Chalabi Daughter Memoir Documents Life in Iraq Before, After Saddam

The daughter of controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi has documented her family's exile and return to Iraq in the book "Late for Tea at Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family."

Tamara Chalabi told CBS News' Christopher Isham, "I wanted to tell the story of Iraq through a human perspective, to intertwine the public history with the private stories of my family."

The memoir details the lives of four generations in Iraq, before and after Saddam Hussein.

Chalabi described living with her father, former leader of the Iraqi National Congress, as "always very dramatic," but characterized reports that Ahmed led the United States to war with Iraq as "urban myth."

"The fact that one man could be accused of taking a whole country, and one as big and powerful as the United States, to war is an incredibly naive view," she said. "It's spun out of control."

The book's title refers to a Chalabi family palace with a deer statue in the front garden. When Tamara went to Baghdad in 2003, a time she described as "daunting" and "uncertain," she returned to the abandoned palace and found a teapot in an empty kitchen.

"I felt I arrived late to this tea party, but also, the Iraq I grew up hearing about was a very, very different Iraq than the one we have gotten used to hearing about," Chalabi said in the interview, on CBSNews.com's "Washington Unplugged."

The Iraq she once knew was "vibrant, carefree" -- unlike the country in strife so often heard of now. "I also arrived late for that party so that's why the book is called 'Late for Tea at the Deer Palace.'"