| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
WMD?
Unusually, the CIA here are the good guys - or at least the less bad guys - and we are presented with the deliberate lie of WMDs in Iraq as a conflict within the US administration as to the most plausible excuse for an ideological war.
The desire to prevent an ethnic conflict conflicts with the desire to simply administer a country as a colony. This, in its turn, produces conflict within the US side as to whether the political challenges outlined here are soluble via the torture and murder of political opponents - creating more terrorism and insurgency - or by diplomacy and paying people to do as one wishes. And without a sizable civilian infrastructure to replace that which is destroyed, only the latter has any chance of success.
The problem with this undoubtedly-exciting movie is that it simplifies geopolitical reality for the sake of entertainment. It represents a reality not far enough removed from the Green Zone mentality it criticizes - that never ventures far from that Zone - and so, itself, does not understand the Middle East in any real depth - nor, indeed, the White culture that wishes to exploit it. Nevertheless it does fully grasp the essential point: You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
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