Patrick Baz:

It was pure luck. I had to get the right fixer. I speak Arabic and I knew how to make my way through. The thing with dictators or with dictatorships is that they make you believe that you are not allowed to. You start self-censoring. It is amazing because nobody would stop you from going to take pictures of the Republican Guards. I realized that when the fixer took me to the Ministry of Defense and the guys from the Ministry of Defense said: “Why don’t you come to us and why are you the only one? We want to show that we are defending our country.”

Link: Knowing Where to Step, Gingerly, in Iraq - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com