"With acuity and a fine sense of the absurd, the author peels back the roof to reveal an ant heap of arrogance, ineptitude, and hayseed provincialism."--Boston Globe

"A devastating indictment of the post-invasion failures of the Bush administration."--Booklist

"As chilling an indictment of America's tragic cultural myopia as Graham Greene's prescient 1955 novel of the American debacle in Indochina, The Quiet American."--New York Times Op-Ed

"An eye-opening tour of ineptitude, misdirection, and the perils of democracy-building."--Newsday

A National Book Award Finalist

In this unprecedented account, The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competes with the distractions of a Little America--a half-dozen bars, a disco, a shopping mall--much of it run by Halliburton. While qualified Americans willing to serve in Iraq are screened for their views on Roe v. Wade, the country is put into the hands of inexperienced twentysomethings chosen for their Republican Party loyalty. Ignoring what Iraqis say they want or need, the team pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions and pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity production. Their almost comic initiatives anger the locals and fuel the insurgency.