Before the U.S. rolled into Baghdad 20 years ago, Iraqis warned us what would happen
When the U.S. invasion of Iraq began, NPR's Mideast editor Larry Kaplow was a reporter in Baghdad. Looking back now, he writes that the signs and warnings of the chaos to come were all too clear then.
When the so-called "shock and awe" U.S. missile strikes started in Baghdad 20 years ago this week, I was among a small group of Western reporters watching from hotel balconies along the Tigris River. Explosions, smoke and debris erupted from government buildings in what would soon become the Green Zone. Reports came in of U.S. troops entering the country from the south. We ventured out with government minders, then increasingly on our own, to bomb sites and hospitals treating the wounded.
We worried for our own safety, doing our work with anxious, rumor-fueled uncertainty about whether we'd be made "human shields" or detained. Four of our colleagues were jailed by Iraqi authorities a few days after the invasion began and
