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"No
End in Sight" is a documentary film, written and directed by
Charles Ferguson, about Bush’s trumped-up fiasco of a "war"
in Iraq.
Since
March 2003, the debacle in Iraq has cost over 3700 American military
lives and has left thousands severely maimed for life; over 100,000
(possibly more) Iraqi civilian deaths; countless Iraqis wounded and
traumatized; and at least a thousand deaths of U.S. and foreign
contractors. It has also resulted in the displacement of millions of
Iraqis, not to mention destroying 5000 years of irreplaceable
historical artifacts and records.
Since
Michael Moore’s "Fahrenheit 9/11," there have been many
documentaries on the Iraq invasion and its consequences. These films,
often critical of the U.S. attack, have played to large and generally
receptive audiences.
"No
End" is one of the more “mainstream” of the films dealing with the
war. Director Ferguson interviews many people directly involved in the
planning of the invasion and subsequent events—career ruling-class
diplomats and military chiefs—who now believe the U.S. occupation was
poorly organized, not at all what was intended, or even a total
“mistake.”
Although
Ferguson has crafted a clear, well-organized chronology of events, his
film never asks what was the real reason behind the Bush
administration’s push to invade a country that had neither attacked nor
posed an imminent threat to the U.S. “No End” says nothing, for
example, about the plans of the occupation authorities—from the
beginning—to place Iraq’s bountiful oil reserves under the domination
of U.S. corporations.
To
see the once beautiful, thriving, cosmopolitan, magical city of Baghdad
reduced to rubble is shocking and heartbreaking. The Green Zone,
however, where well-protected American officials live and where the
American puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki officiates, is like
Palm Springs East, replete with Burger King, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks,
spas and health clubs.
Outside
the Zone, the filmmaker takes us through miles and miles of streets
lined with bullet and bomb-scarred buildings. We see people wandering
among broken concrete and exposed rebar, and children sitting forlornly
in doorways of what’s left of their homes. Ferguson does not spare us
from scenes of the city’s morgue, where at least 70 bodies of civilians
are brought every day. One Iraqi man says, "The dead are lucky,
because they are dead."
According
to some of the U.S. officials Ferguson chose to interview in the film,
the appointment of J. Paul Bremer as the U.S. proconsul in the summer
of 2004 was a catastrophic event that radically changed the tenor of
the invasion. Bremer is portrayed as an egomaniac who undermined the
more constructive work of his predecessors in the occupation authority.
On
camera Col. Paul Hughes tells of having obtained 300,000 Iraqi
soldiers’ signed commitments to assist Americans to stabilize Iraq, and
help control the incipient insurgency. The first of Bremer’s disastrous
acts was to disband this army without notifying Hughes, causing almost
a half-million men their jobs. They disbanded—with their guns—and many
then joined the resistance.
Bremer’s
second egregious act was "de-Baathification," decimating
Iraq’s infrastructure, tossing aside the very people who made city
services, schools, hospitals, and communications work. Now, thousands
of civilians had nothing with which to sustain their families.
The
film shows scenes of angry Iraqi men shouting in the streets that they
have no money, no food, nothing! No surprise that many joined the insurgency,
which Rumsfeld & Co. had denied existed, saying that there were
merely some "bitter-enders."
The
film includes a clip where, in a rare speech early into his czardom,
Bremer promises Iraqis that soon they would have 24-hour electricity,
fresh, clean, running water, sanitation, and jobs. None of this ever
materialized. To this day, electricity is sporadic—at most, four hours
a day.
Bremer’s
Coalition Provisional Authority was allocated $18 billion to rebuild
Iraq. As of the film’s making only one billion had been spent. No one
can account for the other $17 billion.
Well
before Bremer came on the scene, however, Baghdad was looted—while the
U.S. authorities stood by. Every store, workshop, and office in every
building was stripped bare, down to the walls. Iraq army officials knew
where the munition dumps were; these, also, were summarily looted.
Ferguson
includes the memorable clip of a whining Defense Secretary Rumsfeld,
saying that democracy is "messy" and that the looting wasn’t
as bad as shown on TV. "You see the same shot over and over again
of a man running out of a building with a vase! There can’t be that
many vases!"
A
soul-wrenching shot shows the museum director crying over his looted
museum, saying that armed American soldiers merely watched while cases
were smashed, artifacts ripped from walls and floors. Yet, at the same
time, U.S. soldiers were employed to guard the oil ministry and oil
production facilities.
A
fact few Americans are aware of is that, at the time of the film’s
making, there were 45,000 civilian contractors in Iraq. "No
End" includes a short clip taken by one of these contractors from
inside their vehicle. We ride along as it careens down the road; the
driver and passengers whoop and holler while indiscriminately shooting
at buildings and cars.
Ferguson’s
documentary tells of the insurgents’ killing and burning of four
contractors, dragging them through the streets. He spares us footage of
their charred bodies hanging from a bridge. Things couldn’t get any
worse, but of course they did. Yet if you listened to Rumsfeld, Cheney,
Wolfowitz, and Bush the war was going along swimmingly; progress was
being made.
We
must keep in mind, however, that if the United States had been able to
declare victory in Iraq and if there had been much less death,
destruction, and mayhem, this movie would not have been made. Instead,
there would have been an entirely different film: Our government
leaders, backed by a gazillion American flags, would boast proudly on
TV of America’s victory.
But
no, we don’t want that film either. It would only serve to inspire
America’s rulers on to the next war. Even now—despite films like
"No End," the spate of incriminating and damning evidence of
the horror that is Iraq, and the opinions of the majority of Americans
and the world—the drumbeats pound for war with Iran.
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