трой", была создана с целью предоставления на российс

This recent comment (written in a foreign language way beyond my ken) led me to a site called www.teamtroy.com www.teamtroy.com. For a second as the site loaded I thought maybe I'd been right in an earlier prediction, and that this would be Troy and buddies new anti-Riverbend project. As you can imagine I was practically salivating in anticipation. Good comedy these days can be so hard to find.

Then I saw what looked like a Canadian maple leaf symbol on screen, and a fairly flashy into. Not looking promising... Soon enough my hopes were dashed and I discovered that TeamTroy seemed to be some kind of construction company.

Funny coincidence that. From now on to alleviate any confusion though I suppose I ought to start referring to Troy and buddies as TeamTroyAndWill (giving William Boyd his deserved credit since he's been doing so much work writing imbecilic comments here) and to the construction company as TeamTroyConstruction.

Intriguingly there was also more recently another comment left on the site by someone called Larisa:
"Recommend you cease and desist your slandering the name of
http://www.teamtroy.com/. Remove all entries bearing a likeness of TeamTroy."

Now I don't think this is actually written by anyone from TeamTroyConstruction at all. I think it is from TeamTroyAndWill, still desperately trolling because they have got nothing better to do with their lives, and grasping at anything to give themselves the feeling that they haven't totally lost the battle, which of course they have.

And I'm certainly not going to be removing any references to TeamTroy on this blog, at least for the foreseeable future.

Why am I so confident? Let's start with...

- Who on earth would ever issue a legal threat through the comments page of a blog? Normal people - with dignity and stuff - would use email.

- the person writing this comment left the name "Larisa". No surname. Come on guys...

- "Remove all entries bearing a likeness..." sounds like someone clueless trying to write in legalese. A "likeness" means an image. I have no images of, or purporting to be of, anyone on this site - except of course for the one of my wife.

- "slander" refers to the spoken word. This site is entirely textual. More misaimed legalese

- I have *not* said anything about the company TeamTroy. I have spoken unpleasant truths about a non-business entity of that name.

Of course I like to be thorough so I have fired off a couple of emails to the supposed senders of these comments. I await the outcome with some interest, one way or the other...

Pretty On The Outside...

Don't worry, this is still basically the same site.

But since - with the demise of the riverSbend smearblog - this blog content-wise has become fairly redundant, (apart of course as a kind of rage outlet for the anti-social urges of a couple of unseemly old gents), I thought I should at least give visitors a slightly prettier facade to look at as they stumble through.

Here's hoping the "full moon" images don't drive any of TeamTroy, poised at borderline instability, to take that final leap into the chasm of madness.

Trolling, Trolling, Trolling...

I note with some degree of satisfaction that my increasing success at spotting and unmasking the fake nyms used by TeamTroy in the comments sections on this blog has seemingly caused them to abandon any attempts to fool me.

Instead they are now simply scrawling gibberish and nonsense in some comments like spoilt brattish children who have stumbled on a box of discarded crayons.

I could of course delete them - respect for freedom of speech does not require me to host a Troll party for a bunch of rather pathetic old gentlemen upset that they lost their favourite toy (the unmourned riverSbend smearblog).

On the other hand it has always been one of the primary principles of this blog that we should take our time to laugh at how badly Troy, William and pals conduct themselves and just wonder what it is they expect to achieve. So for the moment I will continue to do so.

(I am giving consideration to having a special "Trolling only" comments section where all Troll comments will be directed, and moved to if necessary, thus separating the preponderance of TeamTroy chaff from the occasional wheat from other readers. I'll see how it goes.)

Salam on Riverbend

I did receive a short but gracious reply from Salam Pax over the weekend on the subject of his acquaintance with Riverbend. He confirms Riverbend's story about their acquaintance on a couple of points.

"Riverbend sent me an email quite some time before the war. It freaked me out, I thought she was the secret police. Then I was not sure she were in Baghdad (questions about a specific billboard midtown cleared that) and after a couple of emails I asked her to write a post on my blog."

[..]

"I have no personal acquaintance with her unfortunately."

