"Green Zone" is perhaps the worst possible name for the sector of Baghdad where the U.S. and Iraqi governments hold court. It should be called the Bullseye instead. Recent reports indicate that the Green Zone is taking lots of mortar and rocket fire. That’s nothing new.
During my year in the Green Zone, I lost count of the number of mortar attacks. Sometimes, they would come while I was in the shower. One time, a mortar landed close enough to my trailer that the concussion knocked the shampoo bottle out of my hand and pushed me against the wall.
Today’s explosions followed a series of recent mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone. Yesterday, nine US embassy contractors were wounded when mortars were fired.
On May 2, two Indians, a Filipino and a Nepalese national working for the US embassy were killed in a rocket attack. Since then, US embassy officials have ordered staff to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings.
I guess people are wearing their flak jackets in the showers now, since they live in "unprotected buildings." Business as usual. I never did get why they didn’t have sandbags protecting the roofs of those trailers we lived in. The British had them.