This is a article which concerns typical neo-liberal 'Bush bashing', by elitist democrats whose only solution to the world's problems is 'vote Demopcrat!'. I agree the grounds for invasion were pro-Israeli and serve them more than us. We definitely have turned ourselves into a huddling mass awaiting the next act of terrorism so we can feel vent frustration and rage at THEIR hatred of us, by killing Moslems for Jesus, but this is not a solution.

The vote to support the invasion was bi-partisan and Bush can tell all liberals that, "I'm a reflection of YOU" BUT President, and Commander in Chief, Bush has now met the objective of capturing Sadam Hussein alive, so the stage is set. Now these peole can offer their testimony in Sadam's defense at his trial. Oh, how the worm does turn. They miss the point of the matter, like the mis-guided two-party followers must always do to keep this charade going. It's the OIL, dummies; it's the contrived re-construction contracts, dummies; it's the death and suffering of our best and brightest, dummies; it's the Israeli agenda dummies; it's the villainizing of a people for holding non-zionist beliefs in their right to Independence as a State, dummies. It's about REAL loss of civil rights under PATRIOT ACT I and II dummies.

We did this together and we have to get out of it together, not by supporting people who voted for the invasion just because they are registered Democrats. You are opposing your own party-line to oppose the war, you must elect new leaders who will return this empire to its' proper state, concerned for OUR interests and not building a new puppet regime for Corporate oil interests. FOCUS people, FOCUS!

Here's the article, written as if the view of some fashion model air-head, or rock star, is superior to our own in this 'cult of personality' meta-world the sheeple live in.

"Oh, well if THEY oppose President Bush and Republicans, then I guess I better too. When's that top 200 diva's-dogs 5-hour show start anyway?" Comment or send me e-mail at: wahkonta@graffiti.net

START OF ARTICLE EXCERPT AS POSTED ON CTRL.ORG

-Caveat Lector-



Now playing in 2,600 home theaters: Bush's lies about

Iraq



Director Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered" reveals the

deceptions and distortions used to sell the

invasion. And from the limousine liberals at Moby's

bash in NYC to the regular folks in Billings,

Mont., antiwar and anti-Bush audiences are eating

it up.



- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Michelle Goldberg





Dec. 9, 2003 | NEW YORK -- Early one morning in June,

film director Robert Greenwald settled into the study of

his Los Angeles home with the day's newspaper. Midway

through an article was a seemingly innocuous quote from

a Bush administration official assuring the country that

weapons of mass destruction programs would be found in

Iraq.



Greenwald says he got a knot in his stomach. The

administration wasn't talking about finding actual

weapons anymore. Now the rhetoric was about weapons

programs, which might mean little more than sheets of

paper. "I had no faith or confidence that the media

would catch them on their moving of their goal," he

says. "Suddenly, I could see the headline in a month

where they're going to announce victory because they

found programs. I flashed back on all those news

conferences where they said Iraq is a danger and invoked

Armageddon.



"I felt I could do a service by nailing them on this

complete change in why they went to war," Greenwald

says. "Two or three days later I read about this group

of former CIA experts from different branches who were

coming out against [the administration]. I thought,

'Wow, this is interesting.' So I put the two instincts

together." Thus the documentary "Uncovered: The Whole

Truth About the Iraq War" was born. Within a few months,

it was completed.



Since then, "Uncovered" has emerged as a kind of liberal

master narrative about the run-up to Operation Iraqi

Freedom. It's for sale on several major progressive Web

sites, including those of the Nation, Buzzflash, John

Podesta's Center for American Progress, and MoveOn.org

(both MoveOn and the Center for American Progress helped

fund the film). So far, it's sold more than 40,000

copies. Financier and Bush foe George Soros held a

screening of it in New York. Podesta, Bill Clinton's

chief of staff, showed it to an audience of 100 at the

International Spy Museum in Washington, and his center

sent a copy to every member of Congress. When Greenwald

screened it at a 500-seat theater in L.A., people jammed

the aisles, stood in the back, and cheered when it was

over.



