{"id":3000,"date":"2004-12-14T20:09:29","date_gmt":"2004-12-15T03:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2004\/12\/is-riverbend-for-real\/"},"modified":"2004-12-14T20:09:29","modified_gmt":"2004-12-15T03:09:29","slug":"is-riverbend-for-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2004\/12\/14\/is-riverbend-for-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Riverbend for real?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tA number of anti-war people are holding up an alleged Iraqi blogger who goes by the pseudonym “Riverbend<\/a>” as the authentic voice of the Iraqi people. Martini Republic<\/a>, David Isenberg<\/a>, and the pretentious Juan Cole<\/a> are examples. But it’s unlikely that Riverbend is what she claims to be.<\/p>\n

On MR’s comments, USA Today writer Cesar Soriano<\/a>, who’s done four tours in Iraq says he’s tried to meet her and been ignored (scroll down):<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n

I’m Cesar G. Soriano, the USA TODAY reporter who wrote the feature story you’re questioning.<\/p>\n

In between fits of laughter, I’ve been reading comments that suggest, among other things, that Iraq the Model is written by CIA agents at Langley who planted stories about the web site into the mainstream media.<\/p>\n

For the record:<\/p>\n

1. I can vouch that the Fadhil brothers are real, they are Iraqis and they do live in Iraq. During four tours in Iraq, I’ve met the brothers several times, in person, in Baghdad. Their photographs appeared in our newspaper and website.<\/p>\n

2. My story was not the first written about the Fadhil brothers, but it was one of the earlier ones. The story was about Iraqi bloggers in general. I interviewed different bloggers, some ?pro-American? and some ?anti-American.? Here’s the link to the original story:
\nhttp:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/new…<\/a><\/p>\n

3. I first heard about the web site from a work colleague who happens to be an Iraqi-American. I have never had any contact with the CIA regarding the blog story.<\/p>\n

4. As for Riverbend, I have attempted on numerous occasions to contact the author of that blog. ?Riverbend? has never responded to my queries and, as far as I know, has never given media interviews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Soriano has met the brothers who write “Iraq the Model”<\/a> and can at least vouch for the fact that they’re Iraqis blogging in Iraq, as can hundreds of Americans now that they’ve paid us a visit. Riverbend claims to be personally familiar with the situations in both Baghdad and Fallujah, which is unlikely.<\/p>\n

There are certainly a number of real Iraqis blogging who have very different perspectives on current events than this Riverbend character (see the Blog Awards<\/a>,) who’s either a Saddamite shill angry about loss of privilege or a Western leftist writing from somewhere outside Iraq with the typical Anti-American Sophisticate Attitude(tm). There is certainly zero evidence that she is who she says she is or that she speaks for the Iraqi people.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of anti-war people are holding up an alleged Iraqi blogger who goes by the pseudonym “Riverbend” as the authentic voice of the Iraqi people. Martini Republic, David Isenberg, and the pretentious Juan Cole are examples. But it’s unlikely that Riverbend is what she claims to be. On MR’s comments, USA Today writer Cesar … Continue reading “Is Riverbend for real?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-Mo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}