No End In Sight

Charles Ferguson's "No End in Sight" is now available on DVD.
It arrived via Netflix yesterday.

Buy a copy for your congresscritters.

This documentary gives a clear picture of the incredible lack of planning for the Iraq War and the devastating consequences as told by insiders in the military and the government. The arrogance and the incompetence of the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz duo leaves you wondering why these two are not in jail awaiting prosecution for war crimes. Perhaps the title means that there is no end in sight for the irreparable damage done by this administration to the reputation of our country. Perhaps there is no end in sight for the horror that has befallen the Iraqi people. We see the same cast of characters in the Bush Administration as we did during the Reagan and Bush I administrations. With a total disregard for humanity and morality, these political ideologues ravaged a nation and created the quagmire that is now Iraq. There is no dispute.

What upset me the most were clips of Rummy joking with the press during his briefings about certain reports coming out of Iraq. For instance, he said that "stuff happens" when asked about the looting. He joked that the media was showing the same picture of someone stealing a vase over and over and how can there be so many vases in Iraq. Well in fact, the media reports we were reading were true. The WH said that the troops weren't there to police Iraq, so the only thing that was guarded by the troops was the Oil Ministry. Surprise surprise. 7,000 years of Iraq history was looted or burned. The national archives were destroyed by fire. There were simply not enough troops from the get go, thanks to Rummy and Wolfowitz. Footage showed looters taking who parts of power plants away in trucks, buildings were destroyed for the rebar, the infrastructure was ravaged.

How about our troops not having the proper Humvee armor? There was no excuse for that. But remember when the press stuck up for Rummy when a troop asked why there wasn't enough armor? They were labeled "liberals" and dismissed. If $18billion was slated for the war and a year later only a billion was spent, you would think that someone could have mustered up some Humvees with armor. Couldn't some of the 'going out of business' auto manufacturing plants in the US be used to make armored vehicles? Well no. That would make sense.

The damage caused by L Paul Bremer was so devastating and seeing it carefully outlined in this documentary made me shudder. He decided that there would be no interim government. The De-Bathification left over 50,000 unemployed. These were civil servants, professionals, engineers, scientists, teachers, librarians and the intelligensia who were party members so that they could have jobs, for god's sake. They weren't political ideologues like Bremer, et al. When he disbanded the Iraqi military, he left over a half a million more people unemployed. Bremer did this without consulting anyone. Over 70 munitions dumps were left unguarded in Iraq. Who do you think went to raid the cache? Why all the unemployed and disenfranchised and disenchanted citizens of Iraq. And wouldn't we do the same if this happened to us in America?
Add to that, the contractors/mercenaries who would shoot people at random and get away with it and you've got a full blown insurgency made up by mostly Iraqi's because they were unemployed, insecure and fed up with their so called "liberation." The US is completely responsible for the civil unrest and the rise of al Sadr. Someone had to rise up.

The State Department in 2004 painstakingly drew up an insurgency report for the administration yet it was disregarded and the president never read it at all. Not even the executive summary. In fact he mentioned to the press that it was full of guessing.

I am going to buy this film so that I can pass it around. It's not a political movie and it's quite instructive, especially for those who chose to watch Fux News for the past 7 years and who are willfully and deliberately misinformed. The film is unemotional and unbiased, by the way. It was I who became furious.

Personally, this film made me feel more antagonistic towards those people I know who actually argued with me when I suggested that the "State" has nothing but bad intentions. There is no one fighting for my freedom and it's only the ignorant and naive who believe that. The truth is hard to swallow but it must be done for the very sake of freedom. Perhaps in a few days I will be able to muster up the strength to even speak to someone who voted for Bush or supports this administration at all but perhaps not as I am devastated and see no end in sight. I feel helpless and my heart goes out to all the Iraqi people. I wish I knew what I could do.