No End in Sight
by Charles Ferguson
List Price:
Our Price: $6.97
You Save: $8.01 (53%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.43 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ali Fadhil, Campbell Scott, Gerald Burke, Omar Fekeiki, Robert HutchingsDirector: Charles Ferguson
Brand: Magnolia Pictures
Producer: Charles Ferguson
Writer: Charles Ferguson
Producer: Alex Gibney
Producer: Audrey Marrs
Producer: Jennie Amias
Producer: Jessie Vogelson
Producer: Mary Walsh
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Subtitled); Arabic (Original Language); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 10102
Studio: Magnolia
Product features:
- The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq s descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, NO END IN SIGHT is a jaw-dropping, insider s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as forme
Movie Reviews of No End in Sight
Movie Review: A brilliant but sobering and depressing examination of the invasion of Iraq
Summary: 5 Stars
November 26 -- OK, just how infantile is this? Someone who obviously hates political dissent and only wants happy accounts telling how splendidly everything in Iraq is going (whereas the most one can do is cherry pick the fact that there is less killing -- though in every other way things remain awful) just now, in a matter of a few minutes, gave every review that praised this documentary eight (8) unhelpful votes. Talk about a big baby! Has political discussion degenerated to this point, to creating multiple accounts to give a stack of negative votes in only a few minutes? Pathetic. So reviews that had gone two months with only 2 or 3 unhelpful votes get 8 in 30 minutes. I wanted to point this out because in a month some coming here might think all those unhelpful votes were given by a lot of people over the course of several weeks, instead of one person with multiple accounts in the matter of minutes.
I'll add my praise for this exceedingly well done documentary. The difference between this documentary about Iraq and most others is the sheer number of highly placed individuals participating. If you ever supported the war, this should change your mind. If you opposed it, it will show you that it was conducted more foolishly than you had suspected. I was passionately opposed. I had multiple concerns. Because of the reports of multiple highly placed former Iraqi weapons inspectors, I was quite confident that Saddam neither had WMDs nor the means to deliver them. I was concerned that it would be easy to invade Iraq, but that we would quickly become stuck in a quagmire and that it would take years and years to leave. I was convinced that huge numbers of civilians were die and that many Americans would die as the result of guerilla resistance. What I didn't anticipate was that the Department of Defense would make everything far worse than it needed to have been.
This documentary will break your heart. The various participants explain some of the stunningly stupid decisions made during the invasion of Iraq. The worst was unquestionably the decision to disband the Iraqi army. We are likely to be suffering the consequences of that horrific decision. The short term effects were that the United States lost a half million trained soldiers that could have been used to maintain martial law in Iraq until order had been established. Instead, a half million men were rendered unemployed and a huge number of trained soldiers instantly became insurgents. Though not all of the insurgency was a result of this catastrophic decision, clearly a substantial among of it was. The army could also have easily have nullified the threat of the various ethnic militias. In the long run, not having a well trained and unified army could result in a greater vulnerability to invasion by Iran than ever before.
This is simply one of the most depressing documentaries I have ever seen. One of the great myths of the past 30 years has been that the Right is better on security matters than the Left. Prior to the Iranian Hostage Crisis the public did not consider either the Democrats or the Republicans as better on defense. Given the catastrophe in Iraq, we definitely should view the far Right in particular and the Republican party in general as extraordinarily incompetent on all military and security matters. The entire affair in Iraq could not have been bungled more completely if someone had tried. And that doesn't even get into the absolutely staggering waste of money. The film sites the work of two scholars at Harvard (one of them was Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz) who computed that the likely cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq will likely amount to almost $1.9 trillion. I suspect that will turn out to be conservative, because I think we will be forced to stay in Iraq far longer than any of us want.
The film also drove me to a conclusion toward which I have been moving for some time. I now regard the invasion of Iraq as one of the three greatest tragedies in American history. The two largest tragedies were the "peculiar institution" of slavery and the genocide of the continent's Native American population. The invasion of Iraq has been a catastrophe on more levels than one can easily enumerate. I noted the absolutely gargantuan cash cost of the war. With that money we could have easily funded social security until the end of the 21st century as well as putting in place a universal health care system, and still have had the vast majority of the money left over. The film doesn't even touch on the fact that much of the cost of the war has been funded not by congressional appropriations, but loans that we have taken from China. We have further empowered Iran to a degree it has never been before. By gutting the Iraqi military we have made Iraq extremely vulnerable to invasion by Iran. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died is a moral stain on the US that cannot easily be eradicated.
I have come to two other conclusions. I honestly believe that the perpetuators of this war -- George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and others -- should be prosecuted as war criminals. I know this won't happen, but what they have done has been as thoroughly evil as anything that has happened in Somalia or Bosnia. They should be forced by an international tribunal to account for their crimes. The other conclusion is one that surprises me. As much as I detest our presence in Iraq, I believe that there is no way that we can leave before we have rebuilt an Iraqi army and security force. If we do not, the nation will remain vulnerable to various militias and to threats from surrounding nations. Iran is the major threat, but northern Iraq is vulnerable to Turkey, which feels threatened by the Iraqi Kurdish population (the Kurdish areas in southern Turkey, which they fear might break off from Turkey to form a new Kurdistan, are among the richest in natural resources in all of Turkey and therefore crucial for the Turkish economy). I hate the fact that we need to stay because missteps by the Bush administration have essentially painted targets on the backs of every American soldier in the country.
This is a must-see film. And it provides additional evidence that Bush is the worst of all our presidents. But I think that is not quite right. I honestly believe that Bush is not only the worst American president. I believe that he is the worst American ever. No single individual American can come close to the amount of harm that he has inflicted on the world. Unfortunately, we as a nation will be struggled with his tragic legacy for decades if not centuries to come.
The film ends on powerful words by a former American soldier in Iraq. He asks the interviewer, "Are you telling me that this is the best America can do?"
Summary of No End in Sight
NO END IN SIGHT - DVD MovieSimilar DVD Movies
Endgame: Blueprint for Global EnslavementCAR; Release date: 2007-11-13; DVD
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops:
Invisible Empire: A New World Order DefinedDVD
Best price: $14.95
Price in other shops:
Iraq for Sale: The War ProfiteersRelease date: 2006-09-26; DVD
Best price: $8.53
Price in other shops:
Frontline: Inside the MeltdownPBS; Release date: 2009-05-12; DVD
Best price: $11.98
Price in other shops:
Michael Moore - Capitalism: A Love StoryFox; Release date: 2010-03-09; DVD
Best price: $3.91
Price in other shops:
CollapseMPI; Release date: 2010-06-15; DVD
Best price: $8.74
Price in other shops:
Frontline: The WarningPBS; Release date: 2010-01-05; DVD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
Why We FightSony; Release date: 2006-06-27; DVD
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops:
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the RoomMagnolia Pictures; Release date: 2006-01-17; DVD
Best price: $7.38
Price in other shops:
Inside JobSON; Release date: 2011-03-08; DVD
Best price: $14.33
Price in other shops: