WATCH: No End in Sight (2007)
Joe Giambrone, The Political Film Blog
The Banality of Imperial War Criminals
“Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but what’s worse I think is they’ll come back twenty years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.”
Frankie Boyle
This film may have been the one that inspired Frankie’s rant.
As the next team of warmongers gears up to lie the world into an illegal assault on Iran, this film takes on added significance. It’s angering on so many levels from the monsters in suits, to the reign of terror, to the Nazi-level war crimes, to the willful blindness of both participants and filmmakers.
Some Background
America’s invasion of Iraq was exactly comparable to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, from a legal standpoint. No American ever had the legal right to step one foot on Iraqi soil. Iraq was a sovereign country, a principle that World War Two was fought to establish, costing upwards of 70 million lives.
America thinks it’s above the law and has led the assault on any restraints to its exercise of force, Iraq being a most glaring example.
No End In Sight says not one word about any of that. Far from it. They accept the US regime’s main argument that Saddam was a bad guy, and so somehow it was okay to invade his country. It was not.
They knew it was not. That’s why they concocted phony “Weapons of Mass Destruction” lies to try and deceive the United Nations into granting Security Council approval for the attack–and their obvious lies failed. That made the entire war a breach of the UN Charter and the “Supreme International Crime,” Crimes Against the Peace.
Every subsequent action was the direct fault of those who initiated the war, every atrocity, every evil, every consequence, every kidnapping, every maiming, every rape, every murder. These people are monsters towering well above and beyond the Saddams or Qaddafis of the world.
By their own logic, as they are immoral and gleefully evil, other nations now have a right to invade America and install a new regime. That’s not the way international law works. It’s the way imperial war propaganda works, however.
Spinning the Indefensible
Now onto the fiasco depicted in the film. We have a cast of self-styled do-gooders participating in a major war crime, desiring to stabilize the country and rebuild it (after their own military destroyed it).
They are prevented from doing so by a series of seemingly incomprehensible bad decisions from Rumsfeld, Cheney, Paul Bremer and their gaggle of incompetent lackeys.
- Upon the fall of Saddam, no law is enforced, allowing complete chaos and looting all over the country.
- The Iraqi army is disbanded leaving hundreds of thousands of armed, trained men, with no income and nothing to do.
- The Americans refuse to even speak with Iraqis as their stormtroopers raid and kill and torture their family members.
I’m of the mind that all of this was intentional, and that the PLAN A was never to win the peace in Iraq. Wars are so difficult to launch, they wanted Iraq to descend into region-wide chaos engulfing Syria (done) and Iran (still very much on the agenda).
General Wesley Clark divulged the Bush Junta’s plans, which were to attack “seven nations in five years,” barely a week after they allowed the 9/11 attacks to succeed. That’s another story, and America has yet to recover a modicum of self-respect and demand justice.
What No End in Sight captured was a small part of this large imperial agenda for a “new American Century” of aggression and the seizing of vital resources, particularly oil and gas.
While the film talks about Paul Bremer’s presumed incompetence, it fails to mention his 100 Orders slicing up Iraq’s economy like Darth Vader seizing a new star system. Of course, pillaging other countries is glaringly illegal, but we’ve already established the blinders worn by the filmmakers.
These types of key omissions are why I don’t ever trust US documentarians when it comes to foreign policy. They revert to the juvenile “mistakes were made” mindset. They’re not “mistakes” when you do them on purpose: those are crimes, capital crimes punishable by death. They violate every Treaty the country has signed–and which the US helped create in the first place – including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter.
The most evil criminals wear suits and they get away with it.
One of the reasons they get away with it is because of biased journalism that spins away their crimes so that the public is dissuaded from thinking of US rulers as criminals on par with the worst war criminals one can name. In the end it’s an assault on reality as well as morality.
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Okay, so let’s say we believe in the Rapture and getting whisked off to Heaven with the other “righteous” after we’ve succeeded in destroying the Middle East.
The obvious next question is: What exactly is so righteous about destroying the Midde East?
Oops! We didn’t think of that . . . I guess we are getting whisked off to somewhere else instead . . . Damn!
