"War is a serious business."

Thus concluded Charles Ferguson, film director and producer of No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq at the end of an evening of debate, following a screening of the film. Not just any old screening, either; this was only the second ever screening, in front of an audience of academics, students and lay people - learned others - at the heart of the well known Californian political community, Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

The film, which won the 2007 Sundandce Film Festival Special Jury Prize in the Documentary category, is Ferguson's first film; I'm not sure how he came to make it, as his bio listed a degree in mathematics, followed by a doctorate in Political Science, which was in turn followed by a a number of years as an independent consultant providing "strategic consulting" in the early nineties. Perhaps he has now found his vocation - for this film truly is magnificent, acting as a quality piece of writing against the dross that an every day reader recieves. It is to Michael Moore's movies (Fahrenheit 911 being the most similar in topic) as the Times or Guardian are to the Mirror or the Sun, the New York Times or the Herald Tribune to the Daily Post: this is a purely class documentary, allowing the subjects to do the speaking, whilst Ferguson narrates only the most fragile of architectures. And it is clear who's mess is Iraq - and who's legacy.

But what was, perhaps, the most enlightening was the reaction of the audience. As I've already alluded, this is one of the heartlands of neoconservative Americanism: Condoleezza Rice was a former Provost of Stanford and Larry Diamond (the panel moderator, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Professor of Political Science) alluded to his friendship with her back in December 2002, prior to the war starting. He commented that he was "convinced that [she] believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction]" - something I was not entirely shocked to hear, yet still cannot understand: he is not in a position to admit that he is (was) wrong, could not do so; yet the whole world new that Saddam did not have weapons, as Hans Blix (the UN weapons inspector) was ascertaining at that very time. That the US "and whole world's" intelligence agencies could have thought or believed otherwise seems, at the very least, unbelievable.

A brief synopsis of the film, for it is a must watch if there ever was one. From the Sundance blurb: "The first film to examine comprehensively how the Bush administration constructed the Iraq ware and subsequent occupation, No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq exposes a chain of critical errors, denial, and incompetence that has galvanized a violent quagmire." I have little else to add - for there are various briefs available online which describe what you will see - other than to say it is highly recommended. Of more interest is to talk about the surrounding information from this evening, not least to highlight the fact that Ferguson promised the greater than 3000 pages of transcripts and the hundreds of hours of film footage would be placed into the public domain. By his own explanation of why the film is limited in what it presents, "a complete catologue of the extraordinary stupidies would take a much longer time than any human could sit through." And yet we must: the United States has a long way to go before any self-respecting (and many non-self-respecting) countries can sit face to
face and believe what they hear.

So, going back to the panelists and what they said, perhaps linking in a little with the film where possible.... The first to speak was Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gibson, a soldier from the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army. The guy was a jerk! Really exemplified the moronic nature and brainwashed state of those who led the military invasion of Iraq, and although he started by stating how much he could empathise with the soldiers who had been in the film, he really did miss the mark quite widely. Perhaps the most telling comment to sum up his talk was a question from a member of the audience: "Who do you think is responsible for bringing Al Quaeda to Iraq?" - for up until his talk, there' been but the vaguest mention of Al Quaeda and the American spectre of "Terrorism," and even that had been to downplay any linkage...In the days after 9/11, Bush dedicated a team to linking Osama Bin-Laden with Iraq...There was no association that we could find... (my paraphrasing of one of the intelligence agents interviewed for the movie).

By contrast, Professor David Kennedy of the History department at Stanford sounded quite intelligent. Well, I'm sure he is, but what I mean is that he did not try to proselytise religious or political beliefs as fact; instead, like a good historian, he merely put forward a number of questions that he thought would be important in the future to answer. I repeat them below as they are worthy, and would like to repeat also his commendation of No End In Sight - "an important contribution to the historical record, particularly for the candour of some of the interviewees". The questions that he went on to suggest were (in brief), the following:

1. What was the deep strategic rational for committing to the war in Iraq?
2. How, if at all, did that rationale relate to the reasons portrayed [to the wider world] in 2002 for the invasion of Iraq?
3. What factors - political, institutional, situational - have determined the events after the end of the "conventional" war?
4. How will this end?
   • the bigger picture and impact on the wider world
   • likely to have a bigger impact than Vietnam, which was geopolitically contained to south east Asia and the United States, whereas this has influence across the world
5. In what way did the great trauma of 9/11 so change the thinking in this country to make all this possible?

As was discussed much during the evening, the main premise behind most of these questions - and much of the debate upon this subject, both here and elsewhere - is that a "different, wiser American policy may have produced a different result." I shall return to this. But perhaps the greatest statement to come from this man was a play on the words of Omar Bradley, "This was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong enemy for the wrong reasons by the wrong leadership with the wrong battleplans." How true.

Larry Diamond was the final speaker. I don't really have that much to say about what he said - I've said it all already, and I think that his belief about weapons of mass destruction really sums up the US right-wing intelligentsia, at least for the early years of this century. Instead, I shall return to Charles Ferguson - who actually was the final speaker, but can be viewed as the "special guest" and the one who's opinions really count. After all, he's seen the footage and read the transcripts; he's the one who has summed up the evidence for us all; he's the one who is probably best qualified at the present time to give a viewpoint, rather than the academics in their hallowed halls, so many miles away yet eager to voice their opinions.

And Ferguson was good. He spoke briefly, keen obviously to hear from the audience rather than profess more of his view - which, in any case, did a good job of staying out of the way during the documentary. He Gave a couple of additional examples of the US naivety and stupidity in the war: explaining how for about 3 months ORHA (the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance) and subsequently the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA, headed by L. Paul Bremer) "did not have access to telephones or email... people would try to smuggle in laptops ... and search for access to satellite phones so that they could check their own, personal AOL accounts." Around the same time that Bremer was made head of the CPA, General Ricardo Sanchez was put in command of the US military operations; it is telling that within just a few days "General Sanchez formed the opinion Bremer was... stupid. The two men couldn't be in a room together."

What of the future and what of the past? As one member of the audience put it, this documentary does not discuss Chapter One; it's chapter two, or even three. There was no discussion of the reasons for going to war - reasons that the panelists attributed to a number of different things, the most surprising, perhaps, being Fergusons belief that it was due to a "coincidence" of various factors: Bush junior's election as president, the failures of his father, the administration, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the quest for oil... And yet, it must be that this final factor was near uppermost: or perhaps, as suggested, not the fact about oil, for the oil will make it onto the world market. More likely, the fact of what happens to the revenue from that oil. Oh, and of course let us not forget that there was the belief in weapons of mass destruction.

Will these factors play out elsewhere? Suggestions were made that oil is a prime reason for attacks on Iran, Venezuela, and other countries that "we don't like." One can see the US building up for these campaigns in the future, but this particular Iraq war is likely to have far-reaching repercussions ahead of any future US desires. For starters, the US army is all but decimated: spread as it is through Afgahnistan and Iraq, with soldiers going not just through their second or third tours of duty, but fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh tours, there is not the capacity to pursue further campaigns. And that is not even speaking of "cleaning up the mess:" with estimates of between 1.9 and 3 million refugees (and the US still having accepted less than a thousand onto American soil), there is a lot of human anguish going on in the Middle East. As Ferguson put it: "think of the Palestine problem and multiply by four." And then probably multiply it some more, several times over...

The two questions that remain at the end of all this are ones that will continue to crop up, time and again. The immediate response from the film - and the only question that any of the 'other' panelists asked (i.e. not Ferguson) - is, could it have turned out "ok," or, at least, substantially better than it did? Ferguson reports that the centre of gravity from the wide range of responses he has heard to this question is a resounding "yes." It could have been a relatively stable situation... The second question is another "what-if." What would have happened if we [the US] had not intervened in Iraq?" And the answer to this one is a lot more complex. Ferguson describes Iraq (and I have no knowledge with which to comment) as a country that had been ravaged by 20 years of war, followed by a further 10 years of UN sanctions. US Foregn policy along with domestic local Iraqi policy had created a country that was going to be a mess, whatever happened. The question really was how best to deal with that mess. A question we are likely to be discussing for a very long time.