Dexter Filkins
The New York Times

I remember the whole period from October, November, December 2003, everybody — all the reporters — were still playing by the old rules and going where we wanted to go. And everybody would come back more and more and say, “My God, I had something really scary happen today: ‘my car got raked by gunfire,’ or ‘a crowd chased me down,’ or ‘some guys with masks chased me in a car,’” and so it was clear that the environment was changing, and so we had to respond to that and it took a long time to kind of figure out how to do that.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Washington Post

In early December of 2003, I was driving back from Hillah. A translator, a driver, and I had gone down to do a story on the provincial council there. Each province had its own government council. We talked to the members. On the drive back to Baghdad, we were about half way there and saw what we thought was a big car accident. One of the vehicles was on fire. We saw a couple of bodies on the road. As we’re driving by, something caught my eye. I thought, “This is very unusual.” Because people were celebrating, were cheering, were very boisterous. I thought, “This is not an accident. This is very strange.” So I directed my driver to pull over and my translator and I got out. I kept my notebook in my pocket, and since I’m of a darker complexion, if I don’t open my mouth, I’m often mistaken for a dark-skinned guy from Basra. So I just sort of walked through the crowd with my translator. It became clear that those were Spanish intelligence agents and seven of them had been ambushed...

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