(a) they are not personally acquainted (NB. Could I ask all TeamTroy members when they post their dimwitted, trolling comments claiming this proves Riverbend is a Berkeley student to just sign themselves TeamTroy when they do so, instead of making up new pseudonyms to replace the recently outed Lopez, Brad, Susaita, WKS. I'd be grateful if you'd do this to save me the hassle of spending the 2 minutes having to do it myself? Cheers)

(b) he was very suspicious when he heard from her (before the war)

(c) they exchanged emails wherein he interrogated her about details of Baghdad

(d) eventually he accepted she was genuine.

So there we have it. Salam before the war when he lived in genuine and reasonable fear of being tracked down by Saddam's secret police, after a long period of suspicion, accepted Riverbend as being a genuine young woman in Iraq.

There remain of course a number of people Stateside with zero on the ground knowledge of the situation and much, much less reason to be suspicious who think they know better than he does.

I've said if before - some people will believe, or pretend to believe, anything as long as it suits their political views. And I don't of course expect Salam's post to change that.

The rest of us will just watch as the purposeful denial becomes ever more clear.

Riverbend on Salam

As I mentioned in the comments here, at Ken Bell's suggestion I emailed Salam Pax to ask if he could clarify how well he knew Riverbend, and thus could he vouch once and for all for the fact that she is an Iraqi. This of course to counter the claims of a couple of pestilent commentors (who like to give the impression they are large in number by endlessly using different nyms).

As I suspected Salam has not (yet?) responded. But I did get a comment from Riverbend on the matter. Now I don't think this needs emphasising to my sentient readers, but it is one of the endlessly propagated myths of TeamTroy that I am some kind of "official" front for Riverbend; of course I am no such thing. Our correspondence is occasional though friendly - really I am just a fan of hers like most people who read this blog. And I know very little more about her than anyone who just reads her public output. All the "evidence" I have that Riverbend is/is not an Iraqi has basically appeared in this blog. I strongly believe she is, but I could not claim to 100% know it, any more perhaps than anyone reading this knows that I am based in the United States. You have my say-so, you don't really have any reason to disbelieve it, but do you really know it? Not really, I think.

Anyway Riverbend requested that I not reproduce her email in full as it might divulge information pertaining to both her and Salam Pax that should not be in the public domain but the gist of it is as follows:

Riverbend and Salam have not met or actually spoken. However Salam was, quite understandably suspicious (probably more suspicious even than TeamTroy!) when Riverbend first emailed claiming to be an Iraqi reader. He basically made her jump through a lot of hoops before he would accept it - asking her to describe small and ephemeral details of her location, and incidents that would not have made any news. Also of course the fact that they shared a language - and she had up to date knowledge of its slang was further bolstering evidence.

Basically Salam would have had his own credibility severely undermined if he had allowed an imposter to guest on his blog and he ensured this did not happen. Riverbend invited me to ask Salam to back up her version of events. I don't doubt he would if we were in contact; at the moment we are not.

Conclusion
OK my writing this here will not prove anything to anyone determined to be sceptical. William Boyd or Troy would say - Riverbend could be lying , or even *I* could be lying - maybe there never even was a mail from her (but obviously for she or I to lie so publicly would risk immediate exposure). And those same people, even if there was an email straight from Salam Pax, would say I forged it or indeed as TeamTroy(George) had suggested in the comments here that Salam himself may not be real! (Reports that Troy and William Boyd still believe the earth is flat may or may not be exaggerated)

Some people will believe (or pretend to believe) anything rather than admit they were wrong. (And of course face up to the fact that they wasted months on a laughable and slimy smearblog that served no purpose other than to bring shame and ridicule on them and the causes they represent)

Bottom line is as far as I'm concerned, if you believe Salam Pax is real then you basically have to believe either he's very easily fooled or Riverbend herself is real also.

Has it Really Come to This?

It seems hard to believe that just a few months ago - when this blog was set on exposing and ridiculing the smear activities of a disgruntled GOP activist in the US intent on undermining the voice of a newly liberated Iraqi, even then some people (not many but some) said it was a waste of my time.

What would those people say now?

It seems the blog has degenerated into 4 main activities:

1) Troy, William, and their pals post their dumb irrelevant anti-Riverbend or anti-me remarks in the comments under a variety of long-exposed pseudonyms, still apparently believing themselves incognito. (Jeez H Christ, I already told you, William Boyd, that I know you used the same IP address to post here as "boper", as you regularly use in soc.retirement. And yet you still post as "boper" pretending to be some klutz who just wandered in off the street. What the **** is wrong with you?)

