No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos

by Charles Ferguson

The first book of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality, and anarchy, No End In Sight is a shocking story of wholesale incompetence, recklessness, and venality. Culled from over 200 hours of footage collected for the film, the book provides a candid and alarming retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials, Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts. Together, these voices reveal the principal errors of U.S. policy that largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today—and what we could and should do about them now. No End In Sight marks the first time Americans will be allowed inside the White House, Pentagon, and Baghdad's Green Zone to understand for themselves the disintegration of Iraq— and how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Middle East, War, History

672 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2008

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Charles Ferguson if a film director and producer, software entrepreneur, writer and authority in technology policy. He won an Oscar in 2011 for Inside Job, his documentary on the financial crisis, and was an Oscar nominee for his first documentary, No End in Sight, on the war in Iraq. He has written four books, and is a life member of the Council of Foreign Relations and a director of the French-American Foundation.

Reviews

[Frank Marzano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful (and infuriating) book. Among other things, we learn that many of the things that went wrong with the Iraq war were not only predictable, they were predicted.

[Choong Chiat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides an incisive and detailed exposition of the unfortunate series of events/mistakes that led up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and what happened after that.

While this book tries to be even-handed in its approach and not attempt to attribute blame to anyone in particular, it is perhaps evident it hints at which individuals should perhaps shoulder most of the responsiblity for the mess that occurred in post-US invasion Iraq.

And although I personally am saddened and shocked by the arrogance, political/ideological close-mindedness and incompetence of those individuals within the US administration that were orchestrating the Iraq war/post-war effort, I, reading this book, cannot shake away the subtle feeling that part of the complaints against these individuals is perhaps a "Success has many fathers while failure is an orphan" effect, if you all get what I mean.

In addition, as another reviewer has pointed out, this book does not really have a conclusion. While I will agree that this is a minor deficiency of the book, I suppose such a deficiency is perhaps unavoidable, in light of how the story of post-US invasion Iraq is still unfolding.

[Clifford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though ultimately critical of the Iraq War, a very honest attempt to dissect in an intellectual and non-political way, what mistakes and missteps led to the problems in Iraq. I imagine the documentary movie (which I haven't seen) is probably more politicized (because that's what sells) than the book which is very methodical and thorough.

[Nicko · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lesson on the dangers of fallout from failure to plan, Western arrogance, and Republican beauracratic cronyism. An arab fighter put it best, "The Americans may have the watches, but we have the time.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good work Washington!

[Alec Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

The interviews upon which the dcoumentary is based.

[S O · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, it helped to answer questions that I didn't even know I had about something that was pretty hard to wrap my head around.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good resource for anyone researching the Iraq War because of the Q&A format.