No End in Sight

A Reel Progress Screening

July 19, 2007, 7:00pm – 9:30pm

About This Event

Official Synopsis:

"A coolheaded, devastating expose" - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"Enraging...apocalyptic...masterful." - Rob Nelson, Village Voice

The first film 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 jaw-dropping, insider's tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness, and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell Lawrence Wilkerson, and General Jay Garner (in charge of the occupation of Iraq through May 2003), as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts.

"NO END IN SIGHT" examines the manner in which the principal errors of U.S. policy-the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military-largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. How did a group of men with little or no military experience, knowledge of the Arab world, or personal experience in Iraq come to make such flagrantly debilitating decisions? "NO END IN SIGHT" dissects the people, issues, and facts behind the Bush administration's decisions and their consequences on the ground to provide a powerful look into how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war.

A recent report by the Center for American Progress, "Strategic Reset," will be available at the screening. The report calls for the United States to pick up the pieces left by President Bush's flawed Middle East strategy by building a comprehensive, sustained diplomatic approach across the region.

Please join us for a provocative conversation with filmmaker Charles Ferguson and senior CAP fellow Brian Katulis following the screening.

Featuring:
Charles Ferguson, Filmmaker, "NO END IN SIGHT"
Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Location

AMC Loews Metreon Theatre
101 Fourth St
(At fourth and Mission St.)
San Francisco, CA 94103

Biographies

Charles Ferguson is founder and president of Representational Pictures, LLC, and writer, director, and producer of "NO END IN SIGHT: The American Occupation of Iraq," which is his first film. Ferguson was originally trained as a political scientist. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained a Ph.D. in political science from MIT in 1989. Following his Ph.D., Ferguson conducted postdoctoral research at MIT while also consulting to the White House, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Defense, and several U.S. and European high technology firms. From 1992 to1994, Ferguson was an independent consultant, providing strategic consulting to the top managements of U.S. high technology firms including Apple, Xerox, Motorola, and Texas Instruments. In 1994, Ferguson founded Vermeer Technologies, one of the earliest Internet software companies, with Randy Forgaard. Vermeer created the first visual website development tool, FrontPage. In early 1996, Ferguson sold Vermeer to Microsoft, which integrated FrontPage into Microsoft Office. After selling Vermeer, Ferguson returned to research and writing. He was a visiting scholar and/or lecturer for several years at MIT and Berkeley, and for three years was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. At the Center, his work examines U.S. national security policy in Middle East with a focus on Iraq. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Center's Middle East Progress project. Prior to joining the Center, Katulis lived and worked in the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, including projects in Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. From 2000 to 2003, he worked as a senior associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. He has published articles in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor among other publications. Katulis received a graduate degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs.

NO END IN SIGHT opens in New York and DC on Friday, July 27th, and will open in Los Angeles and other select cities in August.

For more on the Center's Reel Progress film series, please see: http://www.reelprogress.org