Irak, de la dictature au chaos

As you may have inferred from my many sardonic comments about the neocons, I oppose the war in Iraq. The documentary No End in Sight confirms my opinion not shared by everyone to be sure. But this documentary, written, directed, and produced by Charles Ferguson, an information technology expert and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, shows in a rare non-ideological way, the mistakes made up to and during the Iraq invasion.

This is not an incendiary Michael Moore screed; it puts the left's argument in cool, rational light for the right to see clearly and attack as is its right. Ferguson grimly reminds us that information about the absence of WMD's was ignored to further an agenda that began immediately after 9/11 with the order to confirm a link between Al-Qaeda and Hussein's Ba'athist regime.

If you want more insanity, how about the order to disband the entire Iraqi army and Ba'ath party members from government service. That 2004 brought an insurgency of disaffected Sunni men who could have been serving in the necessary local army was no surprise. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's lack of preparation for post-invasion operations is just another depressing fact brought out by this sober, if not surprising or dramatically compelling documentary.

If you read the New York Times, you won't need the information in No End in Sight, but Ferguson puts it together so carefully and responsibly you might want to refer to it as you debate the neocons who claim the surge is working and the end is in sight. They need glasses, and not rose colored ones. But then retaining political power does mighty strange things to one's vision.