No End in Sight: Iraq’s Descent into Chaos
No End in Sight: Iraq’s Descent into Chaos (written and directed by Charles Ferguson, 2007) This is a chillingly credible account of how the United States created the quagmire called Iraq. Eschewing polemics, narrator Campbell Scott, in a steady professional voice, connects the commentaries, the filmage, and an episodic time line from the months prior to “Operation Freedom’ to the chaotic situation that existed in early 2007.
The commentators include on-the-scene officials, journalists, American soldiers, and Iraqis. Their comments, on occasion, are juxtaposed against Pollyannaish official statements by then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld , Vice President Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush. Only two members of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Iraqi triumvirate agreed to be interviewed.
From the outset it appears that a handful of people within this triumvirate, through arrogance, deceit, and hubris, thrust the United States into a post-Iraqi war occupation for which we were woefully prepared. [For a detailed account of Vice President Cheney’s role in triggering this war, see The Dark Side (2006.] The Department of Defense and the White House totally ignored a one-year State Department assessment of what a post-war Iraqi occupation would entail. Under Rumsfeld, DOD had planned virtually nothing, while relying upon exile Ahmed Chalabi ‘s counsel. Soon after the fall of Baghdad in April, 2003, senior officials were talking of reducing the U. S. military to about 30,000-to-40,000 troops within a few months.
U. S. military in Baghdad were reporting that Iraqi generals were offering to provide entire divisions as part of an ongoing security force. Meanwhile, looting and chaos were afoot throughout much of Iraq. General Jay Garner, the initial DOD representative in Baghdad for several months, expressed shock at what his successor, Ambassador Paul Bremer, announced within days of arriving in Baghdad:
- Block efforts to create an Iraqi government;
- Exclude all members of the Baath party from government positions; and
- Totally disband a military of perhaps 400,000 soldiers.
These crucial decisions were made by a very few people in Washington. The blanket ouster of Baathists from government assured an indefinite period of governmental chaos. The summary dismissal of the Iraqi army left hundreds of thousands of soldiers unemployed at a time when military arsenals were poorly guarded. One observer stated that the bombing of HumVees and the killing of two U.S. soldiers on the day General Garner departed Baghdad in May marked the beginning of the insurgency.
Despite Rumsfeld’s cavalier dismissal of the suggestion of an organized insurgency and Cheney’s May 30, 2005 statement that this was the “last phase of the insurgency,” the internecine killings escalated. That the government security forces were riddled with Shiite extremists made a mockery of government-provided security. By 2006 Iraqis working for the U. S. embassy couldn’t tell people where they worked for fear of assassination.
This documentary provides staccato evidence of how out of touch the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld trio was with what was happening in Iraq. Then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and others underscored that accurate assessments were available—and simply ignored.
No End in Sight only touches briefly on the massive planned reconstruction effort: $16 billion earmarked in the first year, with only $1 billion spent. Nor does it mention the various political coalitions masterminded by the Americans or the problems in providing minimal electricity and oil production. Also, the entire Abu Ghraib calumny is omitted. Rather, what it describes is the story of how a few Americans, from the outset of sending in a skeletal invasion/occupation force, contributed to an increasingly chaotic situation to which there is ‘no end in sight.’
Some months after the making of this documentary the Bush administration, following the ‘surge,’ still speaks of ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’ If such is possible, it would be a miraculous turnaround after such wrong-footed initial official American decisions and failed implementation.
No End in Sight is a cool-handed account of what can happen when a powerful governmental cabal, working in secrecy and without involving the State Department and others with hands-on knowledge of a situation and a geographic area, blithely blunder into an Arab tribal cauldron. It did not turn out, as President Bush indicated on May 1, 2003, to be “mission accomplished.”
