The American official was trying to talk about aid and development projects and finally a local tribal chief got up and said, "Even if you turn our country into heaven, we don't want it from you. Just leave us."

I think in Baghdad, any westerner, journalist or not, has a big dollar sign on his or her forehead. So, first and foremost, you are a ticket to unimaginable wealth. And that makes any trips out of the safe zones very risky.

But in Afghanistan, the general rule was that since you were fighting the Taliban, which was not a lawful government force, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. And that led to a lot of excesses in Afghanistan, excesses like Abu Ghraib that were already well-publicized.

What I found most ironic is that the safest part for us as journalists was during the actual war. Back then, during that stage of fighting, we were not targets. After the war itself, during the first month or two, it was extremely safe. We could go anywhere in Iraq, talk to anyone, and didn't have to worry about anything.

Even if you are a liberal in the Muslim world, when you see Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and you see all the other reports of abuses by American forces, it's very hard to get up and say, "We should simulate the American ways," because this is the face of America now in the Muslim world, for many Muslims.

Long before 9/11 and the war in Iraq, a lot of people hated the United States and the West. But what the Iraqi war seems to have done, at least in... I mean, I'm just reporting what I see from the people on the ground, is that it has silenced many pro-American forces in the Muslim world.

If you are an eighteen or nineteen-year-old with little education, as is often the case, and you're put in charge of many, many people on the other end of the world, you have absolute power and you're not prepared for it.