Baghdad in 1990, prior to the First Gulf War, was a pleasant and uncannily safe city, despite the international uproar over Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Westerners could move around the city without risk, and reporters were free to roam and to report what they wished, with few restrictions (as long as you were nice to your government minder.) Occasionally, however, Saddam’s forbearance wore thin, as I discovered on October 22 when I filed a story about the release of five Canadian diplomats.