"Bush's War" - anyone else disappointed with this PBS show? Critiques welcome here.

[Voice for Peace]

(I don't mean disappointed with the war)

[enid602]

1. WP

I thought they should have mentioned the use of white phosphorous in Fallujah.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

23. They didn't only use it in Fallujah. The used it at the beginning of the war, and it was reported as

napalm by a CNN reporter.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/21/otsc.irq.savidge/

snip

It is now estimated the hill was hit so badly by missiles, artillery and by the Air Force, that they shaved a couple of feet off it. And anything that was up there that was left after all the explosions was then hit with napalm. And that pretty much put an end to any Iraqi operations up on that hill.

[grasswire]

2. well, the film editor is apparently a freeper

There was a thread yesterday copying some of her posts from freerepublic.com about the show.

[Voice for Peace]

38. Interesting.. do you have a link to that?

[alfredo]

49. There was something about that here on DU do a search.

[grasswire]

50. here ya go

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/posts-by:filmcutter/

[Voice for Peace]

52. thanks very much! nt

[kevinmc]

3. I liked it

I have seen all this on Frontline in different shows .... nice they tied it all together.

Has the whole list of who should be in the Hage(sp?) on war crimes charges.

[datopbanana]

4. meh

[bjnumb9]

5. from the 45 minutes or so that i've been able to watch

i think it's incredible. it's pretty damning stuff to the administration, showing how tying 9/11 to Iraq was obligation number 1 to Bush & Co.

[Oeditpus Rex]

6. I think we need to understand

that "Bush's War" and other such documentaries aren't aimed at the politically aware, but at the idly interested — those who might say, "Gee, I'd like to be more informed, but I just don't have the time/inclination/knowledge to wade into the internet for the truth."

What the "Frontline" crew did that was such a great service was to take all that information that's scattered about the intertubes and put it in a concise 4 1/2-hour package. Yeah, it didn't include everything, but it had more than enough to convince the idly interested, or at least to stir them up.

I'd rather it'd been producers at CBS News or some such other, though, since it would've drawn a much larger audience. But that ain't about to happen.

[Festivito]

7. It skipped money as an aspect, leaving it questionably intangible.

This was a war designed by committee, the PNAC shill for money, the future pipelines for investment for future money, the ground war for Halliburton-to-hide-its-loans money continuing payments to Cheney, and the to-be-inherited someday Carlyle-to-wherever-it-is-now money.

And that's just my main beef.

It's just non-descript enough to let either side think it heard what wanted to hear: Nothing wrong here, move along.

[Echo In Light]

11. Granted I didn't watch much, but that's what I got from it too. Was PNAC even mentioned?

[Breeze54]

12. All the PNAC members were mentioned...

[Echo In Light]

13. Not the same. Was the group identified by name and explored?

[Breeze54]

15. Go to the PBS website and I don't recall the use of that acronym

But Wolfowitz, Rummy, of course were mentioned, etc.

[Echo In Light]

17. Yeah, again, not the same if their think tank and its ideologies weren't explored

I watched some of the beginning online and there wasn't any mention ... naturally, as this group represented a school of thought that had so many specific aims and intentions that required a "new Pearl Harbor." ...making it all the more convenient to not mention this group in the film.

Just sayin'

[Breeze54]

18. Why don't you ask the film maker at 11 AM today on the Washington Post?

He'll be online to answer questions and then come back and tell us what he says.

[Echo In Light]

20. If the PNAC isn't specifically explored, the director will naturally disavow its hidden hand/motives

...justifying why it just wasn't important to delve into it. Standard Establishment response to anything considered to be too 'conspiratorial' as to cast the powers that be in too negative of a light i.e. Bushco is "incompetent," not a group of rabid, anti-democratic war profiteers. You get the picture...

[Breeze54]

24. Wow...I guess you can read his mind, then?

:crazy:

[Echo In Light]

26. No, I'm simply offering a likely response. Ever see any MSM where PNAC comes up?

The pundits silently scramble to trivialize and downplay its significance.

Either way, I haven't the time for a four hr doc on something that is largely common knowledge by now. That aside, it's just my two cents on anyone who would make a doc film about the invasion/occupation without delving into the neocon think tank, most of Bush's first term admin, that openly called for what came to pass.