2) I interrogate new and suspiciously clueless nyms who are at least posting from a different IP address, to try and establish beyond doubt if they are just more of the same from the donkeymen of the apocalypse named above.

3) Possibly-independent Riverbend detractors stumble in to nitpick her blog. Despite my repeatedly pointing out this is not the place to do that - and having pointed to somewhere else which is ideal.

4) I or other people occasionally give the clueless stumblers the benefit of the doubt and try to address their witless/irrelevant objections.

All this... and yet I can't keep away...

Anyway if that, in of itself, doesn't present enough of a conundrum I'll throw the following into the mix. That big new secret project I announced. Well I know I made it sound like an online thing perhaps along similar lines to this but I was just joshing.

In a nutshell the person who I misleadingly referred to here in the past as Mrs AtBendingTruth is now in fact in actuality my wife. We got married over the Christmas period and here she is:



And yet here I still am. Unfathomable, eh?

So Many Idiots, So Little Time...

I note after perusing my comments on haloscan that not only did WKS reject my call to attempt to show themselves to be a genuine, non TeamTroy affiliated poster when asked. In fact he continued posting here using the name George (numbskull used the same email address for both names).

That may not be proof beyond reasonable doubt that WKS and George are unsavoury Troy affiliated individuals. But it sure is good enough for me.

Oh and I welcome new posters Lopez and sustaita. What pray tell brought you to this forum during its longest hiatus and when it was getting zero promotion anywhere?

Honestly you guys I'd love an answer? Seems my fame must indeed have spread far.

(Irrelevant fact fans - while Lopez and sustaita are names with a Spanish origin, Troy has a Spanish wife and can speak the language, Buleria, Solerito and of course Diego Gastor are other Spanish-based nyms he has used online. Isn't that an amusing (but of course completely irrelevant) coincidence?)

Good News For TeamTroy on the Asia Blog Awards

Just kidding, fellas... Riverbend trounced the competition.

These were the final standings as listed here.

Baghdad Burning - 941 votes
healing iraq - 342 votes
Salam Pax - 330 votes

What an amazing vindication of the riverSbend smear campaign. (snigger).

Anyway while it would be obviously unbecoming of me to gloat, it is nonetheless interesting the mass amount of cheating that went on came primarily from the supporters of those bloggers who are more pro-US in their values.

My recollection is hazy on exact numbers but I do remember that Phil who ran the awards had said there was some mass cheating going on on behalf of some bloggers. I do recall that Iraq the Model had around 1500 votes last time I looked before Christmas, the vast majority of which now appear to have been adjudged to be fraudulent. (I have no reason to think that any of the bloggers themselves are behind this. It was probably just independent idiots)

I would be very interested if anyone took note of the exact numbers of listed votes when voting closed but by my recollection and in comparison to the standings it would appear that any discarded votes for Salam Pax and Riverbend made up a small percentage (if any) of their original numbers.

However the votes cast for Healing Iraq, Iraq at a Glance, Iraq the Model among others were in the large majority cheat votes. This calls to mind the other fact that despite recent quite unfounded hysteria over dirty tricks against pro-US bloggers the only sustained dirty tricks campaign run against any Iraqi blogger was against Riverbend.

Again I am forced to ask the question I posed when I first ran across the riverSbend smearblog those months ago - if these people who support the US invasion of Iraq
are so convinced of the rectitude of their cause, why do they have to lie and deceive to promote it?

Bouncing Stats

Eagle-eyed/obsessive readers may have noted my hit counter has been acting a bit peculiarly lately. This isn't my fault.

Apparently problems at gostats.com caused them to lose a large amount of member data. This is why it went down from over 10000 to 0 sometime over the Christmas period.

Out of pure vanity I added back 10000 entirely artificially though I know it was in fact well over this before it was zeroed.

Worse yet I've lost all the IP address information I was collecting via hit stats on William, Troy and their pals so I won't be able to forward it to my Al Qaeda connection as I had planned.

And I so needed that $25 million dollars...

