Whether or not the US-led coalition should have invaded Iraq, the victors' occupation ran from April 2003 until June 2004. This is an account of that time by a Washington Post reporter who was there before, during and after Iraq's government by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The word “coalition” was disingenuous: the Pentagon and President Bush called the shots, and the American viceroy Paul Bremer - called a “control freak” by his (in)famously micro-managing former boss Henry Kissinger - was almost as autocratic as the tyrant he deposed.

As this meticulous account shows, the aims were lofty: a “Jeffersonian democracy” and a capitalist economy. From inside the Green Zone, America's name for their bit of the captured capital, naïve “neocon” Republican placemen, and a few women, ate (pork) hot dogs and epitomised bumbling bureaucracy. Chandrasekaran has a wonderful eye for the absurd. For example, to help to reconstruct an Iraqi agricultural college, the geniuses of the CPA chose Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture.

By the time of handover, “more money had been devoted to administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance combined … As much as $8.8 billion could not be accounted for, including $2.4 billion in one-hundred-dollar bills”. Yes, Saddam had to go. But this exemplary reportage is a damning indictment of what has followed.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Bloomsbury, £8.99

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