And yet , as Mr. Chandrasekaran tells it , the walled-off , heavily guarded enclave , centered around Saddam Hussein 's Republican Palace , became as much a fantasyland as anything dreamed up by L. Frank Baum , a place where members of the Coalition Provisional Authority lived in a shiny bubble cut off from the grim realities of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq , a place where the air-conditioning and electricity worked , where Americans wearing '' Bush-Cheney 2004 '' T-shirts could feast on pork and guzzle beer . ''