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By Root 1024 0

were crowded into Firdos Square, whooping and hollering, but our tanks weren’t parked out there as exhibits. Their cannons were loaded and ready to blow something apart, and none of McCoy’s Marines were letting down our defenses. Bravo Company worked roughly to cordon off the area, and the India grunts hustled inside the hotels to clear the rooms. The situation, a by-the-book military operation going on in the middle of a carnival, had gone beyond bizarre and become the sort of experience American soldiers must have encountered in liberating European cities during World War II. It is difficult and dangerous to step instantly from the days of fighting into a warm sea of people who are ready to celebrate the end of combat that is not yet at an end.

We understood the sounds of victory. It was what we had longed for throughout the war, and the shouts rolled comfortably over us. Finally, we had come to the place where we were being welcomed as liberators.

“One minute the Marines are creeping along shot-up neighborhoods, looking to fight Iraqi militia or fedayeen guerrilla fighters,” wrote John Koopman of the San Francisco Chronicle, our embedded reporter, who had become our friend, too. “The next minute they’re in downtown Baghdad, being greeted as conquering heroes. What a difference an hour makes.”

We repositioned the Humvees and moved to support the grunts from India who were prowling through the Palestine Hotel. We tried to stay focused as jubilant Iraqis surged around us, patting us on the back, hugging and kissing us and handing us small flowers, some of them thanking us in fractured English. Beyond the screen of welcoming Iraqis, more people were running around, looters who were hauling away furniture and everything else imaginable. If it wasn’t nailed down, they stole it. There were no longer any police or law enforcement officers to be found in Baghdad, or anywhere else in Iraq, and that wasn’t our job. We were still looking for the bad guys with guns and explosives.

Out of the crowd emerged a small group of people who appeared to be European, judging by their white skin, thick accents, and styles of clothing. They were shouting insults at us like “baby-killer” and “murderers” and “assassins.” Venom spilled in a twisted wave of hatred from the so-called human shields, who had entered Iraq to place themselves between the mean American military and the glorious soldiers of Saddam Hussein.

A middle-aged woman thrust a calendar containing photographs of dead children into my face and screamed, “Look what you did! How could you kill all these innocent children?”

“And what kind of sick bastard makes a calendar out of them?” I snapped back. She will never know how close I was to punching her, because she triggered memories of the ugly scene back at the bridge. But I pointed out instead that those pictures could not have come from this war, because it had only started three weeks ago, hardly time enough to whip up a best-selling little antiwar calendar. Things started to get volatile.

Up came a surly group of Iraqi men, some of whom spoke good English, and they surrounded the protesters who were surrounding Casey and me. One man explained that they did not care for these rude people and that he and his friends had decided to beat them to death.

Now I had to protect the antiwar nutcases, so I tried to give the Iraqi mob a lesson in democracy. “In America, this sort of complaining is called free speech,” I said. “They have a right to say whatever they want to say and should not be punished for expressing their beliefs.”

“Yes,” said the gang leader. “Yes, America. President Boosh. We will kill them.”

I looked at him and said, “You don’t understand. This is part of democracy, and you’re going to have to live with it. You can’t go around killing people just because you disagree with their political views. You get to say what you want, and they get to say what they want.”

The men did not strike anyone, but the intimidated antiwar protesters decided to move along. The peace activists had been saved by a U.S. Marine, one