No End in Sight

In retrospect, I suppose 2007 will go down as the year in which filmmakers began addressing the problems in Iraq. The number of Iraq-themed films has piled up and disappeared at a breathtaking pace. Maybe it's not a surprise that the best of them so far is the one that doesn't try to turn the conflict into something fictional. All of the other Iraq movies have been well intentioned but limp; you can tell they want to address what's wrong without truly enraging anyone. Well, Charles Ferguson, the writer and director of "No End in Sight," has no such qualms, and his film enrages indeed.

Meticulously crafted, "No End in Sight" proves what everyone has already known for a long time: the Iraq conflict is a complete disaster. The film is certainly biased; anyone who wants to discount it based on that fact is welcome to. But anyone who wants to deny that America's handling of post-invasion Iraq has been anything but a complete "quagmire" (to borrow a word from the film) is hopelessly deluded. "No End in Sight" is not about whether or not the war in Iraq was justified; in fact, the film goes out of its way to affirm that at first many Iraqis were happy that the U.S. had deposed Saddam Hussein. Rather, the film is about what went wrong after the invasion, about how groups that actually had a reconstruction plan were met with indifference at every step by an administration that really cared nothing for the Iraqi people even as they fed the American public a lot of hooey about bringing freedom and democracy to them. This film makes clear that for all of its recent talk about dangerous nations destabilizing the world's peace, the United States is one of the most dangerous countries currently in existence.

It's terrifying that governments are run like this; if this film is accurate, my office at work is better managed than the project for occupying post-war Iraq. Ferguson can't be blamed if his film seems one sided. None of the key decision makers managing Iraq policy -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bremer -- agreed to be interviewed for the film. The only consolation the film offers is that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld now look like complete fools. Either they thought they had a good plan for rebuilding Iraq and proved themselves to be ridiculously incompetent; or (and more likely) they never really cared about what happened to Iraq in the first place and have proved themselves to be downright scary.

Grade: A

Summed up in this documentary film are the decisions and consequences of invading Iraq. It is presented in a factual and nonhumourous manner, without apparent axe to grind.

Iraq was invaded for what were certainly dubious reasons, which have each come to light and been discredited in turn since the invasion, including the Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame affair. Eventually President George W. Bush would distance himself from the original WMD and terrorism claims used to justify invasion of this country and would be somewhere along the lines of it being a justifiable thing to depose a dictator who killed his own countrymen.

Present are interviews with people on the ground or deeply involved in Iraq from former administration people such as Richard Armitage to Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), United Nations, soldiers and Iraqi people. The tally is grim as each tells of of the arrogance, mismanagement or blind stupidity which contributes to the situation in Iraq.

As a student of World War II I was utterly flummoxed by the decision to route the Ba'athists from their jobs and to disband a military of 500,000 professional soldiers, leaving them no way to support their families. Following the tide of the allies across Germany, local police, politicians and government workers were largely left in place to maintain order and services so as not to encumber the allied effort. After victory was achieved came the search for and punishment of the guilty.

But in Iraq the failure to follow a successful lesson from the past led to looting (while marines without orders to prevent it, stood by) and destruction of the institutions the people of Iraq would need to depend upon. In two fell swoops L. Paul Bremmer declared over half a million Iraqis guilty and condemned them for being members of the Ba'athist Party or Saddam's military. How utterly blind and foolish this shows when the viewer can see compressed into the span of a film how missteps contributed to the worsening of conditions and the mounting cost of operations. Small wonder Iraqis despise Americans when the viewer sees a segment of film made by a contractor, shooting innocent Iraqis from the back of a truck with impunity.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld comes across as a glib conductor of public relations as things descend into chaos and the viewer will be left with the impression he was not merely inept, but a blithering idiot. I'm not convinced Rumsfeld was a fool, but clearly a lot of things were done wrong and it all smells like a Bay of Pigs mentality.

Everyone should see this and were it within my means I would sponsor its screening on prime time television so all people have the means to see the path of errors and the will to turn blind eyes which lead to this humanitarian disaster.

As of today, Iraq is a fractured nation of religious parties and warlords vying for power. Militias are large, well armed and ruthless. Pulling out will certainly mean a bloodbath, but remaining in Iraq will only hold off the inevitable. Pandoras box is truly emptied and there's very little hope left. Tragically a few intelligent decisions here and there which could have made the difference were not made. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost.

It cannot be disputed that all that is presented here is factual, being that it consists of interviews and documentary footage. There may be some debate as to the truth of what some of the interviewees say, but the interviews did take place and those being interviewed are clearly identified. The material is edited to conclusively establish that the U.S. Iraq adventure is a monument to incompetence. The fact that most of the interviewees were high ranking officials in the Bush administration lends credence to the point of view.

To those who have diligently tried to follow the events of the Iraq war, this film will confirm suspicions as well as add some new insights as to how we have wound up in the mess we are in. To those who have not paid attention, this film should provide groundwork for further investigation. The film avoids sensationalism - it does not dwell on maimed bodies, casualties, troop morale, and so forth. It does not even cite things like Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech or Wolfowitz's estimate the the cost of the war would be two billion dollars tops.

It is not surprising that all of the principal players declined to be interviewed, but it would have been good to have had interviews with officials who supported going to war and continue to defend it.

What I was left with after viewing this was a great sadness that after well over a year since this film was released, and after over five years of the war, there is still no end in sight.

It would be nice to think the terrible debacle of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq of 2003 somehow just happened. That it was just a mistake to go there. That things just went wrong. But as this excellent new documentary shows, things went wrong for reasons—because of how the war was planned and executed.

