posted on October 8, 2003 05:23:50 PM new
'Frontline' takes a chilling look at U.S. conflict in Iraq
Vince Horiuchi
The Salt Lake Tribune
The PBS documentary series "Frontline" launches its new fall season Thursday with a chilling, in-depth look at the war in Iraq. It sifts through the politics and infighting in our own government and probes the larger questions about U.S. policy in the war.
"Truth, War and Consequences" is a 90-minute look at how the conflict began and whether the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence reports about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. The film airs Thursday on KUED Channel 7 at 8 p.m.
The documentary also looks at thus far botched attempts to bring order to a post-war Iraq, a process that already has resulted in the deaths of more U.S. soldiers than during the actual war itself.
Reporter Martin Smith begins the film by introducing the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an organization of exiled Iraqi officials headed by Ahmad Chalabi, which was given the role of planning a post-war Iraq.
It also follows Chalabi, who once attempted a coup against Saddam Hussein but failed without U.S. support during the Clinton administration. Later, Chalabi was a major player in convincing the U.S. government that there was a connection between Saddam and the terrorist network, al-Qaida, after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But as the film details, questions remain about whether the Bush administration gave the American people honest information concerning Saddam building WMD.
Former State Department official Greg Thielmann questions the truthfulness of Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 5 address to the United Nations, in which he claimed Saddam possessed chemical weapons and the ability to build a nuclear bomb.
"If one goes back to that very long presentation, point by point, one finds that this was not a very honest explanation," Thielmann says in the documentary.
What "Truth, War and Consequences" does well is delve deeply into the issue, as other "Frontline" documentaries have. It probes the reasons for the government's post-war difficulties, including the effects that looting by the Iraqis have had on U.S efforts to organize reconstruction.
The film is a methodical and a fair overview of the crisis so far, and brings perspective to an issue that has been clouded by rhetoric from the Bush administration.
It is why the "Frontline" series is one of the finest news documentary programs on TV. "Frontline" always makes a persuasive and enthralling argument with fair reporting and without flash and hype. There is plenty of truth to be told in this war, and this film takes a mighty step in that direction.
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Television columnist Vince Horiuchi appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at [email protected].
As someone on another messeage board said, "She lies, they all lie and the media lies for them." The public can't believe its all a BIG LIE so they get away with it.
Rumsfeld told reporters on Tuesday, "It's not quite clear to me why" Ms. Rice sent him a memorandum on the subject. When he was pressed on the question by a German broadcast reporter, he retorted: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?"
As entertaining as all this is to fans of Washington psychodramas, there are important decisions to be made about postwar Iraq and not a lot of reassurance so far that they are being made correctly. If Ms. Rice's memo signals a real attempt to exercise political control over the violence and instability in Iraq, that would be welcome. But so far, the grandly named Iraq Stabilization Group seems more like an attempt to substitute title-building for nation-building — reminiscent of this administration's announcement that it was dealing with unemployment by creating a new assistant secretary post at the Labor Department.
posted on October 9, 2003 11:47:54 AM new
Rumsfield's medication seems to wear off before he speaks. His unrelentless, condesending and arrogant behaviour makes me wonder about his mental health, especially at a time when the U.S. needs the world to help with the Iraq clean-up.
