22.2.08

no end in sight; are you ready for mccain's 100-year us-military presence in iraq?




Chronological look at the fiasco in Iraq, especially decisions made in the spring of 2003 - and the backgrounds of those making decisions - ... all » immediately following the overthrow of Saddam: no occupation plan, an inadequate team to run the country, insufficient troops to keep order, and three edicts from the White House announced by Bremmer when he took over: no provisional Iraqi government, de-Ba'athification, and disbanding the Iraqi armed services. The film has chapters (from History to Consequences), and the talking heads are reporters, academics, soldiers, military brass, and former Bush-administration officials, including several who were in Baghdad in 2003.

More on the film director, Charles Feguson, from Wikipedia:
Charles Henry Ferguson (b. March 24, 1955) is founder and president of Representational Pictures, Inc., and director and producer of No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, which is his first film. It won a special jury prize for documentaries at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Ferguson was originally educated as a political scientist. He earned BA in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978,[1] and obtained a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. 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 1992-1994 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 Web site development tool, FrontPage™. In early 1996, Ferguson sold Vermeer to Microsoft for $133 million,[2] 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. Ferguson is the author of three books and many articles dealing with various aspects of information technology and its relationships to economic, political, and social issues. Ferguson is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a director of the French-American Foundation, and supports several nonprofit organizations.

For over 20 years, Ferguson has been intensely interested in film, and has regularly attended film festivals such as Telluride for over a decade. In mid-2005, after learning that no major documentary covering U.S. policy in Iraq was being made or was planned, he formed Representational Pictures and began production of No End In Sight. This ultimately resulted in an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in January 2008.

Ferguson is unmarried, and divides his time between Berkeley, California and New York City.

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