Or how it wasn't planned. How ultimately completely unqualified people were left in charge. Here are some of the mistakes that No End in Sight elucidates for us:

1. Nobody knew anything. Out of a basic US cadre of roughly 130 people first sent in to run things, only 5 knew Arabic. Nobody knew from factions. What a Shiite and a Sunni and a Kurd were they found out later. Instead of realizing what leaders would emerge (such as the most popular man in Iraq now, Muqtada Sadr), the neo-cons sent in Ahmed Chalabi, a corrupt exile without credibility or authority, believing he would be the new leader. They didn't know how many troops were required to maintain order, and Rumsfeld, trying to prove a cockeyed theory he had no knowledge to support, chose too few. (Then Army Chief of Staf General Eric Shinseki had pointed this out to the Senate before the war even began.)

2. Nobody, neither Americans nor Iraqis, was designated to maintain order. Chaos reigned. "Stuff happens," said Rumsfeld. No: "stuff" doesn't just happen: it's allowed to happen. As Seth Moulton, a young Marine officer who is one of Ferguson's voices says, "We were Marines. We could have stopped looting." But they were not directed to do so. The troops, already too few, just stood around and watched as Baghdad was torn apart, the national library burned, the national museum looted. All the ministry buildings were dismantled and looted—tellingly, only the Ministry of Petroleum was guarded. Baghdad's water and electricity fell apart, and links with the rest of the country turned into wild and dangerous interzones. Most important of all for the maintenance of order, large caches of arms were unknown to US troops—and insurgents pillaged them.

Iraq was lost in the first week of the occupation. But worse was yet to come. And worse. And worse. A key moment was the replacement of ORHA, The Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), headed by Jay Garner, which was not allowed to protect any of its sites, by the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by the arrogant Paul Bremer.

3. This is when the US destroyed the country's human infrastructure, and in so doing sowed the seeds of insurgency and civil war. The occupation fired the entire Iraqi standing army, half a million officers and men alike, and dismissed and barred from work 50,000 "Baathist" government officials and employees. Rendering all these people unemployed dealt a huge economic blow to the country in itself. But far worse than that, it led to permanent conflict—ultimately to civil war. It created many enemies, and it left no one to work with. At this point the goodwill the Americans had won by toppling the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein was lost. The violence and lawlessness that had been allowed to proceed unchecked began to become organized. Began to have a cause.

4. Many of the Americans sent in to help with occupation and reconstruction had nothing to work with. Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad in spring 2003) arrived to find offices supplied to her and her staff that were empty rooms with no computers, not even telephones. But as she says on screen, it didn't matter because they had no phone lists—and no one to call.

Nir Rosen is one of the most knowledgeable and independent American journalists in Iraq and a producer and talking head of this film. As he has recently said, Iraq today, four and a half years later, is a region of city-states, a source of instability to the whole area, to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, even perhaps to Egypt. Pacifying and controlling Baghdad no longer means anything because Baghdad doesn't control the country—if you can call it a country. The US forces are just another militia, the most hated but not the most effective.

First-time director Charles Ferguson gives us the various figures, the cold facts, the cost, the numbers of dead and wounded. But what most matters is what people have to say, and Ferguson has assembled some key talking heads. These include former Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Bodine, Colin Powell's former chief of staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Col. James Hodges, soon-replaced Iraq viceroy Jay Garner (who like others strenuously objected to the dismissal of the army and the debathification, but was ignored by his replacement, Paul Bremer), Bremer adviser Walter Slocombe, frustrated ORHA functionary Paul Hughes, and other diplomats, journalists, officers, and enlisted personnel who were there in Iraq after the invasion.

Ferguson has a doctorate from MIT, where he has taught; is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution (he's an insider!); and has authored three books on information technology. His approach is analytical. The basic problem was that the usual suspects—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, & Co.—had spent virtually no time on planning the aftermath of "Shock and Awe"--the occupation. It was all planned, skimpily, at the last minute, deliberately ignoring all the experts' advice.

No End in Sight is not so much an indictment or a polemic or a proposal as a post-mortem. Its aim is to lay out the whole devolution process that took place under US control of Iraq. Never mind the run-up to the war, the justifications, the aims. Here is the story that shows the situation might have been handled better. Things are much worse.

We get to see a lot of political documentaries now so we have learned to judge them. This is a very fine one—and for Americans an essential one.

As a military brat, I wanted to see if it was the military or the Cabinet that was making poor decisions about the Iraqi invasion and the years of occupation. Charles Ferguson presented a well laid out chronological story from 9/11/2001 (the Pentagon scenes were especially tearful, we forget that was hit by a plane as well) to the present. Especially interesting was the history between Iran and Iraqi, and I remember the day in 1979 when we knew of American military families that had to leave in the middle of the night from Tehran. America's backing of Hussein then caught up with us in the 90's. Bush's administration was looking for a connection - WMDs, Al-Qada, something.

I was impressed with the candor of Richard Armitage, Col Paul Hughes, and even with Walter Slocombe. The interviews were interesting, honest, and true.

Last week I watched "Saving Private Ryan" for the first time, and understood that we sent in 350,000 troops to Normandy during and after D-Day. Our ability to have that kind of troop deployment is over, as is the Cold War. Instead we are creating a ticking time bomb (much like we did in backing Hussein against Khomeini in 1980) that I hope will not create instability world wide.

I'm planning on buying multiple copies of this DVD - it is that important, not only for now, but in campaign issues in the next year.