No End In Sight: Iraq's Descent Into Chaos

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.

Chris Allbritton was the publisher and editor of his own online publication Back to Iraq, from 2002-2004, reporting from inside the country. He acted as Time magazine’s regional correspondent in Iraq until the summer of 2006.
• December 14, 2005

Graham Allison is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. From 1977 to 1989 Allison served as Dean of the Kennedy School of Government. In the first term of the Clinton administration, Allison served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans, where he coordinated Department of Defense strategy and policy toward Russia, Ukraine, and the other states of the former Soviet Union.
• December 9, 2005

Richard Armitage served as Deputy Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005.
• July 13, 2006

Ken Bacon was the assistant secretary of Defense for Public Affairs from 1994 to 2001. Since 2001 he has served as the president of Refugees International, a non-governmental organization that provides humanitarian assistance and protection for displaced persons around the world. As president of Refugees International, Bacon has advocated on behalf of displaced Iraqis displaced by the war.
• January 24, 2006

James Bamford is an award-winning journalist and author of several books, including A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies.
• February 10, 2006

Amazia Baram is a professor of Middle East history at the University of Haifa, Israel, specializing in the study of Iraq.
• January 26, 2006

Jamal Benomar went to Iraq as principal political adviser to the UN Special Representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Benomar is currently a diplomat with the United Nations, involved in peace-building and post-conflict issues.
• May 1, 2006

Linda Bilmes is a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War, which analyzes the economic effects of the Iraq war.
• December 8, 2005

Ambassador Barbara Bodine was placed in charge of the city of Baghdad by the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA). She left the position shortly after the invasion on May 11, 2003. Bodine is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service.
• December 7, 2005

Gerald Burke worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) as an adviser to Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior, which supervises Iraq’s national police. He left Iraq in 2005.
• July 6, 2006

Ashton Carter is the Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and served as the Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy at the Department of Defense under the Clinton administration.
• December 6, 2005

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the current President of the Global Americana Institute and is a former President of the Middle East Studies Association.
• October 16, 2007

Anthony Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and is also a national security analyst for ABC News.
• January 24, 2006

A. Heather Coyne was recently the chief of party for U.S. Institute of Peace’s (USIP) activities in Iraq. Coyne previously served fifteen months in Iraq as a U.S. Army Reserve civil affairs officer, assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority as the civil society officer for the Baghdad region.
• May 3, 2006

Mark Danner is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bard College.
• December 15, 2005

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.
• December 21, 2005
• October 15, 2007

Major General Paul Eaton (Ret.) was placed in charge of training and organizing the New Iraqi Army and Iraqi security forces after the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the Iraqi Army in 2003.
• February 27, 2006

Ali Fadhil was a doctor in Baghdad, until he became a reporter for the Guardian and National Public Radio. He was chosen as the U.K. Foreign Press Association’s Young Journalist of the Year in 2005 for work he did covering events in Fallujah. In January 2006, Ali Fadhil left Iraq to study journalism at New York University.
• September 23, 2007

James Fallows is a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, and author of Blind into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq.
• January 25, 2006

Omar Fekeiki was born in Baghdad in 1978, and began working as office manager of the Baghdad bureau of the Washington Post shortly after the U.S. invasion.
• November 4, 2007

Sam Gardiner is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, the Air War College, and the Naval War College. Before the 2003 invasion, Gardiner briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the National Security Council on likely outcomes of the effect of bombing on the civilian infrastructure when the air war began.
• February 10, 2006

Marc Garlasco served as a senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon prior to the war in Iraq and as chief of high-value targeting during the war. Later in 2003, he left to become a senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, where he is the resident expert on battle damage assessment, military operations, and interrogations.
• December 15, 2005

Jay Garner served as Director of the Organization of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) for Iraq. He was replaced by L. Paul Bremer less than a month after arriving in Iraq.
• April 20, 2006
• September 9, 2007
• October 27, 2007

Captain Ann Gildroy joined the U.S. Marines in August 2001 and first arrived in Iraq in August 2004. She worked on a variety of missions, including training, equipping, and helping build up an infrastructure for the Iraqi Army.
• June 7, 2006

SPC. Hugo Gonzalez was a field artillery gunner with the U.S. Army. In 2004, he was seriously injured in a vehicle that was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). He spent two years in Walter Reed Army Medical Center before being discharged with a permanent disability pension.
• January 26, 2006

Joost Hiltermann is the Middle East Project Director for the International Crisis Group, an organization that produces reports and recommendations designed to prevent or reduce
the escalation of violent conflict.
• May 8, 2006
• October 12, 2007

Christopher Hitchens writes for Slate and the Daily Mirror and is a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly and Vanity Fair.
• September 20, 2006

Colonel Paul Hughes was assigned to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) and later the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) as Director of the Strategic Policy Office. In April and May 2003, Colonel Hughes was responsible for U.S. efforts to recall the Iraqi Army prior to the CPA’s decision to disband it entirely.
• January 26, 2006
• September 21, 2006
• September 8, 2007

Robert Hutchings was Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), and was responsible for several intelligence estimates on the postwar situation in Iraq.
• April 24, 2006

Dr. Feisal al-Istrabadi was Iraq’s Deputy Ambassador and then its Ambassador to the United Nations.
• February 7, 2006
• October 8, 2007