And on Sunday, people gathered in more than 2,600

American homes, cafes and community spaces to watch

"Uncovered" at parties organized through the progressive

group MoveOn.org. As Greenwald points out, 2,600 screens

is a huge release for an hour-long documentary.

Hollywood blockbusters, he says, typically open on about

4,000. The showings were held across the country, from a

living room in Clearfield, Utah, to a luxury apartment

in a Donald Trump building on Central Park South, where

pop star Moby and money manager Boykin Curry hosted

about 40 people. At 8:30 p.m. EST, parties nationwide

called in to a massive conference where Eli Pariser,

speaking from Moby's party, interviewed Greenwald, who'd

dialed in from Los Angeles. The questions were submitted

by MoveOn members.



There's nothing new in "Uncovered," but there's power in

the accumulation of expertise that Greenwald presents,

which is one reason Bush's opponents are embracing it.

It consists largely of interviews with former American

intelligence agents, military officers and diplomats who

eviscerate much of the White House's case for war. Among

them are Joseph Wilson, the retired diplomat who

investigated claims that Iraq was shopping for uranium

in Niger and found them baseless; Patrick Lang, former

chief Middle East analyst for the Pentagon's Defense

Intelligence Agency; Chas Freeman, former ambassador to

Saudi Arabia; CIA veteran Robert Baer; and more than a

dozen others. The film opens by introducing each of them

and telling how long each served the United States. The

weight of all their experience gives their criticisms of

the Bush administration a heft missing from news reports

that just quote one or two disgruntled veterans.



The movie does more than just present the case against

the hawks, though. Greenwald wants to make sure that the

administration's prewar claims don't disappear down the

memory hole now that most of them have proven false. To

this end, he compiles footage of Bush and Condoleezza

Rice warning of mushroom clouds and of Paul Wolfowitz

telling Congress that Iraq can pay for its own

reconstruction. Lately, conservative pundits like Andrew

Sullivan have claimed that the administration never

suggested that Iraq was an imminent threat. Greenwald

offers an implicit rejoinder with a montage that begins

with Bush saying, "Delay, indecision and inaction could

lead to a massive and sudden horror." It then cuts to

Rice, who says, "It simply makes no sense to wait any

longer." Then Rumsfeld: "Take action, before it's too

late." And Bush: "We will not wait." The sequence ends

with Vice President Dick Cheney saying, "As President

Bush has said, time is not on our side."



"I believe it's irrefutable that we were lied to and

information was distorted in the effort to get us to go

to war," says Greenwald. "I hope the film is an element

in communicating that. I hope it will reach people who

already feel that, people who are uncertain, and people

who disagree and will be able to look at the film and

make an educated response to what I think will go down

as one of the great tragedies in the history of this

country."



Because Sunday's screenings were hosted by MoveOn

members, it's likely that many viewers already agreed

with Greenwald. Yet even at Moby's Manhattan party,

views were far from uniform about the justice and

justifications of the war.



Boykin Curry, a 37-year-old friend of Moby's who lent

his sprawling apartment for the event, is strongly pro-

war. "I support the war for ultimately liberal reasons,"

he said. "To free 30 million Iraqis from brutal

repression and foster the only liberal democracy in the

Middle East." If that sounds like Paul Wolfowitz's

position, Curry doesn't mind -- in fact, he says he

"loves" the deputy secretary of defense.



Nor were some of his guests particularly political. The

apartment, decorated in earth tones and Asian details,

was full of lovely women with highlighted hair wearing

pointy-toed boots and $150 jeans. Guests were served

pizza, warm fruit pie à la mode and Veuve Clicquot

champagne. Some attendees had never even heard of

MoveOn, but showed up because Curry had invited them.

Curry himself is dismissive of MoveOn's politics, and of

Howard Dean, the favorite candidate of MoveOn members. A

Lieberman supporter, he said if Dean gets the

nomination, he'll vote for Bush.



Yet Curry considers himself a staunch Democrat, and he's

furious about the way the Bush administration

deceptively sold the war and then bungled the

occupation. "Like Joe Lieberman said, George Bush has

given a noble war a bad name," he said. In fact, Curry

blames Bush for ruining the righteous project that

Wolfowitz worked for.



