River’s back. I’m sure I’m not the only person who checked her blog regularly, saw no new postings, and wondered with a sinking heart whether she had fallen victim to the violence that engulfs her country. As she said,
This has been the longest time I have been away from blogging. There were several reasons for my disappearance the major one being the fact that every time I felt the urge to write about Iraq, about the situation, I’d be filled with a certain hopelessness that can’t be put into words and that I suspect other Iraqis feel also.
And then she rips into those who are criticizing the latest Johns Hopkins/Lancet study.
There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.
As Andrew Sullivan puts it, “How to disagree? She is living this nightmare. We are merely watching it unfold.”