''The Cruel Month...''

"Riverbend" is the pseudonym of the author of Baghdad Burning, the title of both a new book and a website, who calls herself the "Girl Blog from Iraq." Here's an excerpt from her latest post, covering the demonstrations there last weekend: "Thousands were demonstrating today all over the country. Many areas in Baghdad were cut off today for security reasons and to accomodate the demonstrators, I suppose. There were some Sunni demonstrations but the large majority of demonstrators were actually Shia and followers of Al Sadr. They came from all over Baghdad and met up in Firdaws Square- the supposed square of liberation. They were in the thousands. None of the news channels were actually covering it. Jazeera showed fragments of the protests in the afternoon but everyone else seemed to busy with some other news story. Two years and this is Occupation Day once more. One wonders what has changed in this last year. The same faces of April 2004, but now they have differing positions in April 2005. The chess pieces were moved around and adjusted and every one is getting tired of the game. Who was it that said April was a cruel month? They knew what they were talking about..."