Imperial life in the Emerald City: inside Iraq's green zone. By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

[Javaman]

I'm currently listening to this book.

It's basically about life in the Green Zone in Iraq.

Those of you who have been paying attention for these past 6 years, know all of the screw ups very well, but this book is a really good listen or read if you want a good recap.

But it's more than just a recap, it goes into very specific detail of what was going on over there.

I'm only up to chapter 5 and it deals with bernie kerik. What a fucking colossal jerk.

oh how I wish that bastard went to jail. it's still amazes me he slithered his way out.

Anyway, I digress, the book will piss you off, amaze you and leave you dumbfounded.

I'm only 5 chapters in and I can't wait for the rest.

So many lost opportunities. The whole mess from the get go was a major recipe for disaster.

Apparently, there is a movie coming out next year, "inspired" by this book. aka it will be nothing like the book. it stars Matt Damon.

[Retrograde]

1. Everyone should read this book

No matter how badly you think Bush and Co. screwed up Iraq this book will open your eyes to how deeply corrupt and incompetent they were. Did you get to the part about the general trying to find a local map yet?

[Javaman]

3. No but I got to the part where the first "officials" had to use a tourist map

to find the various ministries.

it's glaringly obvious, that moron* and his band of thieves thought they could just waltz in, tell everyone what to do, set up their version of corporate disneyland and be hailed heroes. Everyone would then just forget the fabricated reason of WMD's and why we went there in the first place.

but it sucks when reality hits the fan.

and that's where their madison ave dogma fell apart. The Iraqi's really didn't cotton to the idea of occupiers. And when they didn't turn up any WMD's, the house of cards fell apart.

I honestly believe, that if things had gone morons* way, they would have fabricated WMD's for the press, but because they found that being occupiers of people who wanted them out, it was like herding kittens and couldn't spin things fast enough to cover up their lies.

The couldn't control the message anymore and thus the bullshit reason to goto war was realized as an outright lie.

[Captain Hilts]

2. GREAT book. The Wash Post op-ed page sucks but they have some good reporters.

Read Assassins' Gate first about how the pre-war stuff got screwed up, then read this one.

To the Bush/Cheney'04 t-shirts worn by so many barely old enough to drink staffers to Haliburton's killing all the cats, there is so much in this book.