Wow. Seems like a reporter actually left the 'green zone' and did some reporting.

Fear and Posing in Baghdad

In a city where violence defies logic and nearly anyone could be on a hit list, pretending to be somebody else makes sense.

By Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer
June 28, 2006

BAGHDAD — You don't want to draw attention, so you keep a battered car even if you can afford a fancier model. You don't wash it; better to let dust smear the windows. Night falls, curfew clamps down, and all those dirty old cars wend their way back to the homes of the capital. The eyes of neighbors slide after them.

Where are the drivers coming from? Some work for the government. Some fight with insurgents or death squads. Some are employed by Americans. No one asks, and no one tells; nobody knows who's who.

Bloodshed has turned Iraq into a country defined by disguise and bluff. Violence in the streets has begun to defy logic, and this is part of the fallout: A lively city where people used to butt gleefully into one another's business has degenerated into a labyrinth of disguises, a place where neighbors brush silently past one another like dancers in a macabre costume ball... http://tinyurl.com/ockhw
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