Jon Stewart on livin' it up in Iraq's Green Zone [VIDEO]

Big hat tip to The Largest Minority, one of my favorite blogs...

jon: The book is called imperial life in the emerald city. it details life in the green zone. the americans had a plan when they toppled saddam hussein. to take over an area inside baghdad, to wall it off, and to operate the country from inside that bunker. how could that fail to work?

Rajiv: it was a brilliant plan, right? seven square mile enclave. they would go in there and refill saddam's swimming pools, set up some bars, a disco, a couple of chinese restaurants, a cafe, gymnasium that have bible study classes, salz a dancing classes to get around. halliburton would bring in dozens of brand new suburbans so they could drive around: a perfect plan.

jon: it seemed like something from dr. strangelove what you described, this idea of there was this sort of little america. not even little america. sort of almost like this eccentric city that had no… it was like a floating craps game or something with bible study obviously. how did they insulate themselves in that way? why did they do that?

Rajiv: they wanted all the comforts of home where iraq was a big, bad world on the outside. they felt that they were going to this strange place. in fact, half of the people that went to work for the coalition provisional authority, they had to apply for their first passport in order to go to iraq. these guys hadn't been out and about in the world. they wanted a little bit of downhome cooking and downhome recreation.

jon: you write this incredible story of the guys that were going to rebuild some infrastructure. they brought three guys to do it. the germans had accomplished the same task in east germany. how much guys did they bring again?

Rajiv: 8,000.

jon: does that speak to the germans' laziness?