No End In Sight - Invasion of the Amateurs?

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Movie
German title No End In Sight - Invasion of the Amateurs?
Original title No end in sight
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2007
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Charles Ferguson
production
music Peter Nashel
cut
  • Chad Beck
  • Cindy Lee
    		•
    occupation

    No End In Sight - Invasion of the Amateurs? (Original title: No End in Sight , German No end in sight ) is a documentary from 2007 about the American occupation of Iraq . The film is the directorial debut of producer Charles H. Ferguson . The film premiered on January 22, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival . On July 27, 2007, the documentary came in limited editions in two theaters in the United States. In December 2007, the film grossed $ 1.4 million and was released on DVD.

    The documentary was nominated for Best Documentary at the 80th Academy Awards.

    Interviews

    The film consists largely of interviews with people who were involved in the initial Iraqi occupation authority and the ORHA (Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, later replaced by the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority). 35 people are interviewed who are now disappointed with what they experienced back then. In particular, many of the respondents contend that the inexperience of the core members of the Bush administration - and their refusal to seek, acknowledge, or accept input from more experienced outsiders - was the cause of the disastrous occupation efforts. Other interviewees include former soldiers who were stationed in Iraq, as well as authors and journalists who criticize the planning of the war.

    The respondents are:

    action

    No End in Sight is a documentary film that focuses on the two years after the American invasion in March 2003. The film shows that grave mistakes made by the administration of President George W. Bush during this period were the cause of the resulting problems in Iraq, such as the emergence of the Iraqi resistance , the lack of security and basic services for many Iraqis, sectarian violence and at one point the risk of actual civil war.

    The documentary notes that there was a lack of advance planning for the administration of Iraq after the invasion. He criticizes Rumsfeld for not providing enough soldiers to maintain order, which led to the lack of martial law after the country was conquered. The ORHA had identified at least twenty major government buildings and cultural sites in Baghdad, but none of the places was protected; only the Ministry of Oil was guarded. In the absence of a police or national army to maintain order, ministries and buildings were ransacked with the loss of their desks, tables, chairs, telephones and computers. Large machines and rebars were also stolen from buildings. Among the looted were Iraqi museums that had preserved priceless artifacts from some of the earliest human civilizations, so No End in Sight believes the looting may have sent the average Iraqi a discouraging signal of the American armed forces' desire to maintain law and order. In the end, the widespread looting turned into organized destruction of Baghdad. The destruction of libraries and records, combined with "deba'athification," ruined the public administration that existed before the US invasion. ORHA staff reported that they had to start from scratch in restoring the administrative infrastructure. Rumsfeld initially dismissed the widespread looting as no worse than the riots in a major American city, and archive footage from General Eric Shinseki indicating his estimated need for the soldiers required reveals an awareness of the shortage of soldiers.

    According to No End in Sight , L. Paul Bremer , head of the coalition interim administration, continued to make three particularly serious mistakes :

    • Cessation of preparations for the formation of an Iraqi interim government
    • Bremer's first official executive ordinance to implement “deba'athification” in the initial phase of the occupation, as he considered members to be disloyal. Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'ath party counted a large majority of Iraqi government employees, including education officials and some teachers, because it was impossible to achieve such positions without being a party member. Under the orders of the CPA, these qualified and often apolitical persons have been banned from holding any positions in the new Iraqi government.
    • Bremer's second official executive order to disband all military units in Iraq, which went against the advice of the US military and made 500,000 young men unemployed. The US Army had insisted that Iraqi troops be kept as they knew the area and could keep order, but Bremer refused, feeling they would be disloyal. In the aftermath, many former Iraqi soldiers, many with extended families to be supported, decided that their best chance for the future would be to join a militia force. The huge Iraqi arsenal was ready to be looted by anyone who wanted weapons and explosives, so that the former Iraqi soldiers gathered in the military camps. The US knew about the location of the arms dumps but said it lacked the troops to secure them. These same weapons were later used against the Americans and the new Iraqi government forces.

    The film names these three mistakes as the main causes of the rapid deterioration in occupied Iraq to the point of chaos, as the collapse of the state bureaucracy and army led to a lack of authority and order. It was the Islamic fundamentalists who sought to fill this void, so that their ranks filled with many disaffected Iraqis.

    reception

    The review aggregator Metacritic rates the film with 89 out of 100 points, based on 28 reviews. Rotten Tomatoes, another review aggregator, rates the film 96 percent based on 95 reviews.

    Awards and nominations

    Awards

    • Sundance Film Festival 2007: Special Jury Prize
    • National Society of Film Critics Award: Best Non-Fiction Film
    • New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Non-Fiction Film
    • Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards: Best Documentary / Non-Fiction Film
    • San Francisco Film Critics Circle: Best Documentary
    • Florida Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Documentary
    • Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards: Best Documentary
    • Toronto Film Critics Association Awards: Best Documentary

    Nominations

    • Nomination for the Oscar for best documentary

    Individual evidence

    1. ^ Gregg Kilday: Iraq documentary generates book and Oscar hopes. In: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . Reuters , January 4, 2008, accessed January 11, 2019 .
    2. ↑ a b The 74th Academy Awards (2008) Nominees and Winners. In: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . AMPAS, accessed January 11, 2019 .
    3. ↑ No End in Sight. In: metacritic. Retrieved January 11, 2019 .
    4. ↑ No End In Sight - Invasion of the Amateurs? at Rotten Tomatoes (English)

    Web links