Gary Dretzka
Noah Forrest
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Douglas Pratt
Ray Pride

In one of Robert McNamara’s more reflective moments in Errol Morris’ fascinating bio-doc, The Fog of War, the former Secretary of Defense recalled the fiery rain of bombs inflicted on non-combatants living in Japan at the tail end of World War II.

In one of 67 separate bombing raids, he recalled, "We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo … men, women and children." An estimated 900,000 civilians were killed overall.

The man, who, in 1961, left one of the most comfortable seats in America -- that reserved for the head of the Ford Motor Co, -- for one of the hottest, added, "In order to do good … at times, you will have to engage in evil."

By "good," McNamara meant avoiding even more deaths -- ours, this time -- in a bloody invasion of Japan. Although "evil" is a wholly relative concept, he seemed to agree with his wartime boss, who suggested it was difficult to claim moral superiority after slaughtering civilians in what amounted to a horrific exercise in muscle-flexing.

While serving in the Pacific theater, McNamara had reported to Gen. Curtis LeMay, a man who never could be mistaken for a bleeding-heart liberal. After they’d assessed the extent of the death and destruction from the raids, LeMay surmised, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals."

McNamara told Morris, "I think he was right. He -- and, I'd say, I -- were behaving as war criminals."

Twenty years after the trials at Nuremberg, an unrepentant LeMay would suggest to LBJ the United States warn North Vietnamese leaders, "they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age."

Don’t expect anywhere near the same candor as that momentarily displayed by McNamara and LeMay from those responsible for either 9/11 or the war in Iraq. Everyone in command, from George W. Bush to Osama Bin Laden, was of the opinion that God’s on their side, and, therefore, nothing they did could be construed as being evil. And, yet, the unconscionably heavy toll paid by civilians rises daily.

If, in the unlikely event President Bush and his cronies were to called before a tribunal in the Hague, Charles Ferguson’s provocative No End in Sight could be entered into evidence as "People’s Exhibit No. 1." More than any other documentary that’s emerged from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ferguson’s freshman film lays out the evolution of administration policy from 9/12/71, through the first tumultuous year of the occupation.

It was during this first crucial year of the war -- before Al Qaeda became actively engaged, and the abuses at Abu Ghraib had yet to steel Iraqi resolve against us -- that those in the inner circle of the Bush administration demonstrated how ill-prepared they were for victory. In their haste to bring Saddam Hussein and his demented sons to justice -- ostensibly by dropping 2,000-pound bombs on buildings in which he might have been hiding -- Bush & Company failed to keep their eyes on the larger prize.

No End in Sight explains how their oversights, miscues and arrogance cleared a path for insurrection, civil war, Al Qaeda and an endless stream of suicide bombings. It does so in a tone that’s at once dispassionate, scholarly, tightly focused and seemingly without a personal or political agenda.

Ferguson was the ideal candidate to perform such a task. A self-described "policy wonk," he had a degree in math from UC-Berkeley, a doctorate in political science from MIT and connections that extended from the prestigious Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations, to the White House. At the dawn of the dot.com revolution, he co-founded Vermeer Technologies, which developed the product that would become Microsoft FrontPage. He’s also the author of three books on the information-technology dodge.

If anything, he was the anti-Michael Moore.

"I was sympathetic to using force to remove Saddam, because I believed he had chemical and biological weapons, and intended to develop nuclear weapons," said Ferguson, who became Republican-rich after Microsoft purchased Vermeer in 1996. "I hoped that the U.S. would be joined by other countries and win the support of the United Nations. I hoped, as well, there would be an Arab peacekeeping force and, after time, a democracy would emerge."

He made No End In Sight specifically to answer the question that’s been on the minds of all Americans ever since Baghdad residents stopped cheering the arrival of American tanks and started planting IEDs to destroy them: what, in the name of God, did we do wrong?

Ferguson contends he embarked on his journey without any pre-conceived notions, or to pin the blame on any specific person in the White House. His mission simply was to be "factual, not partisan."

In this way, No End In Sight is representative of a second wave of documentaries based on our Iraq experience.

