No End In Sight: Iraq War Documentary Available to View in its Entirety Online

No End in Sight, Charles H. Ferguson's documentary about the occupation of Iraq, is available to watch for free on YouTube until November 5th. The documentary focuses on the first two years of the invasion and the miscalculations of the Bush Administration in engaging in the invasion in the first place. The basic premises of the film are that:

* The rise of the insurgency was not anticipated
* Proper security and basic utilities were not provided for Iraq
* They did not foresee the sectarian violence or potential civil war

What makes this film so significant is not any sort of revelations that come from the film (since most of the information was known in advance of the war by many intellectuals), but that key members of the occupation leadership and the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) lay out how the Administration mismanaged the war. This leads to the damning, and widely acknowledged, conclusion that the Bush Administration refused to listen to outsiders who could have foreseen such results. The interviewees include the likes of:

*General Jay Garner( who ran the reconstruction before L. Paul Bremer)
*Ambassador Barbara Bodine
*Richard Armitage (who was deputy secretary of the State Department)
*Robert Hutchings (who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council)
*Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (who was Colin Powell's chief of staff)
*Col. Paul Hughes (who was part of ORHA and then the Coalition Provisional Authority)

The documentary was critically acclaimed (not only having received a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but appearing on the Top 10 list of many critics) and so now, sit back, and enjoy:

Heavy Metal in Baghdad: Inside the Life of an Iraqi Band

The premise behind the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad was to follow the career of the band Acrassicauda, an Iraqi heavy metal band who simply wants to make music. Instead, the picture that emerges is the harshness of life in post-Saddam Iraq, and the desperation of a people who are suffering at the hands of war and destruction. Here is the trailer:


Those of you who know me, know that I am not all that into heavy metal. Sure, in my youth I enjoyed Metallica quite a bit. But these days, those songs are nothing more than nostalgia for me. That being said, this is a riveting documentary that follows the lives of a band who are the only heavy metal band in Iraq. What comes from the documentary is the despair that they all feel, and the importance of their music as an outlet…not only for them, but also for their fans. Sometimes comical, other times devastating, the film shows the reality of what life is like on the ground in Iraq.

What stood out the most for me is that the image the band paints is so different from that which we see in our own media. For the band, life is horrendous. Even though two of the members live only 15 minutes from each other, because of the violence they don’t see each other for months at a time. One member even goes so far as to say that the conflict between the Shi’ites and Sunnis is manufactured by the politicians (he and his wife each being of the different Islamic faiths). All these guys want to do is rock, and everywhere they turn they aren’t allowed to.

The film is out on DVD, so go check it out. Even if you aren’t that into music you will be able to appreciate it!