Lynne Harriton

Plodding, joyless, and probably utterly accurate about CIA life and it’s purpose. It protects the WASP upper classes and business. They don’t see Jews, Catholics, blacks, etc, as true Americans. They just don’t. This portrays a kind of life that destroys marriages and parenting. Devotion to secrecy. So, you have to slow down to watch it: at 2 1/2 hours, it won’t give in to your desire for real spy life to be more interesting, because in fact, it isn’t. But you’ve got to hand it to DeNiro and all the wonderful actors, the list goes on & on, this is probably the most, maybe the only, truly accurate spy movie ever made.

Fascinating. Perhaps adjusted for film in appropriate ways, the story is in fact true. It is one most Americans do not, I believe, know. Many of the specific legalities of the decision to invade Iraq (and thus take our eyes off the ball in Afghanistan) are somehow still murky for us on this side of the pond (USA). We know Colin Powell (RIP) was duped. We know there was no WMD. We know the domino-based theory that led to this decision (Iraq was weak; easiest to conquer as Saddam was ‘not all there’ mentally) thus turning Iraq into a democracy would be easier than with any other Middle East nation and lead to additional democracies being created in the region like dominoes. We know “W”’s administration was very enthusiastic about invading Iraq long before 9/11. Yet as to war crimes, we are unclear. We hear that Bush, Cheney, and until his recent death, Rumsfeld, have stayed put in the USA due to fears of arrest, war crime charges and trial in The Hague. But, by the time we hear this, we no longer know if it’s true or coming from our chosen media bubble. I marched against that war, both major marches. Yet, somehow it did not occur to me that the nation itself could be charged in The Hague. Seems to me that to this day we are not sure about War Crimes issues. Well, this film fills in that information from the British POV. The Blair government was very concerned about the legality of joining up with the USA. They believed the nation could face War Crimes charges. The nation. They argued that they needed a new authorization. A few days after the main event of this film, Washington DC convinced them they could re-use the authorization from the first Middle East war. There was insistance on a UN determination. This the USA later dropped as being too hard to get. But Britain joined the Coalition of the Piddling. We went to war. Turns out the casus belli was pure and utter BS. In fact, Rumsfeld went around the CIA. This film takes place when Britain was still insisting on UN authorization. The 2 administrations realized the UN would not provide it unless they got 6 or 7 more votes. They set up to blackmail 6 countries, places like Guinea and Cameroon. An internal memo requested signals intelligence employees look for ways as they did their monitoring. A young woman felt this was going too far and gave a copy to an anti-war protester. In doing so, she broke rule #1 of Britain’s Official Secrets Act. There is some very smart lawyering in her defense. Also, smart journalism. Excellently written, acted. She was not charged for a year (as her defense hoped no WMD would be found and none was, yet she’d admitted she’d leaked the memo.). So, it all comes down to a defense so smart, that after making her wait a year, the Blair government inexplicably drops the case. In court. “We will not pursue.” No explanation. Turns out the Blair administration felt that their invasion of Iraq (not bothering with new resolution or UN authorization) could potentially set off war crime accusations and trial in The Hague. They didn’t want to chance it. So, Americans? What do we know about this? Why is our information so muddled? We know and always have that attacking Iraq was immoral. We know Al Queda hated Saddam and Saddam had nothing to with 9/11. But the war crimes discussions in DC as they tried to pull together a coalition? The bypassing of the CIA? We know little. I’ve heard that Bush left the USA once; accompanied by Clinton, to Haiti. Rumsfeld and Cheney, never. But what is true? This is the problem with living in media bubbles. Just how illegal was the Iraq war?