Review of No End in Sight (2007) by Mark L — 06 Mar 2008

This is a refreshing 2007 documentary by Charles Ferguson that avoids name-calling but still focuses attention on responsible parties through interviews with those who'd bother to talk, many of whom are mid to upper level figures. The painful divorce between the informed analysts and the actual policy makers was one of the early, regrettable problems. Ferguson shows how very poor decisions were made to fail to police urban Iraq, especially Baghdad, in the first days, to disband the military which actually wanted to help with security (in the process converting them to a part of the armed problem), to actively unemploy Iraq's professional population, etc. ad nauseum. There's not much of a pre-war context given, but this documentary shows how what might have actually been a real victory turned into an intractable mess. Now, there is "no end in sight.".

I'm not an expert, but this film passes the "sniff" test for general apparent factualness.