Apart from Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which started the documentary ball rolling, the first wave was comprised of vérité-informed films shot by the soldiers themselves, and edited into shape back home, There also were films created by embedded reporters and photojournalists, who rode along on patrols and participated in raids. Some also attempted to tell the stories of Iraqi families caught in the middle.

They reflected the immediacy of the danger faced by everyone involved, as well as painting portraits of the men and women who in served in our names. The vast majority were excellent.

Documentaries in the second wave seem to be shrouded in failure and despair. The inevitability of sudden death lurks behind every street corner and in every pothole on roads leading from Kuwait to Kurdistan. Moreover, no one in Washington seems to be paying attention.

Ferguson has populated No End In Sight with Americans and Iraqis -- here and abroad -- who were in place in the weeks after Saddam Hussein was deposed, but whose advice and observations were either ignored or trivialized. They represent a broad spectrum of bureaucrats, political appointees, career diplomats, intelligence experts, reporters, military brass, educators and think-tankers. Interspersed with interviews are clips shot during and after the invasion, at news conferences, press briefings and in neighborhoods.

If the administration is underrepresented, it’s only because key players declined to be interviewed. Again, though, few of the talking heads here could be categorized as leftist, pacifistic, apologists for Al Qaeda or in any particular hurry to "cut and run," to borrow a phrase popularized by defenders of the administration.

Even though No End In Sight has met with almost unanimous praise, most of the critics have also insisted that the facts in evidence are "familiar" or otherwise widely known.

That may be true of the small fraction of Americans who read the New York Times religiously and prefer C-SPAN to Cinemax. We know from polls and surveys, however, that patriotism trumps logic, even as confidence in the President plummet. Indeed, many people still think we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction inside a closet at one of Saddam’s old palaces.

Certain things, of course, are common knowledge. We know the administration hadn’t invested much time and energy into the process of rebuilding Iraq, but probably unaware of exactly how little thought went into it. We know that our troops often appeared to be operating with their hands tied behind their backs, but it would have been impossible to comprehend just how ill-equipped they were to perform even the most obvious of tasks.

Why, for instance, wasn’t martial law declared immediately after the first statue of Hussein was ripped from its foundation? Why didn’t we develop a plan to protect the treasures in Baghdad’s museums, libraries, zoo … and, for that matter, the many ammo dumps ringing the city? Why did we assume that everyone in the Ba’athist Party either was corrupt or a potential enemy, and fire them en masse from their jobs … ditto, the army?

Ferguson’s sources suggest that many, if not most of the soldiers, police and bureaucrats who served Saddam would have gladly helped the Americans rebuild their country, if only because it meant bringing home a weekly paycheck. Instead of ordering the army, minus those closest to Hussein, to patrol the streets and attempt to keep the peace, we decided to start from scratch, by dismissing everyone and sending them home … where many would kill time by forming militias and raising hell.

Seasoned American embassy personnel were unceremoniously dumped and replaced by hacks, who, a few months before, couldn’t tell a Kurd from a camel.

"The people in Bush’s inner circle weren’t stupid," argues Ferguson, who spent three months in Iraq in spring, 2006. "They were arrogant, driven by hubris and unshakably convinced they were right. They also displayed a pathological distrust of media, military and so-called experts.

"The views of many of the people who offered differing opinions weren’t heard, or they were reprimanded for speaking out."

Ferguson’s sources also reveal that Bush and other top-level advisers didn’t even bother to read the reports and studies from their own personnel in the field. For their part, during the early stages of the occupation, at least, both the media and Congress were too busy waving flags to raise questions about what would happen next.

No End In Sight doesn’t spend a lot of time weighing other people’s theories about the administration’s motives and lack of foresight. Vice President Cheney’s relationship to Halliburton is barely mentioned, as is the sloth-like pace of restoring the country’s petroleum industry and infrastructure.

Ferguson says he’s gratified by the early response to the film, especially from military personnel. No End In Site opened in Washington, before other big cities, but there hasn’t been much of a clamor from the presidential candidates to study other people’s mistakes.

"I hope Americans will watch it, so they will be informed before they vote," he adds, noting that no one, himself included, has forwarded any concrete solutions to the dilemma. "It’s going to be a long time before Iraq will be normal country."

But the title told us as much going into No End In Sight, didn’t it?

August 4, 2007

- Gary Dretzka

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