[Breeze54]

25. Found this for you... "Why didn't you address Dick Cheney's association with JINSA & the PNAC?"

PBS Frontline: 'The Dark Side'

Michael Kirk
Producer
Wednesday, June 21, 2006; 11:00 AM

Producer Michael Kirk was online Wednesday, June 21, at 11 a.m. ET to discuss his PBS Frontline film, "The Dark Side" , a look at Vice President Dick Cheney 's turf battles with the CIA and director George Tenet for control in the war on terror. The film examines intelligence and reports leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the internal tension that simmered beforehand. The leak scandal surrounding Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby , and the comments of former CIA officers have added to the public dissension over the war on terror.

PBS Frontline's "The Dark Side" will air Tuesday, June 20, at 9 p.m. ET ( check local listings ).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/06/12/DI2006061201204.html

snip-->

Los Angeles, Calif.: Dear Mr. Kirk,

Why didn't you address Dick Cheney's association with JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) which (along with PNAC - Project for the New American Century which Cheney was also associated with as his wife is a fellow up at the American Enterprise Institute where PNAC was based under PNAC chairman Bill Kristol) were the main driving force for the Iraq war (with the pro-Israel lobby - AIPAC - leading the charge as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have so accurately outlined in their excellent paper which mentions JINSA and PNAC as well - why no mention of Mearsheimer/Walt paper in your documentary?).

Michael Kirk:

Thank you for your question. The Project for the New American Century was addressed in our film,
"Gunning for Saddam"(which aired in EARLY November 2001 (www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/gunning), and
in the film "War Behind Closed Doors"(www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/Iraq).

[Echo In Light]

28. Good question. Thanks for your diligence

[Echo In Light]

29. "War Behind Closed Doors" is gone. Will watch for "Dark Side" in June

[Echo In Light]

30. "War Behind..." can be found by accessing their search engine

[Breeze54]

31. I think that was June '06, but I might be wrong... You can watch it online here-->

The Dark Side
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/

posted june 20, 2006

[Echo In Light]

40. Gotchya

[Voice for Peace]

33. I thought they almost made a case for Cheney et al's innocence. Perhaps this was

a fair look at the facts but it seemed to simply present these people as having poor judgement, nothing more. I don't quite believe that.

[Voice for Peace]

32. I thought it skipped almost entirely the human cost of the war.

I have seen many of these interviews before and was expecting something much more illuminating and devastating. Although it effectively showed how utterly chaotic and mismanaged it was from the beginning, it didn't didn't cover the real horror.. seemed like it could have been made by people who hadn't even noticed all of the lives lost.

[Supersedeas]

47. the human costs and the importance of Oil as a strategic motivation

[Voice for Peace]

48. yes, exactly nt

[Festivito]

55. Which would be fine to convince the already converted.

The human human cost of war is the primary concern (and is the best of concerns) for the people in America who already voted against these Republicans. This program needs to reach those whose concern is like the concern for those who have started and run this horrible war.

These reachable people need to know that their belief in corporations over people is wrong; corporations are not better than people. Just look of what they have wrought, but in terms of what they respect: money more than people.

They need to know the cost that is hidden from them is monetary as well.

It was an excellent show. But, just another preacher preaching to the choir, while the roof over the congregation already opens to the elements.

Sorry it took so long to find an internet connect.

[chelsea0011]

8. A lot of it seemed a rehash of the movie "No Way Out" which was

a much better production.

[LeftHander]

9. Basically sets up Rice as primary choice for VP....

THis "problem" the Iraq War was destined to continue into another GOP administration.

McCain/Rice ticket will actually play to the Republicans. This program shifted blame away from Rice and made her look like the savior. It made her look like she was unable to do her job effectively as long as Rumsfeld as Powell were in the administration. Removing Rumsfeld was key.

The show did expose how wrong Cheney and Rumsfeld and the other neocons were and still are. How arrogant they are and how ineffective and incompetent of leader Bush is.

