] PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - Where was Salam Pax?
]
] While bombs rained on his beloved Baghdad and fierce
] battles roiled the sands of Iraq, people around the world
] spent last weekend seeking a man called Peace.
]
] In Brazil and Sweden, in China and Australia, from
] California to Maine, the question flew across the
] borderless Internet: Where is Salam Pax?
]
] For months, the mysterious Blogger of Baghdad, whose
] pseudonym translates as "peace" in Arabic and Latin - and
] who is suspected by some of being a secret agent or a
] hacker - had chronicled the minutiae of life in a city on
] the edge of war. Salam Pax's blog - a log of thoughts, or
] a journal, on the Web - had become a symbol of the power
] and pitfalls of a fast-growing new form of interactive
] reporting that has emerged with this war.

No word from Salam Pax (www.dearraed.blogspot.com) since March 24th. I hope it's just because his internet access is down!

Web surfers worldwide seek Baghdad man called Peace

] In a religious ruling, or fatwa, Shi'ite cleric Grand
] Ayatollah Ali Sistani urged Iraqis to stop fighting in
] and around the Shi'ite holy shrine of Najaf, the Al Khoei
] foundation in London told Reuters.

It's good to see more local leaders stepping forward, speaking in a language that the Iraqi people understand, so it's not just our psyops leaflets and radio broadcasts trying to spread the message.

Shi'ite Leader Urges Iraqis Not to Resist

] BERLIN (APOnline) -- German Foreign Minister Joschka
] Fischer said Wednesday he hoped Saddam Hussein's
] government would collapse quickly, marking a stark
] turnaround from Germany's previous opposition to regime
] change as a goal of the U.S.-led war.

I anticipate that the closer we get to winning, the more countries are going to be jumping onto the bandwagon. Some because they'll just plain want to be identified with the winning side, and others because they'll be smelling the whiff of war spoils in the air, and will be wanting to try and cash in.

Germany now backs regime change in Iraq

] Chinese hacker groups are planning attacks on U.S.- and
] U.K.-based Web sites to protest the war in Iraq, the
] Department of Homeland Security warned in an alert that
] it unintentionally posted on a government Web site
] yesterday.

Chinese Hackers plan attacks to protest war

] The investigation found that Sarovic knew about and
] failed to stop Bosnian aviation company Orao's illegal
] exports of engine parts for fighter planes to Iraq.
]
] NATO peacekeepers found evidence of the illegal trade
] during a raid in October of Orao, which is based in the
] Bosnian Serb town of Bijeljina.
]
] Following the first U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991,
] the United Nations imposed a global ban on exporting
] weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Another story about Serbians (in this case, Bosnian Serbs) illegally exporting military equipment to Iraq.

Bosnia leader quits over Iraq arms

] Russian military advisers have told Iraqi President
] Saddam Hussein and his government that the main Allied
] drive on Baghdad will not take place until mid-April and
] will then come around the west of the city, Russian
] journalists and analysts with strong links to Russian
] military intelligence now claim.
]
] Strikingly, the Russian analysts, whose work appears on
] the iraqwar.ru Web site, believe that U.S. and Allied
] forces are still overwhelmingly likely to win the war and
] that they are performing in a highly impressive manner.
] The reports are described as "based on the Russian
] military intelligence -- the Main Intelligence
] Directorate or GRU -- reports."
]
] A March 31 report on the site revealed that Iraq was
] receiving analytical advice from Russian officials.
] "Russian military analysts are advising the Iraqi
] military command against excessive optimism," it said.

United Press International: Analysis: Russia advises Iraq on U.S. plan

News in both Russian and English, providing a different spin on the war.

Note: Dates on this site will be in the reversed format, so "01.04.2003" means April 1st 2003.

War in Iraq - Russia's View

] In wooden cases, labelled 'Ministry of Defence, Baghdad',
] British troops found chemical suits, gas masks and
] nerve-gas indicators. The chemicals, their vials marked
] in Russian, were being tested, but officials suggested
] the material may in fact be designed to check the
] atmosphere for deadly nerve gas.

More information about a link between chemical protection equipment and either a Russian supplier, or some supplier that labels things in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Mystery Chemical Equipment near Basra

] The union has made about 3,000 masks, and an unknown
] number of people have taken up the call and made their
] own, Ismael said.
]
] The scientists came up with the concept by taking apart
] Iraqi army gas masks imported from the former Yugoslavia.
] The tight-fitting rubber masks, with glass eyepieces,
] have activated charcoal filters in metal canisters that
] hang from the front.

My quest for the origin of the Iraqi gas masks continues . . .

In this article, it's not clear whether they're talking about new or old gas masks, but the statement that Yugoslavia was exporting gas masks to Iraq is intriguing, especially because of other reports that certain chemical protection equipment was marked in Russian... It makes me wonder whether the observers may have seen Cyrillic lettering and assumed that it was Russian, when it was actually some other language such as Serbian (The Croatians use the western alphabet that we do, but the Serbians use the Russian "Cyrillic" alphabet).

It may sound "conspiracy theory-ish", but would it really surprise anyone if it was discovered that there was a link between the Iraqi government and the Serbian mafia?

Kurds Making Homemade Gas Masks

] One of the chemicals found was marked both in Russian and
] English with the name sarin, one of the most sinister and
] dangerous nerve agents.

A question in my mind, is whether it was really Russian, or might have been some other language that used the same Cyrillic alphabet...

Troops Discover Sarin Gas Testers