Tweet
Film Review: 'Uncovered: the War on Iraq'
A highly impressive array of talking heads deliver vivid counterarguments to the Bush administration's rationales for the war in Iraq in Robert Greenwald's documentary, the latest in a seemingly endless spate of politically themed films being released in conjunction with the campaign season.
Expanded for this theatrical release, via Cinema Libre Distribution, from the 50-minute version previously released on DVD, "Uncovered: The War on Iraq" provides compelling arguments that even those on the right wing of the political spectrum will be hard pressed to entirely refute.
Eschewing narration and excessive histrionics in its presentation, the film is essentially a series of filmed testimonies from a large number of experts representing the military, diplomatic and intelligence fields, interspersed with news footage recapping the administration's buildup to the war.
The film begins with the interview subjects stating their names and credentials, and the sheer breadth and volume of them is quite overwhelming. They include Stansfield Turner, former head of the CIA; Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat who blew the whistle on the false assertion regarding Iraq's purchasing uranium from Niger; Ray McGovern, a top CIA analyst for nearly three decades; Scott Ritter, the former top U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq; David Kay, who was subsequently appointed by Bush to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and many, many others.
These figures, representing a broad swath in terms of philosophies and politics, deliver damning refutations of the Bush team's assertions, which are, naturally, edited for maximum effect. While the arguments obviously will be digested differently according to the viewer's preconceived notions, the impressive credentials of the witnesses, most of them former insiders rather than mere pontificators, give their arguments an undeniable credibility.
A highly impressive array of talking heads deliver vivid counterarguments to the Bush administration's rationales for the war in Iraq in Robert Greenwald's documentary, the latest in a seemingly endless spate of politically themed films being released in conjunction with the campaign season.
Expanded for this theatrical release, via Cinema Libre Distribution, from the 50-minute version previously released on DVD, "Uncovered: The War on Iraq" provides compelling arguments that even those on the right wing of the political spectrum will be hard pressed to entirely refute.
Eschewing narration and excessive histrionics in its presentation, the film is essentially a series of filmed testimonies from a large number of experts representing the military, diplomatic and intelligence fields, interspersed with news footage recapping the administration's buildup to the war.
The film begins with the interview subjects stating their names and credentials, and the sheer breadth and volume of them is quite overwhelming. They include Stansfield Turner, former head of the CIA; Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat who blew the whistle on the false assertion regarding Iraq's purchasing uranium from Niger; Ray McGovern, a top CIA analyst for nearly three decades; Scott Ritter, the former top U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq; David Kay, who was subsequently appointed by Bush to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and many, many others.
These figures, representing a broad swath in terms of philosophies and politics, deliver damning refutations of the Bush team's assertions, which are, naturally, edited for maximum effect. While the arguments obviously will be digested differently according to the viewer's preconceived notions, the impressive credentials of the witnesses, most of them former insiders rather than mere pontificators, give their arguments an undeniable credibility.
Comment