MovieChat Forums > No End in Sight (2007) Discussion > was your mind changed?

was your mind changed?

posted 14 years ago by jriley555
8 replies | jump to latest

that's what i'd like to know.

much of the decisions made here i'd heard before, but when you show them all together in context, according to the testimony of responsible authorities who were part of the occupation - it presents a fairly astounding inventory of incompetance/malfeasance on the part of the bush administration.

if you believe this document is harsh, why?

focusing upon the occupation, rather than re-hashing at length the decision to invade in the first place was also welcome, since these are really separate issues of history.

if our leaders thought it was so important to intervene in the destiny of millions of iraqis, they owed those people and our people the obligation to do some freaking homework, due diligence, allocating adequate resource to what it is they were undertaking, given the best advise available. the advisory well seems to have been merely what rumsfeld, cheney and wolfowitz wanted to hear.

but they were more interested in selling us a war. this was not my opinion at the time, but it certainly is now.

the western allies prepared for the occupation of europe (well-established countries with familiar cultures & institutions) starting TWO YEARS prior. the admin cobbled together a hundred or so people with little arab scholarship and gave them 50 days to start from scratch with no policy guidelines, while purposefully ignoring a large catalogue of state-department studies which had been prepared:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/documents/.

its really beyond belief. if you weren't a cynic before this war, how could you not be now?

[–] JohnMoonlord 14 years ago

First of all: one of the best formulated and most relevant question I've read on IMDb (or anywhere else). Kudos!

Though I always felt the claimed motives for the war were fraudulent, I still hoped that putting an end to the Hussein regime would give a chance to the Iraqui people to get out of it in a much better shape, with a government worthy of the name running the country.

Once I've seen the movie, I don't think I've ever been this pissed in my life. I didn't know much about post-war Iraq, and I was horrified by what I learned, especially coming from credible sources.

Otherwise, something that I really found interesting is that, like most people, I had my own general opinion on what should be done. But watching this movie made me realize how off the mark I would've been and reminded me how important it was to let people that were either trained or had experience in this kind of situation (or any other, for that matter) do their thing and trust their judgment (unless there's reason to suspect incompetency or dishonesty on their part).

[–] jriley555 13 years ago

John,

apologies for not attending to your response sooner. thanks for your thoughts.

i agree with your notion that the 'degree of difficulty' of this thing was about as high as it gets. certainly nothing the bush admin was equipped to deal with.

they couldn't see past the bombs they knew how to toss. really, really sad.

for a look into a brain of a politican who actually had one, here's a lick to the late Sen. Robert Byrd's clear preconception about how it would all go, and he didnt have 50 or so paid lickspittles to draw it all up for him...

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/06/28/robert_byrd_iraq_speech_2002

in a world where everyone has an opinion on everything, you get a lot of bad opinions - me

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ialiqaiser 12 years ago

I didn't read most of your post. I'm just answering the question you posed in the topic.

I never for one second in my life believed this was a legit war. I was 16 years old when Shock and Awe was carried out. It boiled my blood witnessing that.

I haven't held the US government as a just government since before the Palestinian's Second Intifada.

During the beginning of major operations in Afghanistan and in Iraq, I thought we were after their oil or we were protecting our "strategic interests". The Carter Doctrine.

But I was incredibly naive then. Now that I'm older I know better.

You see, the US Government is kind of like that a-hole you meet on the bus who, for no reason at all, will whip out his ding-ding and hose everyone down just for laughs.

Hope that answers your question.

[–] Katz5 12 years ago

This will be a provocative post, so be warned. I will mention things that our controlled media won't touch with a ten foot pole.

A group of individuals decided in the late 80s to plan and carry out a New World Order in the Middle East. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz (and consultant "Think Tank" traitors like Bill Kristol and Richard Perle) carried the torch. Even George H.W. Bush thought they were nuts. They were known in some inner circles of the CIA as "The Crazies." (Google Ray McGovern and watch his interviews for more info). The underlying idea was to put Israel in charge of the entire Middle East, find a way to pump oil through Haifa and have them sell the oil back to us. All that got in the way are those pesky Muslim countries: Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon. Egypt and Libya were controlled by bloodthirsty tyrants who took orders from the U.S. (now those tyrants are gone and the outcry from the Neocons over the removal of Mumbarek and Ghadafi was well publicized). Find a reason to invade the first country to take over - that reason was 9/11. Draw a magic line to link 9/11 to Saddam - he and Iraq are the first choice because Saddam tried to kill GWB's daddy.

