SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain
If all that is said is true, then this is like some kind of twisted Orwellian nightmare. It's Animal Farm all over again as a select few individuals make the choices. Terrifying in more ways than one, the film shows the disastrous war, planned out my money grabbing idiots. It's not just the dying soldiers/Iraqi civilians that highlight the problems, but also the unemployment and destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage. The only protection is offered to the oil fields. Again, the big names refuse to take part. But there are some balanced arguments, which sometimes fall into "he said/she said" retorts. No End In Sight is riveting stuff, and if even just a handful of claims are true, then it's worth taking note.
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