"This isn't about being for the war or against the war,"

said Moby. "It's about a president who lies."



Moby got involved with MoveOn a month and a half ago,

when he agreed to judge the group's "Bush in 30 Seconds"

contest, a competition to create the best anti-Bush

advertisement. He first saw "Uncovered" in the basement

of the Tribeca Grand Hotel on Nov. 6, at a screening

that included Janeane Garofalo, Nation editor Katrina

vanden Heuvel and Joseph Wilson. Moby called the film

"powerful" and said that before seeing it, "I didn't

realize the extent of the deceit. Everyone in the

administration knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that

there were no weapons of mass destruction."



It's not hard to see how "Uncovered" would leave viewers

with that impression. Again and again, Greenwald

juxtaposes scare-mongering quotes from the

administration with expert debunking. First, he shows

Bush saying, "Saddam Hussein had the materials to

produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX

nerve agent." That's followed by Peter Zimmerman, former

chief scientist for the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee, saying: "Any sarin that they were making in

1990, 1991, had a known shelf life of about two months.

Well, if you made it 12 years ago and it had a shelf

life of two months, it may not be safe to drink, but it

isn't sarin nerve gas any longer. And there's no way the

agency could not have known that."



After a clip of Secretary of State Colin Powell's

presentation at the United Nations on Feb. 5, Ray

McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA who founded

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity to protest

the administration's distortions, says, "I would have to

comment here on Secretary of State Colin Powell's debut

as an imagery analyst. It was highly embarrassing for

those of us who know something about the business. We

couldn't tell whether this was an honest mistake by

those who now do the imagery analysis ... or whether

perhaps Colin Powell was being set up."



Much of what these administration critics say has since

proved correct. What's missing from Greenwald's film,

though, is an acknowledgment that people in the Bush

administration were not the only ones who believed that

Iraq had some kind of prohibited weapons. The sarin

Saddam had in 1991 might have broken down, but that

doesn't settle the larger question of whether Saddam

continued to produce biological or chemical weapons

after the U.N. weapons inspectors left in 1998.

Greenwald doesn't interview anyone like Kenneth Pollack,

former director for Gulf affairs at the National

Security Council, a liberal Iraq hawk who at least could

have explained why some well-meaning, seemingly well-

informed people believed that Iraq was a threat, if not

an imminent one. The only journalist in the film is the

Nation's David Corn, who makes important points but who

might usefully have been balanced by pro-war writers

like the New York Times' Thomas Friedman or the New

Republic's Peter Beinart.



"Uncovered's" weakness isn't that it has a point of

view, but that it hardly bothers to take on opposing

ones. Frontline's October documentary, "Truth, War and

Consequences," is just as damning as Greenwald's -- and

covers much of the same ground -- but it's even more

persuasive, because it allows players like Iraqi exile

Ahmad Chalabi and Pentagon advisor Richard Perle to make

their cases, and arguably to hang themselves. It also

suggests the extent to which the administration may have

deceived itself even as it was deceiving the nation, a

hypothesis missing from the fairly black-and-white world

of "Uncovered," in which the administration's possible

motives remain opaque.



Still, even if "Uncovered" lacks nuance, it's largely

accurate and politically effective. Even Curry couldn't

find much to disagree with in the documentary, though he

did think that it trivialized and distorted Wolfowitz's

vision. "I thought 85 percent of it was legit," he said.



"This was a movie about Bush and his lies," said Curry.

"Not about whether this war was justified."



Greenwald doesn't disagree. "I think it's legitimate to

debate whether to go to war on the neoconservative

argument that we need to go in and fix the Middle East,"

he says. "It's illegitimate nonsense to talk about

weapons of mass destruction and terrorism."



Not that the administration is talking about either

anymore. On Sunday, White House chief of staff Andy Card

appeared on CNN and declared that questions about prewar

intelligence are now "moot" given Saddam's atrocious

human rights record.



And what about weapons of mass destruction? "We think

there's evidence of some programs that they had," Card

said.

END OF ARTICLE EXCERPT