Iran and Syria would be next on their targets. And Iran currently is in their crosshairs. You could write a twenty page essay on the goatscrew that is the Iraq invasion and the occupation. We all know what happened after March 2003. This documentary shows it in shocking detail. But make no mistake - the Neocon idea is to remove or neutralize all enemies of Israel, put Israel in charge, and then re-route the oil. Those pesky Muslims are one notch below pond slime to the Neocons. They feel they are animals (the mindset of the Neocons). Who cares if they are killed in the process. Who cares of centuries old Arabic artifacts are destroyed in uncontrolled looting. Muslims Shmuslims. This line of thinking is dangerous. Yet those in control in Washington (doesn't matter if a Republican or Dem is in the White House) could care less.

Watch No End in Sight, and then watch the other Ferguson documentary Inside Job. If every American would watch these documentaries back to back, we'd have a revolution on our hands. But alas, it's better to be fat and happy with cupcakes, Facebook, iPADs, NFL and reality TV.

Dude means nice guy. Dude means a regular sort of person.

[–] Indifferent_Observer 12 years ago

Oh Jesus...

I always thought the War was mishandled, but don't attribute most of it to Bush at all. More to the way Government works. Bush was just a figurehead on the way things work in America. The Government policies are what needs to be changed. I don't expect a lot of people to get that though unless they're a bit older and have been around.

For instance, after all this crap with the war they Voted Mr Hope and Change in and what has he done? Nothing at all, but lie through his teeth and blame it all on Bush even on the way to re-election. When the WTC got hit both Liberal and Conservatives demanded action. Bush was just appeasing the masses. The liberals being quick to change their mind, wanted out fairly fast, but its already been set into motion so you can't just walk out. Even Obama who promised to "bring the troops home" realised this. Its not the person, its the way big Government works.

The Government moves slow and everyone in it has different ideas of what we should do. Once something is started, ie War, your in. There is no backing out no matter how bad things look. And war is ugly, mistakes are always made. There will always be people, in every war, looking back saying, "We should have done things differently". Well, hindsight is always 20/20. The Government is a machine.

[–] Oblivion14 11 years ago

I supported the war, because I really did feel Saddam needed to go. As a rogue dictator, he had the potential of plunging the world into chaos in the future. I felt the occupation was badly managed, but I didn't blame Bush like so many were doing. I didn't even mind that they didn't find WMDs, all I cared about was Saddam was gone. And maybe these people might finally have a chance at real democracy.

But goddamn. This had my blood boiling. So much stupidity. So much nepotism, incompetence, arrogance, outright lies, short-sightedness, and ignorance. I pretty much mirror one of the Iraqi interviewees in the film: "Saddam was bad. But this was even worse."

It seems like Rumsfield et al. never really cared about Iraq or the war, all they cared about was making thier careers and their parties look good. All of that sound-bytes about "freedom" and "shock and awe" and meaningless propaganda tactics like that. And what's scaring me is how deeply the neocon influence is still driving all of this. Even now you have people actually cheering those private military contractors who were shooting at random civilian vehicles. People who don't even listen to the film because in their minds, the Iraqis are just "towelheads" and anything sympathetic to their plight is "liberal propaganda". Most of them believe that the Middle East should be turned to glass because Fox News and all those conservative commentators say so. How did this influence came to be so powerful? Why are so many Americans like this nowadays? It's not a word used lightly, but it's evil. Just as evil as the extremist Jihadis themselves.

This movie crystallized my dislike of Bush now, but especially more so of Rumsfield and Bremer. Though I still do not support the withdrawal of the troops. I wish they could, but they really can't. Not without fixing the mess the Bush administration made first. Else they'll just be leaving an even more dangerous situation with the Mahdi Army in power. Another Bin Laden. And this time, they basically made him.

And yes, a little part of my idealism died with this. The world is a *beep* up place, innit?

[–] jriley555 11 years ago

my thoughts are not far from yours and everyone who has weighed in so far, to one extent or another.

the idea that the master plan is to run all the oil through israel doesnt make a lot of sense from a practical or literal interpretation, but the monomania concerning our relationship to israel, with all the nasty things it does in the occupied terroritories and provocations & brutal reprisals it carries out against its neighbors, certainly goes to show that our international affairs are not run with any significant regard for human rights or democratic principle.

we pushed democracy in iraq, as a basis for our botched intervention, while stifling it in palestine, egypt, persia, guatemala, chile, vietnam, italy, greece, nicaragua, the horn of africa, south africa, etc., etc., etc.

the mystery to me is that the events of the last ten years have not undermined the zionistic aspect of our foreign policy and robber-baron aspects of our domestic policy, but rather strengthened them both.

i thank the bush folks for opening my eyes to the real world. it existed long before, but they made the actual landscape of power clear enough to anyone paying attention. some are slower than others.

other docs i would highly recommend:

occupation 101 (the long history of the israelis, arabs & the palestinians)
bbc doc series 'the cold war' (24 45 minute episodes, basically 45-91)

in a world where everyone has an opinion on everything, you get a lot of bad opinions - me