SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain If all that is said is true, then this is like some kind of twisted Orwellian nightmare. It's Animal Farm all over again as a select few individuals make the choices. Terrifying in more ways than one, the film shows the disastrous war, planned out my money grabbing idiots. It's not just the dying soldiers/Iraqi civilians that highlight the problems, but also the unemployment and destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage. The only protection is offered to the oil fields. Again, the big names refuse to take part. But there are some balanced arguments, which sometimes fall into "he said/she said" retorts. No End In Sight is riveting stuff, and if even just a handful of claims are true, then it's worth taking note.

bobm5508 This is an important documentary, that deserves a wide spread viewing by all Americans. It is an informative history lesson of the POST WAR missteps that sadly have our soldiers AND the IRAQI nation leading a frightening existence. The interviews with Iraqi citizens, their heartfelt loss of country pride and loss of any liveable civilization were heartbreaking to me.The director's take here is as on balance as it can get, knowing where we now stand. History is on his side. He has assembled the "usual suspects" of culpable parties - Rumsfeld, Cheney, the always distant George Bush and their dispatched diplomats. He chronicles the mind bogging, bad decisions, decisions made by woefully under qualified participants. The interviews of replaced diplomats are naturally the most damning, but do not seem like their agenda are misguided. The "Usual Suspects", as expected, refused to be interviewed.Many reviews here, and by major critics, depict those decisions and their devastating consequences. I will not rehash them here, and hope you watch this powerful movie.But, I have one nagging question. The "ousted" participants interviewed here seem to have had a good grasp on what needed to be done. Working against all odds (looted buildings, collapsed intrastucture, poor planning prior to their arrival) they speak about their slow but sure steps to reconstruction. Rumsford, Cheney et al picked them and put them in place!! What happened to shift them out of the picture so quickly?? Why did the administration feel the need to remove Jay Gardner (retired General with experience and in place) with an elitist, ex-CEO, armed with 2 devastatingly bad edicts??? I would have liked a bit more back story on how the change from humanitarian organization to the CPA came to be. With 200 hours of footage (I read somewhere), maybe that info can be addressed!?All in all, a must see. It is also a very valuable reminder that we have to pick our future leaders much better than this self serving mess of an administration!

jzappa The documentary offers a social service in dealing with problems and issues of national importance. This is not only a documentary at a time when there is an unusually high degree of consensus about what is important, but also a documentary about what makes this time indeed so significant. And luckily, it is a fundamentally irrefutable one.Software entrepreneur Charles Ferguson makes his debut as a filmmaker here, an impressive one, and not just owing to the tremendously ambitious feel of the graphics, such as the title cards. The amount of dizzying information condensed into such a tightly composed 102 minutes results in a greater understanding of it all. He gets to the root of the fast deterioration of U.S.-occupied Iraq into pure madness, as L. Paul Bremer's disbanding of all of Iraq's military entities, "De-Ba'athification," and not providing enough troops resulted in no authority, no order. It was the Islamic fundamentalists that moved to fill this void, so their ranks ballooned with many disillusioned Iraqi people.We are making a haven for terrorists out of Iraq. Yes, we got rid of Saddam, but what we put in his place is far, far worse. Not only for Iraq, but for us and our allies, or what we have left of them. With no police force or national army to maintain order, ministries and buildings were looted. What hit me the hardest while watching this film was that among them were Iraqi museums, holding precious artifacts from some of the earliest human civilizations.Ferguson's film shows us just how chilling those signals were to most Iraqis. Did American forces even intend to maintain law and order? The destruction of libraries and records ruined the bureaucracy that existed before our invasion. They had to start from scratch to reassemble the government infrastructure. And Rumsfeld rejected the looting as no worse than rioting in an American city.Does Bush read? He doesn't seem to have read anything vital to his intentions. Over 30 people are interviewed here, most of them former Bush followers who have since come down to earth and become embittered by what they experienced. So many of them claim that the inexperience of the pivotal representatives of the Bush administration, and their dissent to investigate, recognize or receive input from more experienced participants was at the core of the devastating invasion effort. And those who voted for them would later protest that Obama had too little experience to be President.The social impact of cinema is reinforced by the documentary, which pushes aesthetics to one side in the face of social movements and upheavals. It might be argued that since Bremer, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz refused to be interviewed for the film, Ferguson only gives us one side of the story. But the assembled qualified footing of the people he did interview, and their composed, comprehensive emphasis on fact, makes such an argument puzzling.

Cockeymofo76 First I just want to come out with it, I'm for the withdrawal from Iraq, so I am partial to this film.OK moving on.The talking heads were poorly done. The Documentarians gave us all the background info on each esteemed contributor, but no time to digest. I felt as though giving 10 sec intro for each talking head would have made each contribution stronger. My other issue with the film is that it kind of zooms through some issues. The first issue being America supplied both the Iranians and the Iraqis with weapons during the Iraq-Iran war. There were others, times when they were being slightly revisionist in their history.Not for the average bloke. If you like to feel "in the know" and enjoy documentaries it is a must.8/10