The story of Plamegate (or how Amassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame took on the Bush's White House and lived to tell about it). Politically, the film is surprisingly free of any ideological bias, only attacking the Bush administration for being liars and manipulators (abusing their power to silence a critic), but never actually suggesting that Saddam Hussein was a good guy who didn't deserve to be overthrown. In fact, the film solidly establishes that Wilson's exposure of the inaccuracies in Bush's State of the Union address certainly wasn't motivated by a desire to prevent Saddam Hussein's demise (which explains why he waited until after the invasion of Iraq to publish his article) and Wilson's hatred for Saddam (and the reasons for this hatred) are stated twice in the film. This is important, because it undermines the Left's argument that Bush shouldn't have invaded Iraq because his WMD case was a sham. The film's implied argument is that George Bush was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but he was wrong to invent a sham reason for this war. Stylistically, the film is uneven, rather boring in the first half, but quite compelling in the second half.
February 2, 2010
Fair Game (2010) **
The story of Plamegate (or how Amassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame took on the Bush's White House and lived to tell about it). Politically, the film is surprisingly free of any ideological bias, only attacking the Bush administration for being liars and manipulators (abusing their power to silence a critic), but never actually suggesting that Saddam Hussein was a good guy who didn't deserve to be overthrown. In fact, the film solidly establishes that Wilson's exposure of the inaccuracies in Bush's State of the Union address certainly wasn't motivated by a desire to prevent Saddam Hussein's demise (which explains why he waited until after the invasion of Iraq to publish his article) and Wilson's hatred for Saddam (and the reasons for this hatred) are stated twice in the film. This is important, because it undermines the Left's argument that Bush shouldn't have invaded Iraq because his WMD case was a sham. The film's implied argument is that George Bush was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but he was wrong to invent a sham reason for this war. Stylistically, the film is uneven, rather boring in the first half, but quite compelling in the second half.