[Voice for Peace]

39. Interesting..setting up Rice as VP?

It made me wonder about Powell as VP, actually -- I started another thread asking about that, because i have heard some rumors. Not as VP to McCain but Obama. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3061367

[Breeze54]

10. Frontline producer Michael Kirk will be online Wednesday, March 26 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss it today

I think they did their best to point out the lies and liars but they could have included a lot
more, as was already mentioned but then it would have been a miniseries. I think it did do a
service as a reminder to all of what happened, in sequence, and who the players were but
maybe they had to keep it within a two hour time frame? They did repeat after each part,
that there are many, many online interviews available on PBS that they weren't able to include
in the finished piece.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/

400+ extended interviews
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/interviews/

Frontline producer Michael Kirk


will be online Wednesday, March 26 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss his two-part film "Bush's War,"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/03/16/DI2008031602418.html

Kirk has produced more than two hundred national television programs. A former Nieman Fellow
in Journalism at Harvard University, Kirk was the senior producer of Frontline from the series'
inception in 1983 until the fall of 1987. His most recent Frontline productions include "Cheney's
Law," "Endgame," "The Lost Year in Iraq," "The Torture Question," and "The Dark Side," which give
an in-depth assessment of the war on terror and the state of the nation's military establishment,
and "The War Behind Closed Doors," an analysis of the political infighting that led to the war
with Iraq.

[ThomWV]

14. Did you see the first half? It was possibly the best show ever put on Television

We must have been watching different programs for four and a half hours. The first half was pre war and was simply stunning, the second half covered the gross incompetence of the execution of the war and the occupation. If anything it showed Condi to have been the last turd floating, a conniving bitch who outlived much smarter and more powerful rivals by standing off to the side, avoiding doing her job, and waiting for the others to kill each other. In short, she came off as a vile person. Bush himself, a detached idiot who has no business in the office.

This was the first show to connect the dots in a short enough time for the average Republican's attention span to allow them to grasp the damaged done by these incompetent megalomaniacs.

[OregonBlue]

16. Agreed. First half was very good. Great time line information. Second half was disappointing.

[LeftHander]

19. watched both in one sitting....1st half was good...

Agree it does expose the applling level of single mindedness of Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Any time someone keeps mentioning "how smart" someone is...It really simply says how incompetent they really are.

[bdamomma]

21. they were all totally incompetent, and with no plan, and no facts.

horrifying how this filthy administration is still here, and no one is being held accountable, this is a wound on us that will never heal.

I saw some not all of the two parts, will view on line, but while watching I was so furious that this illegal occupation ever took place, we all have been played for fools, and will we be sucked into another illegal invasion?? As Americans are we going to see another country being destroyed by the hands of these maniacs, while our country is paying a very heavy price for this illegal invasion.

[Voice for Peace]

37. I think I was expecting something very different. Having seen a lot of the interviews

before, there was no new information. I thought they effectively conveyed the utter incompetence -- but there seemed little or no emphasis on the true devastation of the war on so many human lives. That, in my opinion, is the real story of Bush's war.

[noel711]

22. It was good, but the ending....

I kinda hoped for live coverage of
federal marshalls arrived at White House,
and bringing out the War Criminals, bush and cheney
for their karmic perp walk.

but... is there enough evidence at least for impeachment?

[Voice for Peace]

36. LOL... that would have been a sweet ending. nt

[xchrom]

27. i thought it was pretty good -- obviously it has to be

a condensed version of events.

but one thing i thought it did well was describe how inevitable the war was given the cast of characters we had in the white house.

this was bush's elected war -- and the program did a fair job of pointing that out.

plus it managed to stack up the fact that it's been disaster after disaster in iraq -- a big impression made in the second half especially.
and i didn't think it was ''nice'' to rice -- i thought it showed how inept they've all been.

rice conflicted with the one ''sane'' voice in the admin -- powell.

and rice clearly supported the nutty invasion.

you never get in all of the nightmares that led us to war that keep us in the war -- etc -- but it is bush's war first and last.

[truebrit71]

34. Parts of this were used in other Frontline productions...

...I kept gettting confused as to whether I'd seen it before or not when it claimed to be new...All of the stuff about Tenent and Cheney were used previously...

I came away feeling disappointed in the 2nd part...seemed to be a rehash of widely known stuff...it tended to concentrate too much on the Rice v Rummy battle and less on the human and financial cost of the war...

Some of the kill shots aired were amazing though...they certainly didn't shy away from portraying the reality of the violence...

I am going to go back and re-watch it without familial interrtuptions and see how it sits then...

