For his first film, Charles Ferguson has made the Iraq documentary No End in Sight and has done a stunningly good job. Check it out.
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For his first film, Charles Ferguson has made the Iraq documentary No End in Sight and has done a stunningly good job. Check it out.
23 Comments
Boy, if only more people would would have listened to all those stupid fucking liberals who said this war was a bad idea before it even started.
But hey, at least we get a solid documentary and a few good books out of this mess.
#1: You mean like Hillary and Kerry? Oh wait, they voted for the war.
Management, wedge, the film is about the management, not the shipping department.
Yes, a trillion and three leftists (and plenty of non-leftists) say this was a bad decision by Bush the risk-taker (funny how the left loves a risk-taker unless he’s a conservative). Yeah, we’ve heard this an uncountable number of times, but the point is, what are we going to do about the situation as it is now? Foreign policy must deal in the present, while being aware of the mistakes of the past.
Affixing blame is useful for political purposes, but dealing with the situation as it is currently is critical. Do we have any good suggestions from the left as to how to get out of this mess? Bush broke it, the US has to fix it, but how? Cutting and running is a very bad option, perhaps causing an even worse mess than what came from Bush’s decision.
The reason you continue to hear so much chatter about what a mistake it was is because those who made the mistake aren’t listening.
It may seem like a petty thing, placing blame. But it’s an important matter of principle: those in power have to first own up to their failures. Then we can begin seeking solutions.
“those in power have to first own up to their failures”
Random, I don’t think this is realistic. The Bush admin still may not believe that their decision was wrong and even if they do, to expect them to admit it is unrealistic. Why not get on with dealing with what is happening now? Wassting time over trying to force them to admit something they won’t admit amounts to little more than political posturing.
How many governments ever admit they were wrong? None, besides Roh and what good did it do him? It just made him look weak and incompetent, which he is. It rarely does a politician much good to admit a mistake, especially if they still think they have some support for those decisions.
cut and run is a brilliant idea, which sadly will never happen. cutting loses and getting out quick is not something America is capable of. too much WWII reminiscing about freed countries going on is everyone’s heads all the time and not enough Vietnam reality.
damn. “going on is” shoulda been “is going on”
One should really ask “can America learn from this horrible mistake?” I am not too hopeful because the mindless devotion to ideology at the expense of the greater good seems to be endemic to power and the American experience has a problem with this.
Frankly speaking, IMHO, the Republican Party has failed the nation in the last eight years by nurturing this tragic devotion for the sake of political gain and when this beastly administration they helped create shut them out and would not listen to experienced voices, rather listened only to those that echoed their own flawed inexperience, America was then controlled by only the incompetent, un-democratic few. It is now too late to call the police station and yell “I was robbed!”.
Does someone need to post (once again) all the quotes by Dems on how dangerous Saddam was, how we needed to go in there, what the intel (and not just U.S. intel; every major intel agency) said about Iraqi WMD/nuke programs, etc.? “Liberal” reasons, like how our troops would be decimated by said Iraqi WMD?
R., have you seen the movie? If so, where?
No… we’re pissed off at them, too. But in their case, more for being the blind, idiot followers rather than the morons who led the country into war in the first place. One’s a bit worse than the other.
Amen, Zonath, on #12!!!
repubs and dems and even the russians, germans, italians, french, and british had the exact same info.
Dems are just taking advantage of the situation and playing into their typical liberal voting base. You can disbelieve it or not, but when Bush had 80% approval ratings, even the liberals agreed that pre-emptive strike against terrorists were warranted.
But when things get rough, you know the drill.
All we are saying, is give peace a chance.
1,2,3,4, we don’t want this fucking war.
Bush lies, who dies?
Send the twins to Iraq.
Seems like a group of severely short sighted, narcisstic group to me.
that’s all.
there was no dr. evil behind the whole scheme just to raise oil stocks.
i’d like to meet him if that’s the case.
I mere oil company businessman can manage to fool all the major spying agencies in the western world?
and if anyone really had a oil contract to protect, it was the UN oil for food program, France, and Russia.
I recall the UN secretary general, France, and Russia were very much against invading Russia.
And France had diplomatic correponsdence with Iraq during the battle.
Go explain that one.
#2,
No, the French. Instead of listening, you came up with ‘Freedom Fries’.
#15,
France and Russia were not a war.
Can we distinguish between liberal and Democrat? As in liberal citizens and Democratic politicians.
I think liberal citizens were right at the beginning but for the wrong reasons. I think Democratic politicians were, not necessarily wrong, just weak.
fwiw, I was against this war strictly for strategic reasons. We had a war in Afghanistan. You don’t divide your forces and go off on another adventure before you’ve finished the job in your current adventure. It’s bad military strategy. It may have worked in WWII when armies lined up against each other, but not in the Middle East. How stupid were our leaders that they didn’t think of this?
I’m a liberal citizen who feels that this is our mess (not the Iraqis) and we need to finish it before getting out. But not the way things are going now. That’s what I mean by admitting mistakes. First you admit that what’s happening isn’t working, then you adapt, get other opinions, get your allies involved, and change course. This administration will not do that because they’re worried about their political legacy; they have mistaken romantic notions of American “victory.”
Everything’s political here.
Why in the world should anyone listen to a liberal who sits in a tree sipping a latte and sternly lecturing woodland squirrels about their collapsing eco-environment?
huh??
What does that remark have to do with the movie, the people in it and their comments!?
Anyone who says international intelligence agencies believed Iraq had WMDs is an ignorant fool. UN weapons inspectors knew they had nothing. The g’damn CIA knew they had none. Dozens of US intelligence officers have come out of the woodwork and condemned the Bush administration for making new (and convenient) inferences from old (and outdated) information.
Unbelievable that even now, in 2007, people still have their head in the sand sniffin’ round for truffles.
Oh, the old scapegoating routine.
Democrats versus republican, known and unknown, election or not.
whatever.
As constituents of a democratic nation we are responsible for the government we elect, and the actions it conducts.
Blaming Bush, when a clear majority of nation was baying for blood post 9-11, is the stuff of Germans saying Hitler did it all. If we go around killing innocent people and fucking up other countries, we should bear the burden, act with dignity, and correct the situation.
Learn from things like Vietnam.
Given that the US had 9-11 coming well before we went and jeopardized the lives of millions in the middle east and the economies of innocent peoples around the world, nothing short of a few nukes bandied around the states, or an unraveling of the economy, wouldn’t look unfair.
Jesus, how many kicks in the head do we need.
Albeit an off-post comment, but this cynical opposition on this blog to Korean detente is pathetic, and dripping in insecurity.
Rightfully so.
Apparently many more and the Americans deserve it for being played like chumps so easily and I do not mean “9/11″ but the whole trail of breadcrumbs that was left from the election in 2000 up to this very day.