The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 11/8/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy [Click to enlarge]

National editor for The Washington Post Rajiv Chandrasekaran criticized the Bush administration for mismanaging the Iraq war in a lecture on Oct. 30 about his experiences as the Post's Baghdad bureau chief before and after the U.S. invasion in 2003. Seats at the talk were in short supply as students, faculty and staff crowded into McCardell Bicentennial Hall to attend the event, a part of the College's "Meet the Press" guest lecture series.

Accusations that Chandrasekaran leveled at U.S. officials included the hiring of unqualified GOP loyalists to work in Iraq, their failure to communicate effectively with local leaders and the misuse of valuable assets in the face of a growing insurgency. An accompanying string of rapid-fire anecdotes often provoked incredulous laughter from the audience.

Though open campus dialogue about the Iraq War has been lackluster for much of the conflict's duration, audience members at last Tuesday's lecture probed Chandrasekaran with incisive questions about, among other things, the degree of access he enjoyed with respect to high-level officials and the role of private military contractors in the region.

Chandrasekaran recounted the history of the Iraq War as seen through the lens of the Green Zone, the sheltered seven-square-mile part of Baghdad that since 2003 has served as the U.S.'s base of political power in Iraq.

"The sub-Saharan privation and wild-west lawlessness that gripped one of the world's most ancient cities swirled around outside the walls," said Chandrasekaran. "On the inside, the calm sterility of an American subdivision prevailed."

Chandrasekaran also described his experience as a journalist in a conflict zone. He credited the U.S. invasion with actually making his job easier - for a time. Where he once had to be accompanied to interviews by a government thug, he said, Saddam Hussein's ousting meant that he could travel anywhere and talk to anyone. Soon, however, the insurgency made being an American in Iraq more dangerous than it had ever been under Hussein.

"We did all sorts of creative things to cope," said Chandrasekaran, who culturally camouflaged his armored Jeep Cherokees to look like Iraqi vehicles. "One was made into the Flower of Lebanon taxi cab, and the other was made into a genuine Shiite ghetto-mobile."

Continued...

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