A Better Place To Attack Riverbend

Bending Truth is/was intended to expose and undermine the riverSbend smearblog culprits. It was never intended to support every single item that appears in Riverbend's blog as fact.

It believes Riverbend is a genuine Iraqi blogger but that is pretty much as far as it goes.

If people wish to criticise her blog and its details this is not the place for it.

I discovered, and have posted on this alternative forum. It's an ezboard message board on Riverbend's blog.

The tenor here when I last posted was certainly anti-Riverbend so many readers may find it suits their politics better than this one. And it *is* intended for debate over any Riverbend related matter.

So go there please if you want to complain about Riverbend's description of cluster bombs or describe her blog as propaganda or lies. Bending Truth is not the place for that.

I don't wish to start editing or deleting comments (beyond pointing out those posted by TeamTroy) but I repeat I don't want this blog to be a host to Riverbend nitpickers. I do not have the time or the inclination to defend her every point.

Be warned that I may well in the future direct unwanted and off topic comments like "Her most recent lie is "Cluster Bombs" falling a few days ago" to the ezboard forum. I just don't want them here.

WKS and the Idiot Ordnance Pt II

I received by email a tip from a reader who suggested I might have been hasty in adjudging WKS as a directly involved member of TeamTroy just because he consistently posting moronic defences of the aims of the riverSbend smear blog in the comments section here.

This person said that WKS was a "well-known idiot in the alt.impeach.bush newsgroup" and that they could not "recall one time he has approached a subject intelligently or rationally."

This somewhat muddies the water. I had expected "WKS" would just be, like "dajudge" or "boper" and many others a nym newly invented with the sole purpose of supporting the smearblog.

On the other hand a "well known idiot" who has never "approached a subject intelligently or rationally" sounds like the exact psychological profile of Troy, William Boyd and the others.

Also I note WKS appears to have rejected my invitation to attempt to exonerate himself, but the usual William Boyd nyms have appeared to try to do so.

So the question remains somewhat open, is WKS a complicit member of TeamTroy or is he in fact a completely independent idiot working alone? These are confusing times, indeed...

P.S. I suppose I should be flattered that now that the smearblog is down the morons at TeamTroy have found more time to devote to cluttering up my comments section. But really, even in retirement can't these losers find anything better to do with their time. So much for the Golden Years, eh guys?

WKS and the "Idiot Ordnance"

WKS you may note you are the first commentor here to have fallen foul of the guidelines I laid out in the Dec 16th entry "PLEASE NOTE - This comment was posted by an active member of the riverSbend smear team", thus you have in a sense been "quarantined" - having that warning placed below your comments, and assumed to be one of TeamTroy (I shall belatedly christen this the "Idiot Ordnance")

Here's the key quote:
There have been so many false nyms used by Troy's friends here... that any new poster who adopts the standard practice of defending Troy using really dumb or irrelevant arguments may be assumed to be in cahoots with him.

Also note:
It is open to anyone to contact me by email to complain or to offer evidence of an independent net existance if they feel they have been wrongly judged.

Note I don't just assume anyone who has a bad word to say about Riverbend is on TeamTroy. But WKS's insistence ("It is sad to see River's Bend leave") that we should mourn the loss of the smearblog as it fulfilled a valuble service is a little out of touch with reality to ring true.

WKS I'd like to know your thoughts on these key questions:
- don't you think there is something wrong in pretending to be someone else in order to pretend they have changed their views?
- don't you think a forum ought to allow opposing viewpoints to stand, instead of deleting them and banning posters just because their opinions don't fit?

If you WKS are not in TeamTroy you find yourself in a tiny minority if you disagree with those two points. That's why you fell foul of the Idiot Ordnance. But please feel free to prove me wrong - if you can provide details of a previous web history. Even if you can prove you have ever, in any context said something intelligent I will certainly reconsider your designation.

Note to others if I'm correct in assuming WKS is on TeamTroy this comment may be telling us something:

I hope someone takes Cherice's advice and takes it up again. What with all the negative comments about Baghdad Burning cluttering up comments in other blogs, a blog like river's Bend is a good idea.

TeamTroy(WKS) seems to be holding up Cherice(renowned anti-Riverbend, anti-BendingTruth Iraqiblog-commentor) as some kind of Christlike speaker of Gospel script. This I think is her comment with which he is so enamoured.

