New documentary traces mismanagement, poor decisions in post-invasion Iraq

The war in Iraq clearly is not going well, and Americans' calls for US troops to come home are growing ever louder.

A new documentary, to be released later this month, asks a simple question: How did we get to this point?

The film, No End in Sight, an advance copy of which provided to RAW STORY, focuses mostly on the mismanagement by ill-informed US officials overseeing the post-combat occupation, rather than delving too delving too deeply into the lies fed to the American people in the run-up to war. Rather, its focus is

Through interviews with former administration officials, military members, journalists and scholars, No End in Sight returns to the months following the US invasion. It shows how decisions made by Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their acolytes have created the disastrous situation that exists on the ground now.

A clip of the film, which is reproduced below exclusively on RAW STORY, shows just how far off the administration was in its initial estimates on how the war and its aftermath would be handled. Army Col. Paul Hughes recalled former Defense Department spokesman Lawrence DiRita promising to have all but 25,000-30,000 troops out of Iraq by the end of August 2003.

"I heard him say that, in a room full of people," said Hughes, who was director of strategic policy for the US occupation in 2003. "And I turned to my colleagues and I said, 'This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. It's physically impossible.'"

More striking than the myopic expectations within the Defense Department are the shortsighted decisions made by those overseeing Iraq's reconstruction, especially the US-sponsored Coalition Provisional Authority.

The film identifies three fateful decisions by then-CPA head Paul Bremer that laid the groundwork for the insurgency US troops continue to fight four-and-a-half years after the war's start.

First, Bremer reversed the decision of Gen. Jay Garner, who had been overseeing Iraq's reconstruction prior to his arrival, to form an interim Iraqi government. More fateful was his decision to remove former members of the Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party from their positions in government.

"De-Ba'athification was so deep that we weren't able to get the government running as efficiently as we should have as fast as we should have, and you had a lot of disenfranchised Ba'athists," Garner says as the film shows clips of out-of-work Iraqis marching in the streets.

Bremer's "most explosive" decision, according to the film, was disbanding the Iraqi military and intelligence services, which rendered unemployed 500,000 armed men who helped create an insurgency rather than working to prevent one.

Hughes recounts in the film having to send away former Iraqi soldiers who wanted to help American troops because of the policy. He recalled the effects of that order on American troops.

"Five days after Bremer issued his order, we were fare-welling Jay Garner because he was going to leave Iraq for good, the next day. We had two Humvees on the highway heading out from the Green Zone and they were ambushed and two soldier were killed," Hughes said. "And that was, in my mind, when the insurgency began."

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