After the fall of Baghdad in 2003, chaos and lawlessness prevailed.
How and why that happened is what this documentary tries – convincingly – to explain.
Through interview after interview, director Charles Ferguson shows how mistakes were made in the highest levels of the United States government.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vINM0CAysc8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner (in charge of the occupation of Iraq through May 2003), all recount how key errors resulted in near anarchy.
Perhaps the most damning decision was to disband the Iraqi army. That command left half a million men – armed men – without pay or ways to provide for their families.
It appears that fears of Sunnis and Shiites not being able to serve in the military together were unfounded as Iraq’s army – which had Sunnis and Shiites already – had been a professional force already.
Ferguson hones in on the decisions that were made either without advice from underlings or without consulting them in the first place.
Some staffers called for a much larger United States force in Iraq.
Some say that the Iraqi army could have been used at least temporarily to replace the corrupt Iraqi police force in Baghdad. One key problem: most of the United States troops don’t speak Arabic so policing the streets would be near impossible.
The extra features available on DVD are worth watching to get a better sense of what happened and what went wrong in Iraq.
“No End in Sight” is available for rent.
Murphy can be reached at: [email protected]
