Free Republic

The apartment in Baghdad where Jimmy Aldaoud lived — and died, just two months after being deported from the U.S. — has been cleaned and emptied. But on the windowsill in the bedroom, there's a remnant of the fear he felt about being sent to a country where he'd never been: two plastic toy pistols with orange foam tips and bright pink suction-cup darts. "He would sleep with these in his hands," says Samir Kada, another deportee from the U.S. who lives next door and looked out for him. "He said, 'If anybody comes, I'm going to pull it on...

In October 1995, ABC News' Sheila MacVicar filed a story from Baghdad on Iraq's presidential referendum. Iraqis generally consider it too risky to speak honestly to a reporter from American television, but MacVicar had come across a rare moment of dissent. As Iraqis lined up to cast their votes, they flashed MacVicar their ration cards, which guarantee them a supply of government-issued food. The point was clear: In exchange for their votes, officials stamped the cards. When MacVicar filed her story, she reported this small current of rebellion and called the forthcoming referendum results--99.96 percent for Saddam--a fiction. No correspondent...

If the bombs begin falling on Baghdad, a broad swath of the TV-viewing world will quickly become intimate with Jane Arraf, CNN's Iraq correspondent for the past four years. Arraf files her reports from the third-floor landing of a blocky white building a few hundred meters from the Tigris River, with the ancient city's minaret-filled panorama behind her. CNN shares the building with the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, and the handful of other news organizations that have a permanent presence in Baghdad. But there's an uncomfortable fact about this building to which these tenants don't often call attention: It's the...