Another OffG article which mentions 9/11 in a disingenous, dishonest and misleading way. You people make me want to puke. You are the worst kind, the ones who pretend to be genuine. Every time you authorise the publication of material which excuses the guilty of their culpability in 9/11, it makes the job of actually getting the truth out there more difficult. Who are you serving with your 9/11 rhetoric? Why have you never produced one, single article which points the majority of the blame for 9/11 firmly where it belongs – with Israel? Why do you NEVER expose Israel’s involvement, proven beyond all reasonable doubt? I think I know. Now, apparently, the author asserts that “they allowed the 9/11 attacks to succeed”. Nothing to back this up of course, because it’s bollocks, plain and simple. The author is either ignorant of the facts, in which case he should not… Read more »
Ehud Barak and the official version of 9/11, first time the official story announced, pathway to war being established. Note the opening section where we hear how the the intelligence for the Bin Laden fairytale came form Israel. Bit like the anthrax intel, the lies about Mohammed Atta meeting Iraqi officals in Prague to obtain anthrax. There’s tonnes more. All Israel, all bullshit.
We find the idea Israel was solely responsible for the events of 9/11 to be simplistic and diversionary. But if you or anyone submitted an article exploring the idea evidentially we’d be happy to consider it.
“We find the idea Israel was solely responsible for the events of 9/11 to be simplistic and diversionary.” Can you please show me where I state that Israel is “solely” responsible for 9/11? I make it very clear that they are the MAIN players, but not the ONLY players. Big difference, but of course, as spreaders of lies, your only defence is to confuse in the face of the truth, rather than admit what you are so obviously doing and address the points I make with sincerity. Quite clearly it is not just Israel involved, but as Bollyn clearly lays out in his (peer reviewed) work, they are the planners, the directors, the orchestrators, the driving force. Read his work, watch his presentations. Or do you only get your 9/11 info from the MSM? Kind of undermines the supposed purpose of your website, no? This is not the point though,… Read more »
Here is a clear example of how Israel has massive influence over US foreign policy and is deeply embedded in its government. These are some of the people you are defending
The War Party – BBC Panorama
” –and their obvious lies failed” . . . ?
But you even say yourself that Iran is still very much on the agenda, and, after that, today’s Washingon will not be talking in terms of failure, but of total success.
I fear that the general western public are simply not well enough educated to be able to reject the next thousand lies about to come from Washminster. They think of the Middle East as much too far away from the US/UK for it to concern them.
Most of us on this site, however, are lucky enough, or cursed enough, to know better.
Another OffG article which mentions 9/11 in a disingenous, dishonest, misleading way. Every time you authorise the publication of material which excuses the guilty of their culpability in 9/11, it makes the job of actually getting the truth out there more difficult. Who are you serving with your 9/11 rhetoric? Why have you never produced one, single article which points the blame for 9/11 firmly where it belongs – with Israel? Why do you NEVER expose Israel’s involvement, proven beyond all reasdonable doubt? Now, apparently, the author asserts that “they allowed the 9/11 attacks to succeed”. Nothing to back this up of course, because it’s bollocks, plain and simple. It doesn’t even make sense. 9/11 was a carefully orchestrated, decades in the planning operation, the purpose of which was to kickstart the pre-planned War on Terror, which would be used as the pretext to get the stupid goy nations, especially… Read more »
Totally fits the “waging war by deception” motto that Mossad allegedly uses.
But seeing all the players (by their fruit) and their obvious handiwork
it is safe to state there has been and still is a team effort.
Whether through interference, collusion, or covering up/glossing over tracks and motives.
Simply not going there is often enough sufficient, seeing how there is the over-arching
consensus in narrative and messaging.
Nudging, edging, massaging. Keeps the juggernaut in motion, crushing its victims
while rolling like media thunder.
