How can I have been so stupid?

The Boston Globe talks to four war reporters about how it feels to face danger and the distinct possibility of death in the line of reporting wars. Here’s LA Times reporter and present day Caribbean bureau chief Carol J. Williams on her experiences in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq,

When I’ve been in frightening situations (drunk Bosnian Serb gunmen wearing ski masks at a roadblock sticking the barrel of their AK-47 into my nostril, surrounded in a Chechen village by Russian Army tanks and troops preparing to blast the place to smithereens in pursuit of rebels, seen bullets meant for me ping off of fences and cement walls flanking Sarajevo’s Sniper Alley, been mistaken for a Russian at a bazaar in Kabul in 1986 and been lassoed and yanked into a curtained enclave before I could explain who I was, etc, etc.) I tend to reproach myself silently, as in “How can I have been so stupid as to end up here? link