In Shifting Sands: The Truth About Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq (2001)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Director:

Scott Ritter

Writers:

Alex Cohn (writer)
Scott Ritter (writer)

Genre:

Documentary

Cast

Tariq Aziz	...	Himself
Rolf Ekeus	...	Himself
Scott Ritter

Also Known As:

In Shifting Sands (USA) (short title)

Runtime:

USA:92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:PG

Company:

Five Rivers

The early timeline of the current Iraq war

I thought plans for the Iraq war began when certain members of George W. Bush's first term cabinet came into power. This documentary makes it clear that people were forming plans to invade Iraq even in the Clinton era. It's not just Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld who came up with the idea, there was a clear desire for the US and ally Britain to remove Saddam by military means fairly soon after the first Gulf war, in UNSCOM's early days.

Ritter does not narrate the documentary but his interview footage appears extensively. "In Shifting Sands" was made before the 2003 Iraq invasion, but it illustrates and fills in the background of how the war came about, even if this was not it's intention. Another thing highlighted is how the UN has become corrupted by one or a small group of nations (The United States and allies). UNSCOM became a US tool, UNMOVIC even more so although that didn't last long. If the US and Britain were prepared to let the matter of Saddam remaining dictator drop, Iraq would have been correctly declared as WMD free a decade ago, sanctions would have been lifted, the UN would still have it's integrity and a war would have not been initiated. Maybe Saddam would have acted up again, who knows, but if UNSCOM had been allowed to give its final verdict on Iraq WMDs, the West would have known Saddam was not a threat. I applaud Scott Ritter for making this film and think a lot more highly of him (after the unflattering remarks about him when he resigned) having seen it.