Chris Hondros
Getty Images
Once the fighting stopped, it seemed like the country was getting more pacified. By mid-April or so, all of the most experienced war journalists said, “Okay, now we can do it our way,” and, much to the shock and amazement of our embed people, we hired local Iraqis, you know? “Hey, do you have a car?” “Yes, have a car, sir. Yes, no problem.” “Okay, come here tomorrow. We’ll pay you forty dollars a day.” “Okay, yes, no problem.” You know, like we normally do in Africa, Asia, anywhere else. That whole first year Iraq was pretty safe to cover, relatively speaking.

Elizabeth Palmer
CBS News
It was a fool’s paradise in a way. I felt we could go anywhere, and we did, including into the Green Zone, which was extraordinary, because we were able to stroll around Saddam’s playground those days and see that crazy canal system where he’d putter around on his little boats.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Washington Post
It wasn’t like we were greeted with flowers and sweets, but it was an incredibly warm welcome. I’m fond of saying that back then the greatest risk I felt I was in was being invited into somebody’s house and being served food of sketchy origin or tea made from water pumped directly from the Tigris River. When I went up and told people I was an American with The Washington Post, I was embraced, I was welcomed into people’s homes. They wanted to tell me their stories. These were people who couldn’t speak freely, in many cases, for their entire adult lives.

Anthony Shadid
The Washington Post
To me, 2003 was really distinctive. It was unusual in a lot of ways. The most unusual was that for the first time, with the possible exception of...

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