Review of No End in Sight (2007) by Josh — 02 Aug 2007

The movie is at times incoherent; it sneers at U.S. forces for doing nothing to stop looting in 2003, but later in the film, it makes the troops look like storm troopers for arresting suspects. Throughout, the audience gets only one side of an argument, plus scary music, so it can congratulate itself for being so much smarter than these guys.

But there was no simple answer to anything in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld invaded with a smallish force because he wanted to tread lightly in a region where Americans are viewed with suspicion, not because he was a fool.

De-Baathification of Iraq is presented as a disaster, and perhaps it was. But that wasn't obvious at the time. Picture the alternative: a rebuilt military packed with our sworn enemies and headlines reading "Saddam's forces still in power in U.

S.-backed government." There is nothing cinematic about the project - these suits and analysts belong on TV - but it is a useful summary of what happened in the early days after the taking of Baghdad.

The star emerging from the mess is Col. Paul Hughes, director of strategic policy for the occupation in 2003, who comes across as an invaluable adviser whose warnings went ignored. Somebody give him another job in Iraq.

Hughes' boss back in D.C., Walter Slocombe, is hung by his own words and seems incompetent at best. Some details caught on the fly are vivid and shocking: A professor says he came across a freshly minted Georgetown graduate with no experience in anything who was put in charge of all Baghdad traffic.

Most of the film, though, rehashes information you already knew and tries to inflate trivia into scandal. The American head of the provisional government, Paul Bremer, didn't speak Arabic? So what? Douglas MacArthur didn't speak Japanese.

OK, President Bush had no combat experience. Neither did FDR.