William – In expressing your concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people you seem to have missed the well known fact that the U.S. led UN sanctions had killed a half-a-million Iraqi children before the second U.S. led premeditated illegal immoral attack on Iraq. Our U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright justified those innocent children’s deaths on live national television as “worth it,” thus cementing her legacy as a war criminal of “Nazi” status. Of course along with those half-million children were another half-million Iraqi adults who died because of Western sanctions alone, but they don’t merit so much as a footnote of regret in Western corporate media when it comes to documenting our rather bloodthirsty Western barbarism directed at Iraq. Your obviously willful ignorance of history might help you sleep at night William, but it really isn’t very becoming of anyone who considers themselves to be a moral… Read more »
Also remember that the US ambassador to Iraq gave Saddam the nod to invade Kuwait. APRIL GLASPIE TRANSCRIPT Yes, remember April Glaspie and her amazing stint at Middle East diplomacy? Saddam-Glaspie meeting Transcript of Meeting Between Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. – July 25, 1990 (Eight days before the August 2, 1990 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait) July 25, 1990 – Presidential Palace – Baghdad U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see… Read more »
When compared with the Nazis who decided upon the invasion of Poland, those who instigated the invasion of Iraq come off even worse in one significant respect. The Nazis faked a Polish attack upon Germany and then invaded Poland ‘in response’. To focus upon the important tense here: the Nazis claimed they had been attacked. By contrast, the Western powers that invaded Iraq claimed that one day they could be attacked. That was the explicit basis for the invasion: that one day they ‘could be’ attacked via Iraq’s deployment of WMD. Could. Might. Maybe. You never know. Hey, it’s a theoretical possibility! We have to assign it a non-zero probability, even if vanishingly small! The outrage is not that the fabled WMD didn’t exist; it’s that ‘We could be attacked one day!’ was thought sufficient excuse for an invasion, given that such weapons existed. Not even the Nazis thought ‘We… Read more »
The Sun, subsequently carried the headline “Brits 45mins from doom”,[4] while the Daily Star reported “Mad Saddam ready to attack: 45 minutes from a chemical war”,[5] helping to create the impression among the British public that Iraq was a threat to Britain.
The UN has proven to be unfit for purpose; without the muscle to enforce its myriad of laws.
We are left with the current reality of how our species actually operates: one tribe of killer apes seeking an advantage over the other tribes.
As a species, we aren’t as civilized as we think we are.
That’s because it’s based in NY and dominated by the US which as discussed has no respect for law or treaties or anything other than what meets their needs.
Let’s not forget that there was a time, not so long ago, when the US didn’t even exist yet.
Back then, it was other countries who had no respect for law, or treaties, or anything other than what met their needs.
That said, of course the US is our big global problem right now.
But I see little sign that anything is being done about it.
True, but to be honest back then there was no such thing as international law or the modern concepts of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Things like the Geneva and Hague conventions simply didn’t exist until relatively recently. Indeed, the whole of international and humanitarian law is virtually entirely western in its conception and development, relying first on the League of Nations and later the United Nations for any serious effort at enforcement.
That said, now such things do exist the governments of the West have no excuse for non-compliance, especially as it’s they who are most vocal in supporting the prosecution of those nations in violation of such norms.
Indeed.
I was just pointing out that the laws and institutions which men create are always vulnerable to attack by men who don’t give a damn, and there are no guarantees that the same men won’t change them, ignore them, or even destroy them.
Once the likes of Bolton and Pompeo start ruling the roost, anything goes.
Only the devil could be behind half-decent government being corrupted to the extent it is today.
I really wonder what on earth could lead people to actually want a career in politics, apart from filling the space left by an influential relative who had successfully bribed or threatened his way into a very lucrative version of what really ought to be a poorly paid vocation in the service of the nation.
Pop culture:
League of Nations – Justice League
United Nations – Avengers
All propaganda.
It sometimes needs things coming to a head for things to change. Germany started two world wars and photos exist from the destruction, all families have bad war stories. To this day in 2019 the after effects of WWII are with me – and they are not good. Germans resent war. The many refugees who they have accommodated, do, too. Motivating people who live in Germany for war is probably not possible. Hiring Ukrainian mercenaries, yes. But will they be enough? And their motivation is to destroy Russia – not destroy the ME. If you think in historical phases, the Iraq war taught everyone a lesson. You can’t always get what you want. Afghanistan, the same. The idea that killing Saddam and then Gaddafi would net those two countries for the American areas of influence was amateurish thinking and delusional. And now we have the mess. There is an end… Read more »
” Motivating people who live in Germany for war is probably not possible.”
I am German and I don’t recall much resistance against waging war in Yugoslavia, ignoring International Law.
