Muqtada al-Sadr, shown in newsreel footage inciting anti-American insurgents, makes a similar distinction between the old authoritarian rule and the American occupying forces: Hussein was the "little Satan," America the "great Satan." It could have been otherwise, Ferguson suggests. The Iraqis may have regarded Americans more like avenging angels had the Bush administration heeded the advice of its Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA).
Narrated by Campbell Scott with a neutrality that makes its content all the more incendiary, No End focuses its attention on May 2003, after President Bush spoke in front of a "mission accomplished" banner but before plans to stabilize and rebuild Iraq had been implemented. According to Ferguson's film, it took the United States two years to plan its policy to rebuild Germany after World War II; it took less than 60 days for the U.S. to plan its policy to rebuild Iraq, much of it done by those not fluent in the country's language or culture.
Many of the 35 talking heads interviewed by Ferguson, a Brookings Institution policy wonk and software designer who self-financed the $2 million film, are or were high-ranking officials in the administration. Some, like Col. Paul Hughes and Gen. Jay Garner, were from the Pentagon. Others, like Bodine, came from the State Department.
With the exception of Walter Slocombe, adviser to the the Coalition Provisional Authority, which succeeded the ORHA, no one interviewed defends the U.S. decisions to "de-Ba'athify" Iraq and demobilize its army.
