Donald Henry Rumsfeld was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a four-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies.
Barbara K. Bodine is an American academic and former diplomat. Bodine formerly directed the Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative (SINSI) and lectured at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She currently serves as Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University.
The Coalition Provisional Authority was a transitional government of Iraq established following the invasion of the country on 19 March 2003 by U.S.-led Coalition forces. The invasion marked the fall of Ba'athist regime led by Saddam Hussein.
Jay Montgomery Garner is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who in 2003 was appointed as Director of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, making him the immediate replacement of Saddam Hussein as the de facto head of state of Iraq. Garner was soon replaced by Ambassador Paul Bremer and the ambassador's successor organization to ORHA, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
Lewis Paul Bremer III is a retired American diplomat. He was the second de facto head of state of Iraq as leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, from May 2003 until June 2004.
The occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) began on 20 March 2003, when the United States invaded with a military coalition to overthrow Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and continued until 18 December 2011, when the final batch of American troops left the country. While the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia were the largest contributors to the coalition, 29 other countries, such as Japan, were involved in the Iraq War in a lesser capacity. Additionally, several private military contractors took part in enforcing the occupation.
Lawrence Thomas Di Rita is an American political advisor who served as an aide to United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He has also worked as a spokesman for Bank of America.
Charles Henry Ferguson is an American angel investor and strategic advisor to early stage technology startups and venture capital firms, especially in artificial intelligence. He is also the founder and president of Representational Pictures, Inc. and director and producer of four feature documentaries, including No End in Sight (2007), which won the Sundance Special Jury Prize and Inside Job (2010), which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Prior to making films, Ferguson was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Visiting Scholar at MIT and UC Berkeley, and a visiting lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. Earlier in his career Ferguson was the founder and CEO of Vermeer Technologies, developer of FrontPage, which was sold to Microsoft in 1996. Ferguson holds a BA in mathematics from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT. Ferguson is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and sits on the board of directors of the French American Foundation.
The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States-led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict persisted as an insurgency arose against coalition forces and the newly established Iraqi government. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing insurgency.
My Country, My Country is a 2006 documentary film about Iraq under U.S. occupation by the filmmaker Laura Poitras.
Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney, and produced by Gibney, Eva Orner, and Susannah Shipman. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It focuses on the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention and interrogated at a black site at Bagram air base.
The Civilian Police Assistance Training Team or CPATT was a multinational advisory team operating within the US-led coalition in Iraq to rebuild the Iraqi Police.
Green Zone is a 2010 British action thriller film directed by Paul Greengrass and written by Brian Helgeland, based on the 2006 non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The book documented life within the Green Zone in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2: Dissolution of Entities signed by Paul Bremer on behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority on 23 May 2003, disbanded the Iraqi military, security, and intelligence infrastructure of President Saddam Hussein. It has since become an object of controversy, cited by some critics as the biggest American mistake made in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein and as one of the main causes of the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS).
The Hurt Locker is a 2008 American war action thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal. It stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Guy Pearce. The film follows an Iraq War Explosive Ordnance Disposal team who are targeted by insurgents and shows their psychological reactions to the stress of combat. Boal drew on his experience during embedded access to write the screenplay.
Standard Operating Procedure is a 2008 American documentary film written and directed by Errol Morris that explores the meaning of the photographs taken by U.S. military police at the Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003, the content of which revealed the torture and abuse of its prisoners by U.S. soldiers and subsequently resulted in a public scandal.
Inside Job is a 2010 American documentary film, directed by Charles Ferguson, about the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Ferguson, who began researching in 2008, said the film is about "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption", amongst them conflicts of interest of academic research, which led to improved disclosure standards by the American Economic Association. In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices led to the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
De-Ba'athification refers to a policy undertaken in Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and subsequent Iraqi governments to remove the Ba'ath Party's influence in the new Iraqi political system after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. It was considered by the CPA to be Iraq's equivalent to Germany's denazification after World War II. It was first outlined in CPA Order 1 which entered into force on 16 May 2003. The order declared that all public sector employees affiliated with the Ba'ath Party were to be removed from their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the public sector.
The Invisible War is a 2012 American documentary film written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering and Tanner King Barklow about sexual assault in the United States military. It premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the U.S. Documentary Audience Award. The film has been lauded by advocates, lawmakers, and journalists for its influence on government policies to reduce the prevalence of rape in the armed forces.
The Unknown Known is a 2013 American documentary film about the political career of former U.S. Secretary of Defense and congressman Donald Rumsfeld, directed by Academy Award winning documentarian and filmmaker Errol Morris. It is a summary of 33 hours of interviews that Morris conducted with Rumsfeld over eleven separate sessions during visits to Newton, Massachusetts. The film was released on April 4, 2014, by Radius-TWC, and is dedicated to the memory of Roger Ebert.
