Uncovered - The War on Iraq

You heard it from Michael Moore; now you can hear it from the director of ‘Xanadu’, ‘Sweet Hearts Dance’ and ‘Breaking Up’. You know what? The guy who paired Olivia Newton-John with Michael Beck, Susan Sarandon with Don Johnson, and Salma Hayek with Russell Crowe (is he misogynist or what?) has made the more serious and intellectually damning critique of the case(s) made by Bush and his cronies in favour of invading Iraq.

Greenwald’s method is simple, clear and direct. After introducing an astonishingly numerous, well-qualified cast of experts – politicians, CIA supremos, diplomats, military bosses, intelligence boffins, etc, etc – he leads us, by means of archive footage, through all the various claims used at one point or another by the warmongers to justify their pernicious plans. At each stage, the experts question and correct the culprits’ ‘facts’ and figures, and deconstruct and destroy their patently flawed ‘arguments’. The process is syllogistically straightforward and subtly devastating in effect.

Despite the bleak consequences of the hawks’ actions (and the US media’s complicit cover-up policies), this saddening document of downright deceit and maddening idiocy is entertaining throughout, thanks to deft editing and the wit and articulacy of several contributors (Ray McGovern and David Kay are especially eloquent). It’s a frightening study of arrogantly self-serving dishonesty and blind faith in the immoral conceit that might is right, and the fact that so many were ready to raise their voices in dissent is both evidence of how bad things have become, and cause for hope – however modest – that a proper sense of right and wrong may one day return.