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A McClatchy reporter reflects on what war brought to Iraq
I picked up a daily habit in Iraq. Every morning, before I left the office, I'd savor that moment–the moment before. Maybe it came from all the times that my Iraqi friends told me how they prayed before they walked out their doors because they might never return.
For almost three years, I spent my mornings the same way: I woke up and worried about what the day would bring. It wasn't a question of whether people would die that day, only of when, how and how many.
We called it a good day when only 10 died, but then there were the bad days. The day a friend died. The day when more than 300 lives were taken in minutes. The day a mother wept in my arms about her lost son, who'd been killed by a militia member, and his widow curled up in a corner of the empty room they'd shared.