May 21, 2004
FILM AS POLITICS: Joseph Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq -- who was thrust into the headlines last year when White House sources told the press that his wife, Valerie Blame, had been a covert CIA operative -- visited the festival Tuesday for a screening of "Uncovered: The War in Iraq," in which he is just one of the many foreign-policy experts interviewed who challenge the administration's WMD justification for invading Iraq. The film by Robert Greenwald was originally funded, in part, by MoveOn.org, the online activist group, which distributed it to consciousness-raising house parties in December; it will now be released theatrically by Cinema Libre Distribution in the summer. "In a democracy, there is no more solemn decision for a government than the decision to send your soldiers, sailors and Marines off to die for their country. That decision for this war was not made in full possession of the facts or in the spirit of a national debate," Wilson said, explaining his reason for becoming involved with the film and writing his new book, "The Politics of Truth." "For the health of the democracy, we need to reflect on how those decisions were made, on how the government shaped the debate and how we were manipulated by an administration that told us we were going for war because of weapons of mass destruction but in the aftermath is telling us it's all about the madman/bad man (who needed to be overthrown, Saddam Hussein)." (Gregg Kilday)

more reviews