No End In Sight

[Reinhold]

the search function is freaking out on me. it seems like there'd already be a thread for this but i don't see it






the poster is a link to the trailer.

On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared an end to combat in Iraq. More than three years later, 3,000 American soldiers and an estimated 790,000 civilians are dead, and Iraq still burns. What happened? The first film to examine comprehensively how the Bush administration constructed the Iraq war and subsequent occupation, No End in Sight exposes a chain of critical errors, denial, and incompetence that has galvanized a violent quagmire. 

Drawing on jaw-droppingly frank interviews with an impressive array of high-level government officials, military personnel, and journalists, many on the ground in "postwar" Iraq, Charles Ferguson zeroes in on the months immediately before and after toppling Saddam. Despite intelligence strongly warning that transforming Iraq into a democracy would be long and brutal without careful planning, massive troops, and international support, Bush launched the invasion after only 60 days of preparation. Baghdad's infrastructure fell along with the city, leaving large-scale looting, lawlessness, and violent chaos in its wake. Installing neither police forces nor self-governing institutions at this crucial juncture, Rumsfeld's inexperienced team disbanded Iraq's military and intelligence, marginalizing 500,000 armed men--only one of a relentless stream of ill-advised moves that ignited resentment, fomented desperation, and fueled a still-raging Iraqi insurgency.

Ferguson's surgical analysis of the way the U.S. government sparked disaster in Iraq is riveting, information packed, and airtight. In his capable hands, the situation has never been so transparently clear, which makes it even more shocking and tragic.— Caroline Libresco

http://festival.sundance.org/filmguide/popup.aspx?film=4656

[MacGuffin]

'No End in Sight' Director Makes Mini-Film in Response to NYT Article
Source: Cinematical

One of the year's best documentaries is No End in Sight, a calm and methodical recounting of the mistakes the U.S. made in Iraq during those crucial first few months after the fall of Saddam in April 2003. One of the main points director Charles Ferguson makes is that when the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi army, it left hundreds of thousands of soldiers unemployed, disgruntled, and armed. Frustrated, many of them joined the insurgency that now plagues the country.

The man who made the decision to disband the Iraqi army was L. Paul Bremer III. On Sept. 6, Bremer wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times called "How I Didn't Dismantle Iraq's Army" in which he defended himself and rebutted some of Ferguson's assertions. His points were basically these: that by the time he got there the Iraqi army had pretty much dissolved on its own; that post-invasion looting had destroyed nearly all the military bases anyway; and that he did consult with advisers before making his decision. (No End in Sight claims Bremer made the call more or less on his own.)

Now Ferguson has responded -- not with an editorial, but with a video. It's a 10-minute short film [link below], posted on the Times' website as a "letter to the editor," that dissects Bremer's article point by point and refutes nearly everything he said. For support, he uses clips from No End in Sight, interview footage that wasn't used in the film, and a telephone interview with one of his primary sources recorded after Bremer's article appeared.

The video is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it retains the same tone Ferguson used in No End in Sight: careful, rational, and without the gimmicks and theatrics that so often make Michael Moore his own worst enemy.

More importantly, it demonstrates how powerful movies can be. Ferguson could have simply written a guest editorial responding to Bremer's piece. Instead, he chose to combine the power of words and pictures. He knew that it's one thing to read a quotation from an interview source; it's something else to actually see the person as he says it, to hear the inflection and the emotion in his voice.

And now the ball is back in Bremer's court.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=54a96b0d367da6ce96eb1401f0e127f76688ddd6

[Pubrick]

that was both informative and entertaining.

i have been informed and entertained.