Home >  Nation & World >  U.S. News

Thursday, March 27, 2003

By L.A. Johnson, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Want a Baghdad citizen's take on the Iraq war or a military officer's stories of the conflict straight from the front?

Want to know where the next anti-war rally is in your hometown or hear the latest CNN or Al-Jazeera reports?

Look no further than the nearest computer. There's an Internet information source for every political palate, from the offbeat to the traditional, the media-filtered to the raw. Millions are following the war via the Internet.

Weblogs -- online personal journals -- are being posted by just about everybody and anybody remotely or directly related to the conflict who can put up a Web site.

A Baghdad resident -- though there's no real proof he's not just a guy from Beltzhoover -- has been using the pseudonym Salam Pax (Arabic and Latin for peace) and logging interesting daily observations about the war in English at dear_raed.blogspot.com.

22/3 4:30pm (day3) half an hour ago the oil filled trenches were put on fire. First watching A lJazeera they said that these were the places that got hit by bombs from an air raid a few miniutes [sic] earlier but when I went up to the roof to take a look I saw that there were too many of them, we heard only three explosions. I took pictures of the nearest. My cousine [sic] came and told me he saw police cars standing by one and setting it on fire. Now you can see the columns of smoke all over the city....

L.T. Smash, the pseudonym of a reserve officer called to active duty, drolly chronicles his adventures in Iraq at www.lt-smash.us. In Monday's entry he wrote, in part:

An officer returned from recently liberated Iraqi territory. His men were met with no resistance whatsoever. The Iraqis had been in a strong defensive position, and had seen his men coming. But they welcomed them as liberators. Liberators with food.

Looking for peace, love and understanding? Peace activists around the globe are staying connected and organizing via the Internet at sites like www.antiwar.com, www.unitedforpeace.org and www.stopwar.org.uk.

Web traffic to traditional war-information news sites has soared since the conflict began.

ComScore Media Metrix, which measures Web traffic patterns, reported that on Sunday, U.S traffic to major news media sites was up 40 percent over an average Sunday during the previous four weeks. Traffic to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's nation and world pages has increased 74 percent over the last month.

On Sunday, average daily traffic increased 128 percent for MSNBC.com, 125 percent for www.Time.com and 124 percent for www.FoxNews.com. Visitation levels had been even higher during the week, but by the weekend people had more access to other media, like television and radio, comScore analyst Graham Mudd said.

U.S. residents' visits to international news sites also jumped over the weekend. On Sunday, as sobering reports of U.S. casualties and pictures and video of captured soldiers filled the airwaves, U.S. Web traffic to international news sites was up 256 percent over an average Sunday during the previous four weeks. On Sunday, average daily traffic from U.S. visitors increased 1,397 percent for www.aljazeera.net -- the Arabic-language site of the satellite network -- with close to 290,000 hits, comScore Media Metrix reported. Al-Jazeera also has an English language version of the site. Both Al-Jazeera sites have had problems staying online in the past few days.

Top domestic news sites on Sunday were www.CNN.com (with more than 2.5 million hits), MSNBC.com, www.Time.com, NYTimes.com and www.FoxNews.com. Top international news sites with U.S. Web surfers on Sunday were bbc.co.uk (with more than 469,000 hits), Canada.com, Canoe.ca, www.Guardian.co.uk, and www.aljazeera.net.

On Monday, when Americans returned to work, Web traffic at major domestic news sites increased more than 80 percent over an average Monday the previous four weeks. Close to 560,000 U.S. citizens visited www.aljazeera.net, representing more than a 2,000 percent increase over an average Monday the previous four weeks, Mudd said.

For more Iraq-related sites, visit post-gazette.com's Iraq Internet resource page.

L.A. Johnson can be reached at ljohnson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3903.