Baghdad staffers besmirched

I was happy (but not surprised) to see my longtime friend and colleague Rich Mauer step up in defense of our Iraqi staff bloggers when they were groundlessly attacked on an ideological blog recently.

Inside Iraq, written by McClatchy Baghdad bureau staffers, has won increasing attention recently, often drawing praise for its authenticity and its unvarnished reports of personal, street-level realities. I suppose it's no surprise that bloggers who view the war through an ideological lens rather than first-hand experience would be challenged by that.

Rich, who's in the Baghdad bureau on TDY from Anchorage, had this to say in his own blog about the conservative bloggers who said they doubted the existence of the our Iraqi colleagues:

So, what shows up in the blogosphere? The right-wing fanatics on Red State call the blog “a Baghdad fairy tale from McClatchey,” bad spelling and all. They claimed that Sahar, Dulaimy and the rest are names made up in some boiler room filled with left-wing ideologues. The stuff our staff is saying can’t be true, they say.

Well, just what do they think happens when a bomb goes off and kills 60 people? Or maybe they think that is made up too?

Sahar posted a note challenging them to fly to Baghdad to see whether she exists. They’ll never do it. They don’t have a fraction of the guts and courage she has.