On the contrary. The media were very successful in spinning the story of the “bad” Serbs killing the “good” Albanians in the thousands and how it was necessary to avoid another
“Auschwitz”.
I remember very well, how famous writer Peter Handke was vilified in Germany, because he dared beg to consider, that atrocities were committed from both sides.
One does not need look at the Middle East for the slaughter of christians.
German re-unification gave the impetus for taking out the socialist nation of Yugoslavia
and settling an old score with the Serbian population within.
Hardly a month goes by without some EU beaurocrat droning on about the wonderful peace
within Europe and what a boon the EU is to its citizens.
And NATO, our allies, our wonderful allies! Strong and resillient. The best. Tip of the top.
Vile, nasty, lobby creatures selling us out.
I’m going to watch the video- just call me a masochist- I protested long,loud and often in the lead up to that ultimate war crime,as did millions of others world wide(for all the good it did). Much braver people than I went to Iraq to act as human shields, a tremendously brace if naively futile act – when did killing civilians ever bother the Borg? As an example the of the wilful complicity of the media; in another illegal war, former Yugoslavia, a passenger train was bombed on a bridge, big brace “storming Norman” went on tv to explain the “mistake and showed video of the initial bombing. That same video showed that the attacking plane came back and bombed a second time AFTER it was clear it was a passenger train. What the sycophantic media never questioned was WHY or how to excuse that second attack. I hear Frankie… Read more »
I’ll probably watch it too, but only after taking strong stomach-tranquillizing medicine . . .
“Know thine enemy”, sort of thing.
People often misrepresent the complete destruction of Iraq and its reduction to a failed state hellhole as the product of misguided or badly implemented policies. But this is wrong. This is what was supposed to happen. This was a war for Israel. That was the ONLY purpose of the war. The Chosen Folk who rule the roost in the Jew Ess Ayy wanted Iraq completely destroyed, with the stupid goys supplying the muscle, the money and the blood. It was NOTHING to do with Oil, Saudi Arabia, or any of the other smokescreens and diversions thrown up by the hasbara merchants.
The same applies to Libya.
The same applies to Syria.
The same applies to the war the Chosen Folk have been trying to incite for years against Iran.
There is nothing accidental about any of it.
“nothing accidental about any of it”
Precisely!
Creating mayhem and chaos is not a mistake, it is a deliberate policy to overwhelm and bleed those the West and Zionists don’t like.
Saddam Hussein also had a contract with the French (Total or elf Aquitaine) coming into effect on 1st April 2003 – selling oil for Euros. That concept needed to be destroyed. It was killing two birds with one stone: 1. Kill off people who are anti-Israel and 2. Get out of the USD monopoly.
French Président Jacques Chirac had been a personal friend of Saddam since about 1974. Not one word, as bad as Mitterrand.
Well said Wilmers, I was about to add that, before I scrolled down … 🙂
The ole’ Axis of Evil, threatening Dollar Hegemony on daily trades would have bankrupted the U$A and they could still do, oh wait, Trump has just shaken hands briefly with Kim in the DMZ, whilst on tour to S. Korea…
Trump, a master of negotiating Bankruptcy, ideal for the job most pressing, in hand …
with military assistance, thriving on cue/’Q’ 😉
One suspects you’d attribute a bad case of diarrhoea to a zionist plot….
I always read your output in that spirit. 🙂
One suspects you’d attribute a bad zionist plot, to a case of mild diarrhoea 😉
I always read your output in that spirit. 🙂
Mark, it would be good if you might distinguish between Jews and Zionists. Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jews. Blaming Jews who are deeply distressed and ashamed at what is happening for actions they oppose makes the situation worse.
Thank you… They knew it was not. That’s why they concocted phony “Weapons of Mass Destruction” lies to try and deceive the United Nations into granting Security Council approval for the attack–and their obvious lies failed. That made the entire war a breach of the UN Charter and the “Supreme International Crime,” Crimes Against the Peace. Every subsequent action was the direct fault of those who initiated the war, every atrocity, every evil, every consequence, every kidnapping, every maiming, every rape, every murder. These people are monsters towering well above and beyond the Saddams or Qaddafis of the world. As soon as the coming financial chaos allows, this is how we can renovate our own states, simply by applying the existing laws that all members of the UN are signatories. Of course as UN courts for war crimes have been absolutely corrupted, we need to try these people in their… Read more »
Empires don’t cave in under pressure.
