Covering The War In Iraq

Veteran CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen spent almost two months covering the Iraq War in Baghdad.

From the battles between American forces and Iraqi insurgents loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr, to the millions of Iraqis living in Baghdad's poorest slums, Petersen saw – and showed us – what life is like in post-Saddam Iraq.

Recently, Petersen sat down with CBS News Correspondent Melissa McDermott to discuss his journey to Baghdad and why he went in the first place.

"I wanted to see it," he said. "I'm a reporter, and I just wanted to get a sense of what it was."

That, he said, didn't take long.

"I underestimated the amount of random violence," Petersen said. "Most of the time when you cover a clash, there's a line somewhere between one side and the other side, and if you stay on one side of the line or the other, you know where you are. In Baghdad, there was no line. Anywhere was a war zone.

"People would fire off a mortar hoping it would hit one place and it would hit over there, and if you were over there, it was your bad luck. For the people who live there, it's never-ending."

Petersen said he was most concerned when he stepped outside the relatively safe confines of his hotel – especially when the kidnappings of Americans and other foreigners became more frequent, and more publicized.

"We [western journalists] realized that we were great catches."

To prepare for that possibility, Petersen wrote a letter to his family in which he describes the growing unease.

"Being hotel bound," he wrote, "that becomes so claustrophobic that getting out, even as dangerous as it has become, is a relief. Daylight, air, people.

And once outside, the fear creeps in. You see a couple of guys talking at the corner and looking at you, you see a car slow down for no reason, and you feel your body tighten. Are they after me? Because there are plenty of people who are after me - the foreigner, the American, the journalist - I would be a big catch for the kidnappers."

Petersen finished his two-month assignment in Baghdad in late September.