The Devastating Truth About Iraq

No End In Sight

Crimes Without Punishment

Kathryn Flett
Sunday January 27, 2008
The Observer

What makes a great documentary? Whether it's epic in scale or cosily intimate, static and verbose or lyrical and beautiful, it has to make my synapses fire or my heart skip a beat or both.

No End in Sight, written, produced and directed by Charles Ferguson, which aired last Tuesday, the day it had been nominated for a best documentary feature Oscar was two of hours of riveting, epic viewing that rejected the opportunity to be obviously filmic (there was, for example, nothing particularly lyrical or lovely about either the way it looked or sounded, which is pretty brave for a documentary aiming at cinematic release) in favour of cold, hard, no-nonsense down-and-dirty home truths, resulting in the most compelling - all the more compelling indeed for being an American film - indictment of Dubya's war on terror I've seen. And I've seen a few.

I'm just grateful to have seen a film that, via talking heads and archive footage, told this tale of ineptitude, hubris, greed and molten stupidity with a quiet, non-confrontational rage. Underpinning the narrative, which ranged from 9/11 to 2007, was a belief that the 'war' was lost within a few weeks of the occupation, and certainly lost for eternity when the Iraqi army was disbanded rather than constructively redeployed, making 500,000 armed men both unemployed and angry. 'The equivalent of sacking five million Americans,' the voiceover told us succinctly.

From old footage of Donald Rumsfeld's almost gleeful soundbite about 'the first war of the 21st century' to the young Iraq veteran's despairing: 'Are you telling me that's the best America can do? No, don't tell me that. That makes me angry' just before the credits, I found myself in a sofa-punching mood. And it was useful, too, in a week of global financial meltdown, to be told that the projected total economic costs to the US of the war and its aftermath may be something in the region of $1.8 trillion. Recession? Bring it on - we've earned it.

Sometimes, however, even in an intensely talky film, an almost throwaway line can resonate the most: 'There were 500 ways to do it wrong, two or three ways to do it right,' said the former (sacked) US ambassador to Iraq, Barbara Bodine, whose job title was 'co-ordinator for central Iraq, in charge of Baghdad' during the early days of the US occupation. 'And we went through all those 500 ways.' And then some.