Uncovered: Tout sur la guerre en Irak

Having now done the troika of anti-war/anti-bush films --F9/11, Outfoxed and now Uncovered: The War on Iraq I only wish I could force feed this film on all republicans " who I'm sure will never get near it and will hold on to their totally misguided viewpoints. This film presents a phalanx of former CIA and diplomatic heavyweights who proceed to tear apart...shred by shred the misleading "evidence" -- the totally fabricated and false rationale for this totally unnecessary war. It is not very funny like F9/11..it is not investigative as is Outfoxed and WMD --the Danny Schecter film: Weapons of Mass Deception --this film just outlines and delienates,carefully and methodically, using REAL experts the deceit and deception --the lies that this "adminstration" have brought to bear to justify the unjustifiable --it is political, it is "biased" but, it is truthful because the people in it were observers (and, in some cases, participants) to the lies perpetuated on the "american public" ...how can we get people to see it? to be exposed to the truth of what has taken place and caused so much heartbreak and anxiety? See it and make others see it as well. ...this is very important

The second of his two documentaries on the 2003-4 Iraq war, Robert Greenwald continues pushing a case against that war by claiming to expose the "truth" about that war, a case that has become gospel among liberal circles but which is not aging very well.

The film centers on two myths about the Iraq war that fall apart upon close scrutiny. The first is on Iraq's building of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Much is made about how "no stockpiles of Iraqi WMDs (weapons of mass destruction, a curious holdover term used by Soviet Russia) were found." To buttress this argument, Greenwald uses David Kay, a chief investigator of Iraq's unconventional weapons programs after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and Scott Ritter, a longtime UN weapons inspector who has been loud and lengthy in attacking the war by claiming Iraq had destroyed its programs in the mid-1990s under UN pressure.

This case, though, falls apart when one examines what the US actually found in Iraq - over 500 tons of weapons grade uranium, the beginnings of a nuclear centrifuge buried in the desert, chemical weapons labs, chemical weapons, missile testing sites, missiles, and voluminous documentation on these programs, documentation that Kay himself has admitted proves that Iraq was building WMDs. Indeed, a major point that Kay and others consistently missed (as does the film) was how Iraq was covering its tracks by streamlining its WMD programs away from big centralized programs to decentralized systems that were much easier to hide - Kay for his part stated that Iraq had built "deception and denial" throughout its WMD programs.

So this case against the war made by the film collapses. Next is Iraq's support of international terrorism in general and Al Qaida in particular. To argue that Iraq did not back Al Qaida, the film must ignore the voluminous documentation unearthed in Iraq (to be fair, most of it has yet to be declassified) showing that Iraq not only worked with Al Qaida, it showed the two to be closer allies than most could reasonably believe years earlier.

The film, like Greenwald's other work, strives to make an argument that can only be made by skillful manipulation of the truth, an argument that time is steadily discrediting the more Iraq recovers from the imperial past of Saddam Hussein.

This film is absolutely no different than the film "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War (2003)". I find that funny because that film claims in the title to be "The Whole Truth", which implies that it is complete. If it wasn't complete, why call it that? If it was complete, why make another film that not only rehashes the same stomping ground, but literally is the same film with the same cuts and dialog (with the addition only of 27 minutes)? At the very most, this should be called a director's cut of the original film, not an entirely different one. The other things that are laughable about this film is it is missing so much about the war in/on Iraq. Anyone who watches the History Channel on a regular basis knows that. There are so many OTHER documentaries made by them which are very good (this is not), and they could actually make the claim that they are "The Whole Truth" or even call themselves a film about the war in/on Iraq, as these make the spurious claim to do so. But, this is just another in a long line of "crockumentaries" made and distributed by the special interest group moveon.org, which is a group who's only intent is to remove George W. Bush from power, a puppet of the Democratic Party. Now that shines serious doubt on the quest for accuracy by the filmmakers. It would be the same if George W. Bush or The Republican party commissioned and distributed a film to be made about Iraq with a group of "experts" they hand picked that they knew would spout off whatever they deemed appropriate for the advancement of their cause, and sold and promoted it under the guise that it is a documentary with the final word on Iraq. This would be especially fishy if it was produced and distributed right before election time so as to try to have a direct effect on the upcoming 2004 election, which these two films are trying to have. If that were to happen, people would call it propaganda, which it would be. This film also clearly is, and anyone trying to dodge that issue is blinding themselves. Like I said, if you want to see a real film about Iraq, watch the History Channel, not propaganda. As for me, I equally despise the Republican and Democrat Parties, so don't go pointing your finger at me--I am probably the least politically biased of all the reviewers of this film as a result. 5/10

A fairly devastating expose of the tissue of lies which spewed out from the Bush administration between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion.

What gives this film credibility is that it consists almost entirely of interviews with numerous experts - CIA agents, weapons inspectors and US government officials - who contrast what they knew to be the case with the distortions and blatant lies the US government spun to the public, and which are now unravelling. Everything from the entirely non-existent connection drawn between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein - which thanks to Bush a majority of Americans still believe are related - to the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, for which there never was any solid evidence.

These experts spoke out at the time, but were ignored by the theoretically free but largely patriotic and unobjective American media, which chose instead to toe the government line for far too long. This is why too many Americans continue to have little grasp of the facts (or indeed of foreign affairs generally), and voted Bush back in.

Though I have some admiration for Michael Moore, this is a considerably more intelligent and well-argued film than his, and definitely is the best documentary I have seen so far this year. It's a shame it hasn't received wider exposure.

Do you remember us going into Iraq, supposedly in search of Weapons of Mass Destruction? Do you remember when the failure to find any WMDs caused the purpose of the war to shift to Iraqi Freedom? And now that Iraq is NOT free, and it is clear there never was a connection between Saddam and Al Queda, our President says the invasion was ALWAYS about making America, and the rest of the world, a safer place... Don't you believe it. Robert Greenwald's UNCOVERED: The War on Iraq is a thorough, even-handed dissection of what the Bush administration said; when they said it; how they twisted the truth for their own purposes; and how we, as a nation, were manipulated by our own leaders into invading a country, killing thousands of its people, and (justifiably) incurring the outrage of an entire world. And for what? EVERY American should see this movie before they go to the polls in November. Knowledge is power; get powerful.