In modern-day Baghdad, the carnage takes a different, less organized form, but the state of affairs is truly apocalyptic. The few Western journalists left in Baghdad these days have armed cars to follow them to intervene in case of kidnapping attempts. The violence is so intense that it is impossible for Westerners to walk the streets—regular Iraqis are afraid to have them in their shops or be seen talking with them in public. I do not plan on returning to Iraq, partly because I have found it impossible to do much real reporting in such an atmosphere of corrosive fear. Meanwhile, Iraqis live with all of this and worse every day. Journalists who have left and maintain contact from the outside by phone watch their former colleagues come unhinged as each day brings more suicide bombings and their less well-publicized corollary: US air raids. A low-level civil war is already under way between the Sunni and Shiites. Where is it all headed?