"you should do this the right way and not sink to her level of deceit (sic) as you are doing with this "clone" blog."

(Personally I remain slightly agnostic on the issue of Cherice's divinity having noted a certain flagrant ideological skew in some of her other utterances, but that is by-the-by)

Is it possible Troy and his buddies have decided they are taking too much flak for the blog as it is in its current location but that the time and market are ripe for another slightly different, perhaps more honest anti-Riverbend campaign. Just a hunch, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I'd also love to see what they could come up - to be honest the rank dishonesty of their other efforts was the only angle that was interesting about them at all.

When Salam Met Riverbend...

Ken posted something in the comments relating to Riverbend's relationship with Salam and how well they know each other:

"[Salam] posted this to his blog on the 3 August 2003:

"People, I have the most amazing surprise for you, well for those who have been reading the blog before the war. do you remember [Riverbend]? she's in Mosul now she is OK but she had to quit her job because some shia fundi took over wher she used to work and made life miserable. and she sent me something to put on the blog."

[Ken:]
Now, I have not checked his pre-war postings, but from this I would be inclined to conclude that Riverbend is rather more than some bird who sent him an e-mail. It looks to me as if they actually know each other. "

The first mention of Riverbend in Salam's blog came way back in March (so when Salam said "Do you remember [Riverbend]?, it was this earlier mention he was referring to):

In one of the posts down there I wrote that I seem to have only one Iraqi reader, well i was wrong. I have two and a half (half Iraqi half Chinese). what is really exciting is that the second reader is a girl here in baghdad, she's 23 years old and is a computer geek (well, engineer), and she agreed to write something for the blog. she will go by the name "riverbend". pleae give her a warm welcome, i hope she decides to join the weblog and write as often as she can in the next couple of weeks, without further ado i give you "Riverbend"

[Snip Riverbend's entry]

the next time,if riverbend decides to join she will be part of this group blog (yes it was supposed to be a group blog but raed is such a lazy bastard). I'll be happy to forward ant mail to her until she makes up her mind whether to put her addy here or not.

Perhaps their relationship is not 100% clear from these couple of scraps, but I am sticking to my earlier interpretation that Salam only has an online relationship with Riverbend.

I'd like to be able to say that Salam has vouched for Riverbend based on a "real world" relationship, but I would not be being honest if I said I really believed that.

Christmas Eve Update

I didn't think I'd have time to do anything PC-related today. But Mrs AtBendingTruth is thoughtlessly putting a big damper on all my holiday plans by lying in bed late at the moment trying to sleep off a heavy dose of the flu. Women, eh! I don't know...

So anyway I cast a glance over the Asian Web Awards, Best Iraqi Blog and noticed that Riverbend is doing extremely well but that for some reason the smearblog no longer featured at all. Had my insidiously persuasive arguments about the fake site misleading voters finally swayed Phil? Well apparently not. I found this conversation in the comments section:

Niloo said on Wednesday December 24, 2003
There are two questionable situations in the Iranian and Iraqi blog contests.

[..]

"River's bend" is also a cheat blog immitating riverbendblog (baghdad burning) which is even been written by non Iraqis.

Phil said on Wednesday December 24, 2003 : url
Right - I will rephrase something again. Nationality is irrelevant - an Asia blog is permissible by nationality, geography or subject matter. Technically a blog about Iraq counts, however the "cheating" blog you mentioned has been removed as the site no longer appears to be work.


I find Phil's rational slightly questionable here - by any sane standard what comes up on my screen currently at the url www.riversbendblog.blogspot.com is miles and miles better than, and equally "about Iraq" as what was there a few days ago, and it has a much greater claim to being the "best Iraqi blog", but I'm certainly not arguing with his decision to remove it.

And as Colleen points out in the comments section riverbendblogS appears to have been removed as well. Again I don't know why or if this is a permanent development but it is obviously one I cautiously welcome.

Just to clarify something Ken Bell said in the comments, I believe that Salam Pax received an email from Riverbend months ago and posted it on his blog. Certainly he believed her credentials and his have been established beyond doubt. As far as I know though Salam Pax has never claimed to have actually met or spoken with Riverbend in person.

And thanks for the Chrismas wishes - all the best to all my readers as well.

