On the scorching summer morning of Aug. 19, 2009, I was walking from my home in Baghdad‘s Mansour district to Ahmed Chalabi’s residence, just a few houses away, for our routine morning meeting. As I made my way down the street, I suddenly heard a massive explosion in the distance. Moments later, the blast wave reached me with tremendous force, and I could feel the pressure ripple through the air. Looking toward the horizon, I saw a huge plume of black smoke rising into the sky, a chilling sign that another devastating attack had struck Baghdad.

As I entered Chalabi’s house, he immediately asked me about the explosion. I quickly made several phone calls to determine what had happened. I was horrified to learn that the attack had targeted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located near one of the Green Zone’s main entrances, only a few miles from where we were. The explosion had caused catastrophic damage, with extensive casualties and widespread destruction.

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It was Ramadan, and Chalabi was fasting, as he always did. I was not fasting, as was my usual practice. As soon as I told him that the attack had targeted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we both instinctively exclaimed, “What happened to Hoshyar Zebari?” At the time, Zebari was serving as Iraq’s minister of foreign affairs, and we already had previous knowledge that he had been inside the ministry when the explosion occurred.

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Chalabi immediately called for his security guards and ordered them to prepare the convoy. “We have to go to the site of the explosion now,” he said. We quickly departed and headed toward the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Along the way, we repeatedly tried to reach Zebari by phone, but none of our calls went through, deepening our fear that the worst might have happened.

As we approached the site of the explosion, the area was beyond recognition. Burned-out vehicles, shattered concrete, twisted steel, and debris were scattered everywhere. The massive concrete T-walls that had surrounded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, normally blocking much of the view of the main building, had vanished. The force of the explosion had hurled them away, leaving an open expanse of devastation in front of the ministry. From where we stood, we could see the entire building, which had been almost completely obliterated. Every window had been blown out, large sections of the facade had collapsed, and the structure resembled a hollow skeleton. The smell of burning debris and human flesh filled the air. We quickly stepped out of........

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