Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

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Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

Author: Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Publisher: Knopf
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 320
Cover Price: $ 25.95

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The Green Zone, Baghdad, 2003: in this walled-off compound of swimming pools and luxurious amenities, Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority, following directions from the administration of George W. Bush, set out to fashion a new, democratic Iraq. Staffed by idealistic aides chosen primarily for their views on issues such as abortion and capital punishment, the CPA spent the crucial first year of occupation pursuing goals that had little to do with the immediate needs of a postwar nation: flat taxes instead of electricity and deregulated health care instead of emergency medical supplies.

In this acclaimed firsthand account, the former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post gives us an intimate portrait of life inside this Oz-like bubble, which continued unaffected by the growing mayhem outside. This is a quietly devastating tale of imperial folly, and the definitive history of those early days when things went irrevocably wrong in Iraq.

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Background Information

The cabinet of George W. Bush included Condoleeza Rice, the first black woman to serve in the cabinet. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 with the intent of destroying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist.