Park City, Utah – Hours before President Bush spoke to the nation about the dire consequences of possible failure in Iraq, a number of those present in the early days of the occupation converged in Utah, where they argued the war was failing precisely because of the Bush administration’s own incompetence.
Among those joining the Tuesday conversation – some in person, others via a satellite feed – were Gen. Jay Garner, who led reconstruction in the immediate months following the invasion; Barbara Bodine, who was in charge of Baghdad under Garner’s watch; and Col.
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during the first two years of the war.
They are among the scores of military officers, diplomats, academics and senior White House officials featured in “No End in Sight,” a cutting indictment of the administration’s management of the Iraq occupation. The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this week.
All of those participating in the discussion, organized by the film’s producers, agreed that Bush officials failed to listen to military and diplomatic experts, preferring to remain ignorant of difficult political and social realities as Iraq spiraled into lawlessness and insurgency.
“When you have decision makers that have no military background, they should lean on the back of their military component,” said Garner, a veteran of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War who was replaced by Bush appointee Paul Bremer in May 2003.
Bremer began his State Department career in Afghanistan in 1966 but had little experience with its neighbor, the Middle East, and has had little since. He served as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority through 2005, a period in which the CPA disbanded the 400,000-person Iraqi army and, through a policy of “De-Baathification,” put millions of others out of work – prompting many to join the fledgling insurgency.
Bodine said those whose experience and expertise conflicted with political viewpoints of administration leaders were sidelined or excluded.
“At one level you began to feel as if you were actually being treated as if you were evil,” said Bodine, a career foreign service officer with extensive experience in the Middle East who also was forced out of Iraq under Bremer’s watch.
Wilkerson – whose boss, Powell, had helped make the public case for war prior to the invasion – said the administration did not bear total responsibility. He denounced Congress – then controlled by Republicans in both chambers – for not exercising greater oversight in a time in which national passions made it popular to support Bush and his chosen war.
“Since I’m a Republican, that makes me mad,” he said. “My party is not the party I became a member of years ago.” Despite the credentials of many of the scores of interview subjects, it was a junior Marine officer who got the film’s last word.
“You’re telling me this is the best the U.S. can do?” Seth Moulton asks at the end of the documentary. “That makes me angry.” Sitting alongside the film’s director, Charles Ferguson, in Park City on Tuesday, Moulton was no less indignant over what he sees as Bush’s still-poor understanding of the problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers.
With just hours to go until Bush addressed the nation, Moulton caustically noted that the president – a man who claims to pay little attention to political winds – refused to change course in Iraq until his party lost control of Congress in midterm elections.
By that time, the lieutenant said, it was likely too late.
(The Salt Lake Tribune is a member of the ap News Service.)
