Farnaz Fassihi on "Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq."

She wrote: “One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it"s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can"t be put back into a bottle."

The email somehow leaked out to fellow journalists and various bloggers, who posted it on numerous Web sites, where it eventually gained a mass audience.

The email also revealed the perils of reporting from Iraq and how foreign correspondents in Baghdad were “under virtual house arrest.” Fassihi wrote: “I avoid going to people”s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t."

That was Farnaz Fassihi writing in 2004. Well she has just published a new book about what life was like in Iraq in the years following the invasion. It’s called, “Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq.” Farnaz Fassihi, welcome to Democracy Now.

Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal’s deputy bureau chief for the Middle East and Africa. From 2003 to 2006 she ran the Journal’s Baghdad bureau.