Film/Book Review: The War on Error
By BARRY GEWEN
New York Times
NO END IN SIGHT
Iraq’s Descent Into Chaos.
By Charles Ferguson.
Illustrated. 641 pp. PublicAffairs. Paper, $17.95.
There are really two debates going on about the Iraq war, but only one of them is being heard at the present time. Was the decision to invade a mistake from the beginning? For the most part, Democrats say yes and Republicans say no. The other debate centers on the invasion’s aftermath. Is the current debacle the result not of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein but of the inept policies that followed? Since this question suggests that success in Iraq was always a possibility, it is generally being ignored both by Democrats, who don’t want to muddy their antiwar position, and by Republicans, unwilling to face up to the Bush administration’s serial failings.
Charles Ferguson’s 2007 documentary, “No End in Sight,” was unusual because it focused on this second question. It was a powerful and heartbreaking film. Ferguson introduced us to well-intentioned, intelligent people who took the White House at its word and went to Iraq to build a decent postwar society. He showed how they had their legs cut out from under them every step of the way by arrogant ideologues in Washington. Now he has taken the material he collected from more than 50 interviews, expanded and updated it with additional interviews, added his own interpolated commentary and a charming introduction, and produced a book also titled “No End in Sight” that, in its way, is as powerful as his movie, and equally heartbreaking.
With the leisure that a book affords, a reader comes to understand why both versions of “No End in Sight” work so well. Ferguson is an expert interviewer — smart, attentive, persistent. He does his homework before he sits down with a subject so that he can ask the right questions. Most important, he is no partisan (he was an ambivalent supporter of the war). Ferguson is genuinely interested in getting at the truth. He wants to know exactly what went wrong.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
NO END IN SIGHT
Iraq’s Descent Into Chaos.
By Charles Ferguson.
Illustrated. 641 pp. PublicAffairs. Paper, $17.95.
There are really two debates going on about the Iraq war, but only one of them is being heard at the present time. Was the decision to invade a mistake from the beginning? For the most part, Democrats say yes and Republicans say no. The other debate centers on the invasion’s aftermath. Is the current debacle the result not of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein but of the inept policies that followed? Since this question suggests that success in Iraq was always a possibility, it is generally being ignored both by Democrats, who don’t want to muddy their antiwar position, and by Republicans, unwilling to face up to the Bush administration’s serial failings.
Charles Ferguson’s 2007 documentary, “No End in Sight,” was unusual because it focused on this second question. It was a powerful and heartbreaking film. Ferguson introduced us to well-intentioned, intelligent people who took the White House at its word and went to Iraq to build a decent postwar society. He showed how they had their legs cut out from under them every step of the way by arrogant ideologues in Washington. Now he has taken the material he collected from more than 50 interviews, expanded and updated it with additional interviews, added his own interpolated commentary and a charming introduction, and produced a book also titled “No End in Sight” that, in its way, is as powerful as his movie, and equally heartbreaking.
With the leisure that a book affords, a reader comes to understand why both versions of “No End in Sight” work so well. Ferguson is an expert interviewer — smart, attentive, persistent. He does his homework before he sits down with a subject so that he can ask the right questions. Most important, he is no partisan (he was an ambivalent supporter of the war). Ferguson is genuinely interested in getting at the truth. He wants to know exactly what went wrong.
(Continued here.)
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