Christopher Reid
I've been watching several highly regarded documentaries lately and so far I think this is the best. There is no manipulation, just straight presentation of facts and points of view in a logical order. It doesn't try to control what you think or believe, it lets reason do that for you. The music is minimal and the footage is directly relevant.I think you could use this as a sample for testing whether someone is telling the truth or lying. Or at least whether they're comfortable with what they're being asked. Because the ones telling the truth look you right in the eye and say what they mean. They rest their stare on you. They might nod. They let a silence remain afterwards. But when someone is lying or trying to avoid a question, they fidget, they squirm. They avert their eyes, their words become vague. You can viscerally see how nervous they are - they swallow, they show small tics, they sweat.We get many points of view from different sides and positions. Of course, the most powerful players were not interested in being interviewed for the film. Some of the soldiers are still suffering but it's not melodramatic.On to the actual subject matter. I didn't know much about the Iraq war and when I recently asked my parents, they recited what originally came to my mind: oil, WMDs, unproven links with Al-Qaeda. Now I feel I have a reasonably good overall picture of what happened. The invasion went fairly well. But the occupation was terribly under-planned. And some awful and dangerous decisions were made. Inexperienced people were given important jobs. Too few interpreters were involved. There was a general ignorance of the culture of Iraq and its relevance to the occupation.Several times, the interviewees explain how they noticed a problem and tried to do something about. Tried to inform the people in charge, warn them. But they wouldn't listen. That seems to be the pattern. The occupation wasn't given proper attention and funding. They cut corners wherever they could. The politicians were better at smiling and looking good than getting things done. And the problems were swept under a rug. Now that the dust has settled, it is brutally clear how simple a lot of the problems were and how easily they could have been avoided.This movie is highly disturbing but not for violence so much as how lazy and indifferent the American administration was. They were happy to start a war but not to follow through in the proper, necessary way. Of course Iraqis started to hate America. They got rid of Saddam Hussein and then let chaos reign. They watched as rebels armed themselves, looting ruined cities and museums and people started killing each-other.It's sickening when you see Rumsfeld and Bush brushing questions off as if there were just minor problems with the war. This is one case where the juxtaposition seems completely in context. The mixture of confused disgust and horror you will inevitably feel by the end of this documentary is captured perfectly in the faces of the interviewees.
machngunjoe
There are so many negative Documentires out there about the 2nd Iraq invasion and this one is the best. No End in Sight breaks down exactly, step by step, how the Iraq war went wrong...well...terribly 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 Staff 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.The entire movie essentially proves that carelessness is the true axis of evil. This was the only Bush/War Documentary to be nominated for an Oscar. ( not that means anything). It didn't get a wide viewing so most people don't know about it, which makes it even more important to see.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.This is the best Iraq War documentary I've seen yet and I've seen a lot
