RT: You have an impressive group of experts in the film. It would have been nice, if difficult, to get Cheney on camera --

CF: We tried. Very hard. The rebuttal is in some sense available in many of their public [statements]. What I really wanted was, I wanted to ask them detailed questions about exactly what had occurred, and why they did the things they did. By the time I approached them, I was in possession of an enormous amount of information, and I think it would not have been possible for them to get away with the generalities that they typically use in their public statements. And I think that's why they refused to speak with me, unfortunately. I tried extremely hard to reach these people. I approached them directly. I approached them indirectly. A number of these people and I have mutual friends. Paul Wolfowitz and I have mutual friends. Bremer and I have mutual friends. I obtained Bremer's personal e-mail address. I talked with his publicist. He initially said yes, actually, but then he backed out.

RT: So, what was it like on the ground in Iraq?

CF: Tense. Dangerous. Fascinating. Grim.

RT: You have a few Iraqis on camera essentially saying that Saddam was bad, but their current lives are worse. Do they have hope for the future?

CF: I think most Iraqis now are deeply despondent. Indeed, three million of them have already left the country, and there's another one to two million displaced internally. It's a terribly pessimistic country right now. I think most of them think this is going to go on for a long time.



RT: So where do we go from here?

CF: There's no question that the American presence is going to have to be reduced. It's politically unsustainable in terms of American public opinion and American politics. It's also militarily unsustainable. It's putting an enormous strain on the American military. The American military presence is going to decline. It's going to wind down. Probably, there will be a significant, though smaller, American military presence in Iraq for a very long time, because most people think that if America withdrew completely from Iraq there would be a horrific bloodbath and very possibly a regional war, with Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan on the other, that would kill millions of people and destabilize the entire region. So there's going to be an American presence. I think the big question is when, and how, and in what direction, American diplomacy and policy is going to change. And I have to say that I'm not optimistic that that's going to happen while President Bush is still in office. Unfortunately, much of the function that American troops are really performing right now is not the reconstruction of Iraq, which I don't think is a realistic goal at this point. What they're really doing is riot control on a national and regional level. They're keeping the situation from getting completely, totally, chaotically, horrifically out of control.

RT: What are your hopes for the film?

CF: I certainly intend and hope to influence people's thinking, and I'm very optimistic that that will happen. Obviously the public mood and the political mood are changing, and becoming much more critical of the administration, and critical of the conduct of the war and the occupation. But people don't know what happened here. Most people don't. And most people so far with whom I've spoken who've seen the film have been deeply shocked when they see what actually happened, and how these decisions were actually made, and how we got to this point. And it is indeed actually shocking that our government would conduct itself this way. I made this film so that it would affect people's thinking, and I'm optimistic that that will occur. Thus far the reception has been very good, and people have been very gratified and very responsive. For example, the trailer to the film was posted on the internet about three weeks ago on a number of sites. One of them was YouTube. In the first two weeks it was on YouTube, 20,000 people looked at it. In the third week, 175,000 people looked at it. That suggests that people are interested.

RT: Do you have any plans to make more movies in the future?

CF: I would love to. I found the process of making this film enormously fulfilling. It was one of the most enjoyable, most rewarding things that I've ever done. I'm not sure what will be next, what will be easiest to get funding for, but yeah, I've got many, many things that I'd like to do.