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Imperial Life in the Emerald City

Inside Iraq's Green Zone

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

(6)

| Hardcover | 9781400044870

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Book Description

An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.

The Washington Post’s former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv ChandrContinue

An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.

The Washington Post’s former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone: into a bubble, cut off from wartime realities, where the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competed with the distractions of a Little America—a half-dozen bars stocked with cold beer, a disco where women showed up in hot pants, a movie theater that screened shoot-’em-up films, an all-you-could-eat buffet piled high with pork, a shopping mall that sold pornographic movies, a parking lot filled with shiny new SUVs, and a snappy dry-cleaning service—much of it run by Halliburton. Most Iraqis were barred from entering the Emerald City for fear they would blow it up.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Chandrasekaran tells the story of the people and ideas that inhabited the Green Zone during the occupation, from the imperial viceroy L. Paul Bremer III to the fleet of twentysomethings hired to implement the idea that Americans could build a Jeffersonian democracy in an embattled Middle Eastern country.

In the vacuum of postwar planning, Bremer ignores what Iraqis tell him they want or need and instead pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions—a flat tax, a sell-off of Iraqi government assets, and an end to food rationing. His underlings spend their days drawing up pie-in-the-sky policies, among them a new traffic code and a law protecting microchip designs, instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity production. His almost comic initiatives anger the locals and help fuel the insurgency.

Chandrasekaran details Bernard Kerik’s ludicrous attempt to train the Iraqi police and brings to light lesser known but typical travesties: the case of the twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance put in charge of reestablishing Baghdad’s stock exchange; a contractor with no previous experience paid millions to guard a closed airport; a State Department employee forced to bribe Americans to enlist their help in preventing Iraqi weapons scientists from defecting to Iran; Americans willing to serve in Iraq screened by White House officials for their views on Roe v. Wade; people with prior expertise in the Middle East excluded in favor of lesser-qualified Republican Party loyalists. Finally, he describes Bremer’s ignominious departure in 2004, fleeing secretly in a helicopter two days ahead of schedule.

This is a startling portrait of an Oz-like place where a vital aspect of our government’s folly in Iraq played out. It is a book certain to be talked about for years to come.

Critics

  • Futile, fraudulent or worse

    Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran 356pp, Bloomsbury, £12.99 The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace by Ali A Allawi 518pp, Yale, £18.99 The Iraq war has produced a cupboardful of ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Boys in the Bubble

    Regardless of how the war ends, Iraq is not Vietnam. This is true not just militarily and politically but also in the reporting about the two conflicts. For many journalists who covered Vietnam and subsequently wrote books about the war, the experien ... (read full critics)

    nytimes published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

1 Review

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  • 1 person find this helpful

    a must read

    I don't like americans, just one of millions of people on this planet that don't like them, and all for a variety of very good and valid reasons. But after reading this book I came to an understanding, because now I can see how the inhumanity of a few, how the greed of a few, how the selfishness of ... (continue)

    I don't like americans, just one of millions of people on this planet that don't like them, and all for a variety of very good and valid reasons. But after reading this book I came to an understanding, because now I can see how the inhumanity of a few, how the greed of a few, how the selfishness of a few, and the ignorance of a nation can cause the world to look at that nation with eyes filled with distrust, sadness, and in a lot of cases, hate.
    A must read to everyone, hopefully it wont fill them with hate, but with the will to change the ugliness that has become the USA.

    Is this helpful?

    Omar said on May 21, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (6)
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  • English Books
  • Hardcover 336 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 1400044871
  • ISBN-13: 9781400044870
  • Publisher: Knopf
  • Pub date: Sep 19, 2006
  • Dimensions: 1548 mm x 968 mm x 194 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Paperback
  • In other languages: other languages 한국 책
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