The true shock and awe of this film's premise is that an entire nation was duped by George W. Bush and his warmongers with a false pretext for going to war against Iraq in 2003. The focus of the film is on a tiny number of reporters for the Knight Ridder outlet, who came to believe that the Bush administration's promotion of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein was a lie.
While the reporters in the film were not of the level of tenacity of Woodward and Bernstein, the Watergate premise was precisely the goal of filmmaker Rob Reiner, who reserved the role of the crusty newspaper editor for himself.
The film opens with a quote from journalist Bill Moyers about the importance of a "diverse, independent, and free media" to a democratic society. The film is successful in demonstrating that thesis. It is also obvious that the absence of objectivity of the mainstream media is even more disgraceful today than it was in 2003 at the start of the Iraq war.
A shortcoming of the film is that it did not follow through on its premise that the Iraq war was a misguided fiasco. A number of statistics were flashed on the screen, which were used to show the tremendous costs, loss of life, and destabilization of the Middle East, leading to the main question posed by the filmmakers: "How the hell did this happen?" Yet, there are some who still stand behind the Iraq war, including current national security advisor John Bolton. While I personally agree with the filmmakers, the chaos for the people of Iraq could have been unfolded more completely in the film.
Still, the film was successful in showing how, in the climate following 9/11, there was not enough push back and dissent against the Bush administration's decision to go to war, the complaisant members of Congress who enabled him, and the pathetic effort on the part of the media to fail to explore the facts. The war in Iraq also set the tone for this nation in what has become a nearly perpetual state of war this country is fighting somewhere on the planet.
A decision to go to war was made, and the Bush administration, especially Cheney and Rumsfeld, used phony evidence provided the intelligence community to support it. The key moment in the film is the Colin Powell speech before the United Nations' Security Council with CIA director George Tenet sitting in back of him. In the film, Powell was described as "the last person standing between peace and war. " Yet Powell, backed up by the arrogant Tenet, seemingly had no difficulty in spinning the yarn about WMDs. With great understatement, Powell later referred to the speech as a "blot" on his record.
Did Powell learn anything at all from his experiences in Vietnam and the doctrine that bears his name? The answer delivered in this film is a resounding "No."
While the reporters in the film were not of the level of tenacity of Woodward and Bernstein, the Watergate premise was precisely the goal of filmmaker Rob Reiner, who reserved the role of the crusty newspaper editor for himself.
The film opens with a quote from journalist Bill Moyers about the importance of a "diverse, independent, and free media" to a democratic society. The film is successful in demonstrating that thesis. It is also obvious that the absence of objectivity of the mainstream media is even more disgraceful today than it was in 2003 at the start of the Iraq war.
A shortcoming of the film is that it did not follow through on its premise that the Iraq war was a misguided fiasco. A number of statistics were flashed on the screen, which were used to show the tremendous costs, loss of life, and destabilization of the Middle East, leading to the main question posed by the filmmakers: "How the hell did this happen?" Yet, there are some who still stand behind the Iraq war, including current national security advisor John Bolton. While I personally agree with the filmmakers, the chaos for the people of Iraq could have been unfolded more completely in the film.
Still, the film was successful in showing how, in the climate following 9/11, there was not enough push back and dissent against the Bush administration's decision to go to war, the complaisant members of Congress who enabled him, and the pathetic effort on the part of the media to fail to explore the facts. The war in Iraq also set the tone for this nation in what has become a nearly perpetual state of war this country is fighting somewhere on the planet.
A decision to go to war was made, and the Bush administration, especially Cheney and Rumsfeld, used phony evidence provided the intelligence community to support it. The key moment in the film is the Colin Powell speech before the United Nations' Security Council with CIA director George Tenet sitting in back of him. In the film, Powell was described as "the last person standing between peace and war. " Yet Powell, backed up by the arrogant Tenet, seemingly had no difficulty in spinning the yarn about WMDs. With great understatement, Powell later referred to the speech as a "blot" on his record.
Did Powell learn anything at all from his experiences in Vietnam and the doctrine that bears his name? The answer delivered in this film is a resounding "No."