[Voice for Peace]

41. Yes, I felt very similarly. I have seen most of those interviews. I was expecting

something very different, ie, more focus on the devastation of human lives.

[truebrit71]

45. Yup...my thoughts exactly...

..

[acmavm]

35. Yes I am. I thought about starting a thread on this but just figured

what the hell.

The criminals pretty much got what I consider a walk, just short of a pat on the back and someone telling them 'nobody's perfect'. It didn't even begin to address the lies, the pain, and the destruction.

[Voice for Peace]

42. Yes, exactly how I felt. Thanks for your pov. nt

[unapatriciated]

43. Crooks and Liars thought it was great...

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/25/pbs-frontline-the-definitive-account-of-bushs-war/
here's the trailer
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x110574

[Loge23]

44. I thought it was superb

It was not the mission of this piece to indict the perpetrators of this atrocity; it was the mission to sort out the facts as they occurred and to get as many of the closest witnesses to share their narrative to what actually happened.
It is the responsibility of the people in a so-called democracy to indict and to hold accountable, so it is us - as a whole - that are remiss.
We can criticize or nit-pick just about every little point in this piece, but I found it to be quite objective.
These are the facts that led up to this calamity. What we do about them is our business and not the purpose of the media or the producers. What more can anyone expect from this?
I think the deranged supporters of this mess would be hard-pressed to defend any of the actions of this administration as recorded in this documentary.

[truebrit71]

46. Maybe so...but it almost made Rummy seem like a sympathetic character as he was trying to draw down

..the troops but Condi wanted more...

It also portrayed Condi as a heavyweight political insider and I just don't see her that way at all...I don't think she has the chops of a Rummy or a Cheney...

[Loge23]

51. Ship of Fools

I do see your point. They did repeatedly mention Rummy's stance on getting out, but didn't Rummy look like an absolute fool clearly in a state of denial? I thought the program showed Rummy in a particularly uncomplimentary light.
Condiliar eventually did prevail, but - to me - that just showed how completely lost these idiots were from the start. No plan, no strategy, no leadership one way of another. Her position was seemingly adopted by default by the time it happened.
But here we are today: Iraq is as screwed up as ever, the Muqtada truce is just about over, and the moron-in-chief is meeting with the Dick and Hadley today. Condi is nowhere in site.
Now we'll just have to hold on for someone to come in in '09 and put the fire out. Unfortunately, the damage is done and only getting worse.

[coalition_unwilling]

53. Call this self-serving, but I think a little more discussion of the

anti-war movement both pre- and post- with its successes (30 million marched against on Feb 15, 2003) and its failures (Dems still haven't cut off funding after holding purse strings for 16 months) would have explained why support for the war went from 70+% for in March 2003 to 70+% against in March 2008.

Think it was a severe oversight not to mention Cindy Sheehan, as her one-person vigil outside the Crawford Ranch almost singlehandedly re-ignited the anti-war movement in this country. Maybe a couple still shots of Arlington West would have helped illustrate the cost of the war for U.S. soldiers.

[warren pease]

54. Mixed review...

I think for people who assume they're getting everything they need to know from CNN or worse, this was an indispensable intro to the concept that these so-called leaders are not only arrogant beyond reason, but seriously incompetent. The fact that they're raving ideologically driven madmen comes out if you're paying close attention to the personalities and the interactions, and maybe if you have a little more context than it's possible to get from CNN et al.

I'm amazed and glad (maybe "glad" is a little flip, but I can't think of the right word now) that they showed and described prisoner treatment at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, although a bit more detail would have been helpful in getting viewers to understand the absolute depravity that their tax dollars are financing. I'm also gratified that they showed this weird, almost giddy enthusiasm for torture on the part of all these fine, moral, christians and men of gawd. I hope the hypocrisy is obvious to all. Good to see they didn't shy away from showing Rumsfeld's hands-on role in promoting torture as just another interrogation technique.

And it was unusual to see Yoo and Addington and Gonzales singled out for particularly vile acts in creating all these lawyerly but ultimately insane justifications for and definitions of torture. By the time Yoo gets through parsing the Geneva Conventions, torture is so narrowly defined that it's almost impossible to meet those new standards. Which is the desired outcome, of course; just another example of fine christian men doing their fine christian jobs on behalf of other find christian men.

