Some of the blog-specific talk out there in the past couple weeks has related to the well-known Iraqi blogger who went by the name of Riverbend.  I discovered this recent “where’s Riverbend?” theme after I, too, remembered her blog today and wondered if she had written anything new.  She had not.  Her last post was three months ago, and began with the ominious line: “Residents of Baghdad are systematically being pushed out of the city.”  It ended with these anxious remarks:

I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever know just how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left the country this bleak summer. I wonder how many of them will actually return. Where will they go? What will they do with themselves?  Is it time to follow? Is it time to wash our hands of the country and try to find a stable life somewhere else?

Let us hope that she and all those fleeing Iraqis have found some safe refuge.  Let us hope that the reason she no longer writes of Baghdad is that she has long since gotten out of that city and out of the country all together. 

These people cannot find basic security in their own country, which this war has ruined, perhaps irremediably. 

Update: I have previously linked to Riverbend a few times here, here and here.