ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent Martha Raddatz and Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran — veteran Iraq War correspondents with recently published books about their experiences — joined about 200 people who braved an afternoon downpour at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg Saturday.
The crowd paid $25 apiece to attend the lecture series, which was held theater-in-the-round style.
Chandrasekaran's book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" writes of the heavily protected Green Zone, the place where non-military government administrators stay while in Iraq. He called the Zone a bit of "D.C. on the Tigris" and a "bubble" where civilians make decisions for the U.S. military, often without communicating with them.
In early 2004, for example, American administrators signed a decree against Muqtada Al Sadr, a popular cleric supported by the majority of Iraqis in Sadr City, a Baghdad slum home to 2.5 million people. They shut down Sadr’s newspaper, prompting massive protests. To that point, only one American had died in Sadr City in the previous 12 months. After the decree, guerrilla warfare broke out. One night in March 2004, an American armored vehicle was pinned down in an alley in Sadr City, and the 1st Calvary, in open trucks, was sent in to make the rescue. 8 men died and 70 were wounded in that operation.
This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2007.