The New York Times reviews a show to air tonight which sounds worth watching. Frontline, which probably has the consistently best documentaries to appear on television, has a show on The Lost Year in Iraq:
Very few punches are pulled during this disturbing, eye-opening hour, written, produced and directed by Michael Kirk. And clearly Mr. Kirk and Jim Gilmore, who is credited with the reporting for the film, found no shortage of highly placed people who were willing, even eager, to talk about the disaster that many perceive American-occupied Iraq to have become since the spring of 2003, when President Bush declared victory there.
The film begins with the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein, a scene shown over and over on American television, and the portentous observation that “the Iraqis couldn’t pull it down themselves” because it was so heavy. So the American military helped.
“The Lost Year in Iraq” doesn’t bother going into a discussion about whether the war was a good idea to begin with. It moves right to Baghdad’s fall in April 2003 and the looting that began hours later and soon “verged on chaos,” as the narrator says.
“We were totally unprepared to secure the city,” says Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Jay Garner, the Army general (now retired) who was named director of the Iraq Reconstruction Group, adds, “There was no plan and no staff.”
