DVD Review: No End In Sight
First-time documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson's No End In Sight documentary is the perfect companion to Rajiv Chandresakeran's book "Imperial Life in The Green Zone" providing what will be a historic record of how the occupation of Iraq went wrong before it ever started. The film focuses on the people charged with trying to make the the policy work, including former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine, retired General Jay Garner, Richard Armitage, and retired Lt. Colonel Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell at the time in which the Iraq occupation was hatched.
All the players seem haunted by their experience, but it is Lt. Colonel Paul Hughes who is particularly compelling. Hughes seems to relive the frustration whenever he is onscreen as if re-living a moment of combat. The desperation in his face and voice are palpable as he describes how his successful to reach out to former Iraq military officers to quell the chaos are unceremoniously shot down by Paul Bremer, who is brought in oversee things, but who seems more focused on the PR aspect of the operation. Hughes admits reflecting on his time in Iraq, "There are nights when I don't sleep very well."
What emerges in the film is a battle between Washington neocons and bureacrats like Walter Slocum and Paul Wolfowitz, who spent almost no town on the ground in Iraq and those like Bodine Hughes, Garner who were given the almost impossible task of trying to make a plan work that had seemingly little regard for the culture and realities of a nation with which we have such a long and sordid history.
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