What Ever Happened to Riverbend?

For those of you unfamiliar with Riverbend’s blog Baghdad Burning, I’d highly recommend it. A while back, a collection of her posts were published in book form. If I were a teacher, I would make it required reading for my students. You can learn more about Iraqi culture and the American occupation from spending one hour on her blog than you can watching the MSM for a year. Her last post was on October 22, 2007, at which time she and her family had emigrated to Syria. Since then she hasn’t posted again. One hopes that she and her family are safe and well. I’ve added Baghdad Burning to my blog roll. Give it a read, if you haven't already. In the beginning, she expresses a lot of sympathy for the American soldiers, aware that they are mostly just young kids thrown into a chaotic mess in a country they neither know nor understand. Towards the end, however, she is genuinely angry and just wants them to leave. Her anger is compelling in that it is sincere and totally non-political. Take a few minutes and give her a read. Her English is superb and sprinkled with American idioms, which leads me to believe that she must have studied in the United States at some point. (She merely notes that was she was educated in a western, English speaking country). She’s also a very talented writer and often quite witty. She writes better in English, her second language, than most American college grads.