Movie Info
Rating:
PG
Starring:
Director:
Charles Ferguson
This is the movie the Bush Administration doesn’t want you to see. And with damn good reason.
No End In Sight is not the first documentary to come along condemning the American government’s handling of the war in Iraq– The Ground Truth, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and Iraq In Fragments all covered similar ground– but it is by far the most lacerating, not to mention the one with the most potential to upset the White House’s rumored September rollout of more troops into the increasingly combustible region.
As neoconservative propagandists continue to trumpet news of progress on the ground and blast Democrats urging a military withdrawal from Iraq as defeatists in retreat, Ferguson’s scathing indictment traces the history of the United States’ worst military clusterfuck since Vietnam all the way back to the ‘80s, when the American powers-that-be helped Saddam Hussein in his war against neighboring Iran (which at that time was deemed the larger threat to U.S. interests). But when the Iraqi dictator got greedy and tried to take over Kuwait’s lucrative oil supplies, the elder Bush vowed to remove him from power. His inability to do so no doubt fueled W’s Administration, which featured key players from his daddy’s cabinet, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. On September 17, 2001– six days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon– George Jr. signed “top secret” documents to begin planning the invasion of Iraq.
When former Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, to make a case for the invasion of Iraq, every statement he made (most of which had been prepared by the White House Iraq Group, overseen by Cheney, Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby) was later revealed to be false. Though he admitted in 2004 that his presentation on Hussein’s supposed “Weapons of Mass Destruction” had been inaccurate, the Administration took advantage of Powell’s golden reputation and essentially ended his previously stellar career. Powell proved powerless to challenge the appointments of neoconservative loyalists to key strategic positions, and impotent when the multivolume "Future of Iraq" study prepared by his State Department staff for the reconstruction of the country after the war was rejected by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. And that, according to the film, is when Iraq became hell on Earth.
Largely told through interviews with three former administration officials-turned-outspoken critics of our Iraq War planning– Powell's former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson; Powell's former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage; and former U.S. ambassador Barbara Bodine, a senior member of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq– No End In Sight charts the myriad steps in the Bush Administration’s failures, from not allocating enough time for the planning process and refusing to allow military personnel to stop looters from destroying the nation’s infrastructure to firing Iraqi soldiers wanting to help rebuild their nation and flouting Geneva Convention laws regarding treatment of prisoners.
The condemning film is a bitter pill to swallow, but also a must-see for Americans who think our nation should be a shining beacon of democracy and justice, providing irrefutable proof that the current Administration has long since lost its way.
No End In Sight is not the first documentary to come along condemning the American government’s handling of the war in Iraq– The Ground Truth, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and Iraq In Fragments all covered similar ground– but it is by far the most lacerating, not to mention the one with the most potential to upset the White House’s rumored September rollout of more troops into the increasingly combustible region.
As neoconservative propagandists continue to trumpet news of progress on the ground and blast Democrats urging a military withdrawal from Iraq as defeatists in retreat, Ferguson’s scathing indictment traces the history of the United States’ worst military clusterfuck since Vietnam all the way back to the ‘80s, when the American powers-that-be helped Saddam Hussein in his war against neighboring Iran (which at that time was deemed the larger threat to U.S. interests). But when the Iraqi dictator got greedy and tried to take over Kuwait’s lucrative oil supplies, the elder Bush vowed to remove him from power. His inability to do so no doubt fueled W’s Administration, which featured key players from his daddy’s cabinet, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. On September 17, 2001– six days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon– George Jr. signed “top secret” documents to begin planning the invasion of Iraq.
When former Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, to make a case for the invasion of Iraq, every statement he made (most of which had been prepared by the White House Iraq Group, overseen by Cheney, Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby) was later revealed to be false. Though he admitted in 2004 that his presentation on Hussein’s supposed “Weapons of Mass Destruction” had been inaccurate, the Administration took advantage of Powell’s golden reputation and essentially ended his previously stellar career. Powell proved powerless to challenge the appointments of neoconservative loyalists to key strategic positions, and impotent when the multivolume "Future of Iraq" study prepared by his State Department staff for the reconstruction of the country after the war was rejected by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. And that, according to the film, is when Iraq became hell on Earth.
Largely told through interviews with three former administration officials-turned-outspoken critics of our Iraq War planning– Powell's former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson; Powell's former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage; and former U.S. ambassador Barbara Bodine, a senior member of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq– No End In Sight charts the myriad steps in the Bush Administration’s failures, from not allocating enough time for the planning process and refusing to allow military personnel to stop looters from destroying the nation’s infrastructure to firing Iraqi soldiers wanting to help rebuild their nation and flouting Geneva Convention laws regarding treatment of prisoners.
The condemning film is a bitter pill to swallow, but also a must-see for Americans who think our nation should be a shining beacon of democracy and justice, providing irrefutable proof that the current Administration has long since lost its way.
