Review of No End in Sight directed and written by Charles Ferguson
Rating *****
This film covers the same ground as Bush’s War. It differs in two significant ways from the Frontline film. One, it does not go into the mishandling of prisoners. And two, it goes into much greater detail the mistakes that Paul Bremmer made.
The fact that Bremmer had no experience in handling a reconstruction, did not speak Arabic, and went into Iraq knowing very little about the culture, apparently didn’t matter to Rumsfeld. In hind sight, the three blunders that Bremmer made and that are highlighted in the film have much to do with why we are still in Iraq. In short, Bremmer created the insurgency problem by putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. Many of whom were armed.
Like watching a movie for the hundredth time, the same people make the same mistakes and the end result remains the same. We should not have gone to war in the first place. Once we did go to war, we mishandled every aspect of the reconstruction. And we are still dealing with those mistakes today at an enormous cost to everyday citizens both here and in Iraq.