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March 03, 2005

Docu calls WMDs a big Neo-Con job

Daily News, 8/20/2004. By Jack Mathews

In March 2003, the Bush administration knew with professed certainty that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and would use them on us.

Now we know that the only way Saddam could have had biological, chemical and nuclear weapons then was if he'd rubbed a lamp and been granted three wishes.

Didn't anybody in the intelligence community or among all the President's men know that?

The answer, in Robert Greenwald's despairing documentary, "Uncovered: The War on Iraq," is yes. Plenty of people in the know knew - people with backgrounds ranging from the CIA to the Iraq inspection teams to the Bush administration itself.

But according to their testimony in this film, Bush was so intent on invading Iraq, and initiating a Middle-East plan that his neo-con advisers had hatched years before 9/11, that their reservations were ignored.

This is Greenwald's second attack on the right this month. His "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," was released in theaters two weeks ago.

But he doesn't resort to any of the editorial flim-flam and smug theater that undermines the credibility of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." To a careful

follower of post-9/11 political news, there is nothing in "Uncovered" that should come as a surprise. Excluding Fox News, it's all been covered.

But recapping it in one tight, 83-minute film, and placing his sources in front of the camera, Greenwald has created a crisp historical document that is worth your time, even if the information in it was not worth the President's.

Posted by jhaff at March 3, 2005 03:50 PM