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Sunday, September 17, 2006
Rich Galen :: Townhall.com Columnist
Life in the Emerald City:
by Rich Galen
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Will Congress pass Obamacare by the end of the year?

  • Washington was abuzz over the weekend with the publication in the Washington Post of an excerpt from a new book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor, Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

  • Chandrasekaran was the WashPost Baghdad bureau chief in 2003-2004, about the same time period I was poking around in Iraq.

  • Chandrasekaran's central theme seems to be: All that mattered in the early days following the fall of Saddam was that an employee of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had proved his or her loyally to George W. Bush.

  • To give you some idea of Chandrasekaran's point-of-view, another excerpt had been e-mailed to me on Friday which included, in its first graf, the notion that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was chock full of "naïve neocons."

  • "Oh, yeah," I thought. "This is going to be great."

  • A problem with excerpts is they are designed to help sell books. Same thing as an ad for a movie. But, too often the best lines are in the ad, and the other one hour, twenty nine minutes and thirty seconds of the film are eight dollars worth of crashing boredom.

  • Describing the life of a CPA employee, Chandrasekaran writes:
    "Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools."

  • The obvious implication being, while coalition military personnel were in constant danger of being injured or killed by ambush or IED, the "naïve neocons" of the CPA were lounging about in perfect luxurious safety, eating dates and pomegranates, sipping fine wines and taking an occasional refreshing dip in the "resort-sized swimming pool."

  • That is an appallingly unfair portrait.

  • The vast majority of CPA employees lived in trailers (two people per half, shared bathroom, running water a pleasant surprise), ate in the cafeteria (food by Kellogg, Brown & Root a subsidiary of Halliburton); worked in crowded, dusty outdated offices (even by Saddam standards); and went out into the Red Zone of Baghdad to do their jobs each and every day.

  • Two not particularly unique examples were two women named Leslie Arsht and Judy Van Rest. Leslie struggled to build up a working educational system; Judy worked out of the democracy-building office.

    Continued...

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    About The Author

    Rich Galen has been a press secretary to Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich. Rich Galen currently works as a journalist and writes at Mullings.com

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    (2 comments so Far)
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    Reply # 1
    Date: Sep 18, 2006 - 9:55 AM EST
    The Washington Post
    That's all you had to write. I knew the rest of it.

    The WaPo is a stringer for al Jezeera.
    Flag as Offensive

    Reply # 2
    Date: Sep 19, 2006 - 7:08 AM EST
    Rich galen u r a hopeless idiot
    Why don't you just blow your brains out you stupid twit

    You are obviously an agent for the murderous conspiracy that is the Bush govt. You are so blind and brainless that you should go suffocate yourself now with a blunt instrument. Don't waste the oxygen of this universe - or better go disembowel yourself with a spanner.

    Die slowly scum.
    Flag as Offensive
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