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 warnings of the chaos to come were all too clear then.
U.S. Marines take up positions in the area around the Palestine hotel in the center of Baghdad, April 9, 2003.U.S. Marines take up positions in the area around the Palestine hotel in the center of Baghdad, April 9, 2003.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.
The lessons of the invasion are still debated, but near-consensus has formed about poor U.S. planning, tragically wrong assumptions and misleading claims about alleged chemical weapons stockpiles. Scenes I encounteredThe prelude showed people afraid of their country's dictator — and of his sudden downfall
And Iraqis were clearly scared to talk. You could eat at a restaurant looking over one of Saddam's palaces, but the waiter would say he feared for his entire family if he commented on its opulence. Iraqis had a sense of their own history — Mongol, Persian, Ottoman, Arab and British rulers had governed them with violence or neglect, leading to cycles of mayhem and distrust of any central authority.
From our hotels we could see a battle on the other bank of the Tigris River, with U.S. tanks maneuvering and a plane called in to fire its machine guns at Iraqi ground forces. That's when the U.S. struck the office of Al Jazeera. He had spotted small American flags on a couple of Humvee antennae."We don't want to replace one dictator with another," he said.
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