FRONTLINE "The Lost Year in Iraq" at pbs.org/frontline

As America looks for an exit strategy in Iraq, FRONTLINE examines the early efforts, ideals and critical decisions of the US-led regime in Baghdad. Watch it on air and online at http://www.pbs.org/frontline/yeariniraq/ beginning Oct 17.

In the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, a group of Americans led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III set off to Baghdad to build a new nation and establish democracy in the Arab Middle East. One year later, with Bremer forced to secretly exit what some have called "the most dangerous place on earth," the group left behind lawlessness, insurgency, economic collapse, death, destruction-and much of their idealism. Three years later, as the U.S. continues to look for an exit strategy, the government the Americans helped create and the infrastructure they designed are being tested. FRONTLINE Producer Michael Kirk follows the early efforts and ideals of this group as they tried to seize control and disband the Iraqi police, army and Baathist government-and how they became hardened along the way to the realities of postwar Iraq.

The Lost Year in Iraq is based on numerous first-person interviews and extensive documentation from the FRONTLINE team that produced "Rumsfeld's War," "The Torture Question" and "The Dark Side."

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[jabom99]

good documentary. explains the mindblowing clusterfuck that is iraq.

[breezeman199]

That still would have been better then the alternative path that was actually chosen.

[nyomythus]

...had the old military class been preserved and utilized to "stabilize" Iraq. The headlines would have read: "Baathist War Criminal Gets Second Career as American Employee"; "Once-Wanted Man, Brigadier Kamal Now Shares Jokes With 82nd Airborne"; "Kurds and Shiites Say: What Regime Change?"; "From Basra to Kirkuk, America Brings Saddamism Without Saddam."

[Sueezedtight]

When you put the lunatics in charge of the asylum, what do you expect?