(2007) This documentary by Charles Ferguson (writer, director, producer) was completed before the 2007 surge under Gen Petraeus into Baghdad had begun to produce results and before Sunni militias in the Anbar province began to turn against foreign extremists. There are those who say these events are a light at the end of the tunnel.

A clip of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld opens this critical examination, narrated by Campbell Scott, of how America got into and created the mess that's become the civil war in Iraq. Interviews with scores of former government officials, military personnel, journalists, and academics were assembled to produce this story from September 2001 to late 2006.

Marc Garlasco, senior Iraq analyst, describes how after 9/11 he was directed to look for any connection between the attacks and Iraq: he reported that no relationship could be found. Nevertheless, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz were the principals who set the course for an invasion of Iraq. The leadership and many of those who would implement their orders in Iraq during the occupation had little or no military experience or expertise in the Middle East.

On 20 January 2003, President Bush signed NSPD-24, granting Rumsfeld virtual control over war planning against Iraq. On 1 May 2003 President Bush in effect declared victory over Saddam Hussein's regime by saying US forces have prevailed. Initially millions of Iraqis had high expectations from the invasion and overthrow of their dictator, but the failure on the part of the Bush administration to adequately plan for a post-war Iraq coupled with insufficient numbers of troops resulted in lawlessness.

Experienced military commanders had recommended several thousand troops would be necessary for an invasion and occupation. "Hard to imagine," replied Wolfowitz, so only160,000 were deployed. Looting might have been reduced had martial law been declared, but Washington directed the ORHA not to interfere. Rumsfeld commented: "Stuff happens."

Only the oil ministry was given protection while Iraq's national archives and heritage in libraries and museums burned or disappeared. "That was the day we lost the Iraqis," remarked former ambassador to Iraq Barbara Bodine, who was later fired. The sky was falling.

Lacking structure, organization, an overarching plan, personnel with Arabic-language skills, interpreters, the ORHA under Gen Jay Garner was soon replaced by L. Paul Bremer and the CPA. When knowledgeable advisers such as Robert Perito offered suggestions, they were told there wasn't enough time to implement the recommendations this time - maybe for the next war. The vacuum quickly filled with violence.

Taking orders from Washington where decisions were being made by a select group in secret without significant debate or discussion over the possible consequences, Bremer acted precipitously, excluding not only the Iraqis but also his staff from knowing in advance, with de-Baathification (putting Ahmed Chalabi in charge), purging 50,000 bureaucrats, teachers, librarians, etc., from their jobs and then disbanding of the military and the intelligence services, affecting half a million men.

Unemployed men turned to insurgency; Muqtada al-Sadr raised his Mahdi Army. Unguarded ammunition dumps provided the wherewithal to fight. Author Samantha Power reported hearing an Iraqi say: "I see bullets in their eyes."

The most interesting exchange, demonstrating the disconnect within the administration over policy and performance, occurs between Col Paul Hughes, director of strategic policy in the CPA, who claims their were more than 100,000 Iraqis in the Independent Military Gathering ready to serve as needed, and his superior in Washington, Walter Slocombe, who says that the Iraqi forces had completely melted away. Hughes notes that while he was in Baghdad and had contact with Iraqi officers, Slocombe was in Washington and made only a brief four-day tour of Iraq before returning home. Almost everyone outside of the inner circle, including military commanders, was astonished and dismayed by the order to disband the Iraqi army.

In July IEDs began exploding across Iraq, killing American troops and Iraqi civilians. President Bush said: "Bring 'em on." Bremer referred to the resistance as "bitter enders"; Rumsfeld denied the existence of guerrilla warfare. The CPA built a concrete compound in the capital called the Green Zone.

In the fall of 2003 Congress authorized $18 billion for reconstruction in Iraq; a year later - following fraud, waste, and corruption - only $1 billion of the money had been spent as appropriated. Focusing on searches for WMD and for Saddam, the military embittered Iraqi civilians by invading their homes, breaking down doors and hauling people away at night, arresting and detaining people merely on suspicion, mistreating them in prisons such as Abu Ghraib.

By 2004 relations between most Iraqis and the so-called Coalition had become toxic. Making matters worse were the 45,000 private military contractors; a homemade video shows a civilian contractor on the road randomly spraying gunfire at Iraqi civilians in cars. The fight for Fallujah made plain the deepening insurgency, which had metastasized from multiple motivations and frustrations, in particular resentment of the US occupation.

President Bush neglected to even read a carefully prepared one-page executive summary of the situation in Iraq. Lacking armored vehicles, a courageous enlisted man questioned Rumsfeld about the short supply; Rumsfeld replied: "You go to war with the army you have …" Democracy produced an advantage for Muqtada al-Sadr's Shia party; the minority Sunnis felt disenfranchised. In 2005 Cheney spoke of the increasing number of casualties as evidence of "the last throes of the insurgency."

With Iraq out of control, in a near-state of anarchy in November 2006 - turf battles involving militias, insurgents, criminals, warlords; the police infiltrated; no one feeling safe with car bombs, sectarian-revenge killings, kidnappings - and the Democrats following the election taking charge in Congress, President Bush finally replaced Rumsfeld with Robert Gates. By then the direct cost of the war was $379 billion with a projected cost of $1.86 trillion; the human cost continues as well with dead, mutilated, and disabled Americans and Iraqis.

Who has benefited most from the conflict? Without a doubt Iran has. Why were so many mistakes made? President Bush was missing in action on the planning, leaving Cheney largely in charge; no participants allowed in the decision process were critical of the predetermined invasion plan and optimistic expectations for a brief occupation.

One seriously injured soldier wants to know that "my suffering, my loss, have a meaning." An American Marine says: "Are you telling me that's the best America can do? That makes me angry."

Among those who participated in the interviews were Robert Hutchings, Barry Posen, Omar Fekeiki, James Fallows, George Packer, Ashton Carter, Richard Armitage, Gerald Burke, Faisal al-Istrabadi, Chris Allbritton, Dan Senor, Ray Jennings, Gen Paul Eaton, Linda Bilmes, Ali Fadhi, Paul Pillar, and Matt Sherman with special commendation to former ambassador Barbara Bodine, Col Paul Hughes, Col Lawrence Wilkerson, and Gen Jay Garner for their forthright explication of events. Among those who refused to be interviewed for the documentary were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, and Paul Bremer.

As of the beginning of 2008, four million Iraqis of a population of 26 million are living outside of their country's borders or in locations in Iraq other than their homes following sectarian cleansing of neighborhoods; an estimated 151,000 Iraqis have been killed and many thousands more injured and maimed since the invasion; drinking water, electrical power, and sewage remain in short supply. Most importantly the Iraqi government of al-Malaki has failed to final resolutions to the political disputes during the period of reduced violence that the surge was intended to provide.

Why hasn't anyone produced a credible documentary, in which these latter individuals who refused to be interviewed would be willing to explain their thinking, that purportedly presents the Bush/Cheney administration's defense of its decisions and actions? The tunnel is dark at both ends.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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