Again, it's hard to come away from seeing all this without the nagging sense that these people are both completely insane and seriously dangerous -- and not only to Saddam, but to the continued existence of life on earth. It's pretty clear that they've created a heavy propaganda campaign, using their tools in mass media to get the public to perceive nukes as just another class of weapon in the conventional military arsenal, as though nukes were just bigger versions of existing bombs and carry no additional threats beyond kilo-tonnage and pure explosive power.

So all that, plus looking directly at Bremer's squalid money grubbing; the relative pragmatism of the generals who quit and the incompetence of their successors; US troops without candy and flowers; Chalabi exposed as a lying con man; the way the occupation is treated as just that, rather than this glorious war horseshit we're used to being fed, and that the US is in way over its head and the troops are mainly just trying to stay alive another day, week, month...

However... And there had to be a "however," there were several things that I think could have been handled better, given more context, assigned more importance. And a few things really pissed me off.

I was amazed that Richard Armitage is cast as the voice of reason balancing out the neocon loons. Armitage is no choir boy; he has a somewhat checkered history. He's a career covert operative and former Navy Seal; he was prominent in the Reagan-Bush I era Iran-Contra scam; he's been linked frequently with drug and arms smuggling, using his extensive Intel community contacts as his personal illegal trading network; he's a PNAC member and co-signer of that 1998 letter to Clinton advocating removal of Saddam, which rose from the dead and became US foreign policy the second the GOP stole the 2000 election. So Armitage isn't exactly the voice of moderation and restraint, or at least his history suggest the exact opposite. And unless I missed something, he escapes his own past completely in this film.

I noticed that all the usual white beltway talking heads from the usual right wing institutions were present and polluting the discussion as is customary. Problem is, they're identified by think tank affiliation, but those think tanks might as well have a left-leaning or socialist orientation for all the viewer is told.

The Heritage Foundation; the American Enterprise Institute; the Hoover Institute; the Council on Foreign Relations... probably several more that I missed. So their biases are hidden behind their think tank affiliations and those think tanks, therefore, aren't identified as vital elements of the great wingnut echo chamber.

Also, I saw nobody from the Center for American Progress or any of the other left-orientated think tanks -- all three or four of them. Maybe they can't afford to dress well on their left-leaning salaries and look like shit next to the high-six/low-seven figure neocon mouthpieces.

And I don't remember PNAC being mentioned by name, although most of the bottom feeders were on camera at various times: Perle, Wolfie, Kristol, Armitage, Feith, Bolton... and of course Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Oil wasn't given much prominence among the causes for the invasion and occupation, even though one of the PNACers, in a moment of weird candor, said that although the oil was the only reason to bother with Iraq, they settled on WMDs because that was the only rationale that all the top policy makers could agree on. And if it wasn't all about oil, there are any number of brutal dictatorships around the would that could use a little regime change -- one of them's fairly close, in fact.

But nobody was talking about invading Indonesia to remove the brutal dictator Suharto, even though he'd been known to have killed his own people, not to mention the East Timorese. But he was our guy, he played along with the IMF/World Bank international piracy and plunder cartel, and at least he didn't GAS his own people. That seems to be the line that dictators who oppose the US must not cross.

Finally, their treatment of the role 9/11 played as the kick-starter for all the misery visited on the world by Bush/Cheney et al over the past six years was inadequate at best. That they clung to the official myth isn't surprising; this film wasn't intended as a 9/11 expose anyway.

But whichever version of that day you happen to believe -- or maybe you don't believe any of them and all you want is a real, unmanaged investigation without white house fingerprints all over everything -- it's impossible to deny that, absent PNAC's "new Pearl Harbor," there's no way in hell these bastards could have pulled off a tenth of the stuff they've gotten away with -- both in foreign policy, which now features preemptive war as just another diplomatic tool; and at home, where upward transfer of wealth and suppression through fear are the norm.

So I think that relationship between 9/11 and the Bushies' agenda -- and one creating an opportunity for the other -- should be vital if they intended to deal with causation in any real sense.

Other than that, I really liked Condi's lacquered hair, smiling face and pleasant demeanor. She could go one-on-one with Cheney for best permanent scowl in DC.


wp