Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter . Shelly Kittleson, an American journalist, spent a decade covering the Middle East, traveling often from Italy, where she has lived for many years, to Syria, Iraq, and other countries in the region. In March, during a reporting trip to Baghdad, the FBI warned Kittleson that she could be kidnapped or killed. She immediately called her friend Alex Plitsas, an Army Special Operations combat veteran who is now a fellow with the Atlantic Council, where he researches counterterrorism policy. “She said that if anything happened to her, I should be her point of contact,” he told me. That call might have saved Kittleson’s life. On March 31, when Kittleson failed to check in as planned, Plitsas searched X, where he found a video of Kittleson being accosted on a Baghdad street and forced into a car. Iraqi authorities gave chase and, after a crash, apprehended one of the kidnappers. Kittleson, however, was in a different car.…