Iraq's most famous blogger, openly gay Salam Pax, has returned to cyberspace at dearraed.blogspot.com .
'Let me tell you one thing first,' he writes. 'War sucks big time. Don't let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom. Somehow when the bombs start dropping or you hear the sound of machine guns at the end of your street you don't think about your 'imminent liberation' anymore.
'No matter what the outcome is,' he continues, 'these things leave a trail of destruction behind them. There were days when the Red Crescent was begging for volunteers to help in taking the bodies of dead people off the city street and bury them properly. The hospital grounds have been turned to burial grounds when the electricity went out and there was no way the bodies can be kept until someone comes and identifies.
'I confess to the sin of being an escapist,' Pax says. 'When reality hurts I block it out, unless it comes right up to me and knocks me cold. My mother, after going out once after Baghdad was taken by the U.S. Army, decided she is not going out again, not until I promise it looks kind of normal and OK. ...
'Things are looking kind of OK these days,' he says. 'Life has a way of moving on. Your senses are numbed, things stop shocking you. If there is one thing you should believe in, it is that life will find a way to push on, humans are adaptable, that is the only way to explain how such a foolish species has kept itself on this planet without wiping itself out.'