They collapse under the weight of their own hubris.
AND pressure.
The rest of the world doesn’t just sit and wait, and in this case, many Americans are beginning to suspect that they are in trouble internationally.
Why the US hasn’t been already expelled from every international organisation?
There is mounting evidence and compelling reasons to shut down every American diplomatic mission across the globe.
And they shouldn’t be allowed back in unless:
– A non-aggression treaty on state-level is signed, and,
– In turn, on individual level, EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN PERSON involved SINGS A NON AGRESSION agreement, and commitment to adhere to non-subversive conduct.
This should also apply to the so-called ‘staunch US allies’.
The premises of every American mission should be made of transparent glass and placed under constant video and audio surveillance. Surveillance footage must be available in real-time to every citizen in the host country.
They have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about, right? or that only applies to little people, and the powerful is exempt from scrutiny?
* That should be SIGNS but SINGS is also very welcome!
“Fear” is the answer.
As Bushling said, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists”.
And international organizations don’t want to end up on the US’s terrorist list.
It’s almost funny . . .
“It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: “You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was “to be as rich and as wise as an American”. What happened?” “An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the 10 years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country-by-country, intervention-by-intervention. The opportunity to build the war ravaged world anew, to lay the foundations for peace, prosperity and justice, collapsed under the awful weight of anti-communism.” https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0XYfckWvZSL9IQDjK60pZdr6sUaGgxtLw6Lws55QAEFqVQ30raw-GeawI Thus begins William Blum’s blistering account of terrible crimes committed in the… Read more »
You have to ask, if we know we have been lied to time and time and time again, just what can you believe any more? We know we have been lied to about Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Russia, Venezuela, Skripal, Russiagate, David Kelly, 9/11, USS Liberty, Gladio, an endless catalogue of “terrorist” incidents, to name but a few. The list is long and undistinguished. So what else have we been lied to about that is generally accepted? What about the “holocaust”? Is that just another of their hoaxes? Why wouldn’t they lie about that? They’ve lied about everything else. Why should that be any different? And what else? Maybe all history text books are full of the same lies and hoaxes. You can’t take anything at all at face value any more.
Because they could not lie about the Holocaust after the war, but they did omit saying very much when it was being carried out, they still hoped to use Germany exclusively against the USSR, re Patton and others.
The real problem was that there was actual journalism, they could suppress, distort but not wholly fabric. The difference began in the 1960s when media became corporatised and then ol9garchical, then it would pint compete lies (see Mirduch Australian 1975), marginalize critics as conspiracy nuts. Since 1990s, they have just churned out PR with no attempt to even make the lies consistent of believable.
That is the difference
1914, human bodies being turned into soap by Germans.
Ditto, 1945. Plus lamp shades.
1990. Iraq incubator babies.
I suppose being born in 1956 helps a little, as Holocust survivors actually lived on my street, as did survivors of Japanese interment camps, also having studied the historical evidence, that is a help. Also seeing the types of lies change over time, and the development of counter-measures to the truth that the CIA and other intelligence groups have come up with, puts what can be lied about into a framework of when and how [articular forms of deception are used. The lies of 1914,-1918 were lies of exaggeration and additive nature. But what most people do not know was that German military policy towards the civilians in occupied territory was “Dreadfulness”, this was because in the Franco-Prussian War the milkmaids of Paris convinced the Prussian soldiers to mt take the city. In 1914, there were numbers of mass shootings in Belgium, and later i France, in order to create… Read more »
“You can’t take anything at all at face value any more.”
not even the music we ‘lovingly’ grew up with !
http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/inside-the-lc-the-strange-but-mostly-true-story-of-laurel-canyon-and-the-birth-of-the-hippie-generation-part-i/
“Riders on the storm (repeat)
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm” of Geo-Political, Societal & Weather Engineering…
Check the link, mark, and you’ll finally understand what provoked Frank Zappa,
to name a certain piece “PENIS DIMENSIONS” 😉