Warzer Jaff is a journalist and photographer. In March and April 2006, he served as Charles Ferguson’s personal bodyguard and fixer in Iraq.
• November 3, 2007

Ray Jennings is the Chief of Party in Iraq for the U.S. Institute of Peace.
• February 8, 2006

Ken Karcher is a former Lieutenant Colonel with the United States Army Reserve. Karcher deployed to Iraq in May 2005 where he trained Iraqi security forces until he was injured by an IED blast near Baghdad.
• May 3, 2006

Carl Kaysen is a professor emeritus of political economy at MIT and a co-chairman of Committee for International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. From 1964 to 1966, he was Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Kennedy. He was subsequently director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton for ten years and then Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT.
• December 6, 2005

Bernard Kerik served as Police Commissioner of New York City from 2000 to 2001. In May 2003, he went to Iraq to serve as the Interim Minister of Interior and a senior policy adviser to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer. He left Iraq four months, returning to the United States to work as a security consultant. In late 2007, he was indicted on multiple felony charges, including income tax evasion.
• October 15, 2007

Ellen Laipson is the President and CEO of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to enhancing international peace and security through analysis and outreach.
• February 8, 2006

Phebe Marr is a prominent historian of modern Iraq. She was research professor at the National Defense University and a professor of history at the University of Tennessee and at Stanislaus State University in California. In 1999-2000, Marr was a senior scholar at the Wilson Center. She frequently contributes to media discussions about Iraq, has written numerous articles on Iraq, and has testified before many congressional committees in recent years.
• February 9, 2006

Dr. Abbas Milani is Director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science.
• October 24, 2007

Michael Moss has been an investigative reporter with the New York Times since 2000. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his reporting on the lack of protective armor for soldiers in Iraq, and in 1999 for a team effort on Wall Street’s emerging influence in the nursing-home industry.
• July 6, 2006

Captain Seth Moulton of the U.S. Marine Corps led an infantry platoon in Iraq. He is currently serving as a special assistant to General Petraeus in Southern Iraq.
• June 7, 2006

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor, is also the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations and former Dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard University. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology.
• December 8, 2005

George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq.
• September 25, 2005

Robert Perrito is a former head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s international police training program, and is currently a senior program officer in the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He was a career Foreign Service officer with the State Department before joining the Department of Justice.
• May 4, 2006

David Phillips is Executive Director of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and the author of Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco.
• December 14, 2005

Paul Pillar was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia until 2005.
• May 2, 2006

Barry Posen is the Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program.
• December 7, 2005
• September 24, 2007

Samantha Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
• July 12, 2006
• September 13, 2007

Nir Rosen is author of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, which studies the rising sectarian tensions that followed the U.S. invasion of 2003.
• January 29, 2006
• November 9, 2007

Harvey Sapolsky is Professor of Public Policy and Organization and recently retired from teaching political science and directing the MIT Security Studies Program. His current research focuses on three main areas: U. S. defense politics including especially inter-service and civil/military relations; the impact of casualties on the use of force; weapon acquisition policies, military innovation, and the structure and performance of defense industries.
• December 6, 2005

Matt Sherman worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and later the State Department in Iraq.
• May 2, 2006

Walt Slocombe served as Senior Adviser for National Security and Defense to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). He was responsible for recommending the disbanding of the entire Iraqi military as well as Iraq’s intelligence services and secret police, and then overseeing the creation of the New Iraqi Army.
• February 9, 2006
• July 13, 2006

Mike Smith is a former Green Beret in the US Army. He has worked as private security contractor for more than fifteen years. He is currently director of North American operations for Olive Group Security, a British-owned security firm based in Dubai. Between March and September 2004 he was the senior advisor to the Special Operations and Counterterrorism Division of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. In this capacity he trained Iraqi security forces.
• May 2, 2006

Jessica Stern is a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and is a faculty affiliate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is the author of Terror in the Name of God and The Ultimate Terrorists, as well as numerous articles on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
• December 9, 2005

James Torgler is a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves and has worked as defense contractor on issues related to training and equipping the Afghan and Iraqi armies.
• September 25, 2007

Yaroslav Trofimov is a writer for the Wall Street Journal, and author of Faith at War, a travelogue about understanding the Muslim world in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001.
• September 25, 2005

Sarah Leah Whittson is Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.
• December 13, 2005

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, from August 2002 until 2005. Since resigning, Wilkerson has frequently spoken critically of the Bush administration.
• January 27, 2006

Teddy (T.C.) Woody is a specialist in the 48th brigade of the Georgia National Guard. In May 2005 Woody deployed to Iraq. In October 2005 he returned to the US to received medical attention at Walter Reed Memorial Hospital for a heart condition aggravated by conditions in Iraq.
• May 3, 2006

Omar X, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of his safety, is a journalist in the United States on a Fulbright scholarship. Three of his brothers were kidnapped in Baghdad and his father was kidnapped and killed. He is one of more than four million refugees from the Iraq war.
• October 20, 2007

SPC. David Yancey was a military police specialist with the 155th Combat Team. In March 2005, Yancey’s Humvee was struck by an improvised explosive device, which nearly killed him. He has been discharged from the army with a disability pension.
• January 26, 2006