Workers’ Protest, Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq
During a July 24, 2003 protest by unemployed Iraqis, soldiers with the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division mounted bayonets and advanced to within five feet of the protesters. The goal, I presume, was to intimidate the crowd of roughly 300 Iraqis. The demonstrators were angry about economic conditions in Iraq (the U.N. estimated the unemployment rate at the time to be about 30 percent). No shots were fired, no one was stabbed, but the feeling of imminent violence was overwhelming.