I am hesitant to tear a leaf from Karl Rove's script but, since it's been four days now, I will in the holiday spirit cautiously unfurl the following banner across this page over the holiday period:

MISSION

ACCOMPLISHED!

Did Christmas Come Early?

I'm hesitant to leap to any judgements about the current non-activity at riverSbendblog. I'd been away from my PC all weekend until yesterday evening when I discovered emails in my mailbox starting from Sunday afternoon saying that the smearblog appeared to be down.

Now Blogger does have occasional glitches and Bending Truth itself has sometimes been inaccessible even to me once in a while. But it is now Tuesday morning so it seems that riverSbend's silence is approaching the two days mark.

Has the blog been yanked by Blogger? Have the old meanies at TeamTroy called it off? Maybe this is just a Christmas ceasefire? It is much too early to say. But certainly every minute that the smearblog is off-line is a good one for anyone who believes in truth, honesty and openness and despises cowardice, deceitfulness and lies.

If it is down for good this is certainly fortuitous timing. Not just because we're coming to Christmas but also because I am finding it difficult to maintain the high level of attention I have previously been devoting to Bending Truth.

I am currently working on another even more important (sorry Riverbend :)), but as yet confidential, project which I will reveal in more details in the New Year. Those individuals (usually from TeamTroy but occasionally from outside it) who have wondered that I have nothing better to do with my time, may soon find themselves conclusively confounded by the evidence that I very certainly *do*. I expect even those naysayers will be reluctantly impressed that I have managed to squeeze Bending Truth in around my other even more vital, currently surreptitious activities.

Anyway for as long as I can flog the hole in the ground where a dead horse used to be that is the riverSbend smearblog I will be maintaining this site; just perhaps not as avidly as I have done up til now.

If this is the last entry up til Christmas may all my readers have a Happy Christmas. Even Troy, Sordo, Jim and William - you pusillanimous old gits!

More Tenacity from the Cockroaches

There is currently a poll being run for best Iraqi blog at this location

Eagle-eyed viewers may note that Riverbend (Baghdad Burning) is doing pretty well, but also that River's Bend has a decent supply of votes. Call me crazy but is it really possible 60 people think River's Bend is the best Iraqi blog there is? God knows a lot of people dislike Riverbend. Some of these people may even think that she is worse that TeamTroy's smearblog But is it even conceivable that 60 of these people might actually think the smearblog is *better* that Zeyad's HealingIraq, and IraqAtAGlance, and IraqTheModel! It's a truly scary thought.

But one I think we need not harbour. What I think is much more likely is that TeamTroy's blog is getting votes from people who mistakenly think they're voting for Riverbend. Which would be a shame. And would effectively distort the poll rendering not meaningless but certainly less useful.

I posted in the comments a query as to what made an "Iraqi blog" since River's Bend isn't (a) Iraqi or (b) a blog but the siteowner Phil said since it was about Iraq (hmmm...) he hoped market forces would just dictate that if River's Bend wasn't an Iraqi blog then no one would vote for it.

I countered by saying that that didn't really address the fact of people being fooled. The Market does not allow for someone to produce a product deliberately intended to deceive customer's of another product into buying it - like producing "Cola-Coca" in a distinctive red and white tin. This is what the smearblog does. Anyway here is our discussion on the matter

I do appreciate Phil's position as I told him, and can understand how someone not fully informed about the situation would be very wary of appearing to take the wrong side in this issue.

Regardless I suggest that the best way of expressing an opinion on the matter would be for anyone who hasn't voted but who actually thinks Riverbend's blog is the best Iraqi blog out there should vote for her.

But I don't agree with some suggestions I've read elsewhere that whoever wins somehow vindicates a particular political view of the Iraqi occupation. I don't think anyone should vote for Riverbend if they happen to think it's a load of garbage only they don't want GW Bush to win the next election.

Best Blog should just mean "best blog". Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is I think one of the "Best Books" ever - but its prevailing ideology is entirely abhorrent to me. I could say much the same of "Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones, or "He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss" by the Crystals.

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I note with some incredulity that TeamTroy has removed Robert's fake rumour story from the blog. Every so often it does appear public opinion has some impact on them. I do note however that Cherice's comments are still there even after she asked that they be removed. Oh well, baby steps...