Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Jules Crittenden calls this: “…narrowly focused, warmed-over Donald Rumsfeld-Dick Cheney hatefest.”

From her article in Pajamas Media:

If you don’t want to read this entire review, or watch all four and a half hours of Frontline’s big fifth anniversary Iraq extravaganza, Bush’s War, here’s the short version:

Bush lied, people died.

It’s hard to know where to start with everything that is wrong with this two-part series, airing at 9 p.m. March 24 and 25 on PBS. So I’ll start with what’s right with it.

As television goes, it is a relatively comprehensive review of the major decisions and controversies of the Iraq war, with a little 9/11, Afghanistan precede. It makes some, though not many, attempts to be fair and thorough in presenting the perspectives of both sides. When you watch it, you might learn a few things. You’ll remember a lot. It won’t change your mind about anything.

We’ve got that out of the way. On to what’s wrong. I’m not sure in the space I can reasonably fill here, short of exceeding Frontline’s own 4:30-hour limit, that I’ll be able to enumerate them all. It’s daunting.

Let’s start with the title. This documentary is not actually about George Bush, or his war. It is about his Cabinet’s infighting. In fact, they probably should have called it “The Cabinet’s Infighting,” though that might not be a big viewer draw. Maybe “The Cabinet Infighting of Bush’s War.” Too clunky. How about: “Cheney-Rumsfeld Lied, People Died.” That’s catchier, and would not only get the viewers but lots of press.

Because this entire documentary, from beginning to end, is not even a Bush-bash, it’s all Cheney-Rumsfeld bash. Bush, in the documentary named after him, gets some cameos, a walk-on here and there. He does have some speaking parts, he’s not entirely a spearholder. But Frontline makes it clear in what disregard they hold the president of the United States. He is a chump who gets pushed around and manipulated by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, despite the best, but tragically flawed efforts of Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet. While the influence of those parties cannot be denied by any fair observer, it is not until he finally decides to get rid of Rumsfeld that the president of the United States presented as having much in the way of independent thought at all.

The Frontline documentarians, of course, avoid expressing any opinions. They rely on the liberal use … pun intended … of a series of scribblers from the New York Times, the Washington Post and other publications to do that for them. In fact, when Frontline can’t find actual participants to do so, Frontline relies on ink-stained wretches to ascribe motives to people and in one astonishing case, to fantasize what a particular meeting must have been like, along with presenting as fact the conjecture that results from the newsman’s usual second-, third- or fourth-in-line position in the game of information telegraph.

Of the actual participants in events, there is a heavy reliance on well-known Rumsfeld-Cheney adversaries such Richard Clarke, Richard Armitage, with no mention of the fact that they, and virtually everyone in this depiction of recent history, have axes to grind and their own sullied legacies to patch up. Few people actually close or aligned with Rumsfeld or Cheney appear to have been interviewed. Possibly because they knew how this was going to end up.

Frontline very much carries the water of the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, the advocates of which apparently couldn’t be prevailed on to shut up, hence all the airtime. Though Tenet ultimately is thrown under the bus by Frontline as much as it describes Bush having done so, the CIA’s view of both Afghanistan and Iraq gets a friendly airing. One of the more remarkable, unchallenged and unelaborated gripes is that after Sept. 11, 2001, the eager, action-ready CIA was forced to twiddle its thumbs in Afghanistan for almost an entire month before the U.S. military finally showed up on Oct. 7. This is stated without apparent irony, even though we’ve been informed that George Bush intended a sober, measured approach. There is no discussion of the fact that 26 days might in fact be lightning speed when it comes to planning and moving forces into place for the takedown of a foreign regime on its own turf.

Frontline takes a diversion into Guantanamo, where you will learn that the Cheney-Rumsfeld junta threw out the Geneva Conventions and authorized military tribunals, the turning on of lights, removal of religious materials, and other atrocities. I must have missed the part where they discussed the fact that the hated Crusader Gulag at Guantanamo does not actually violate the Geneva Conventions and that the people held there are unlawful combatants. Horror is expressed at what Gitmo might inspire our adversaries to do to our own soldiers. I must have missed the part where Frontline discusses what al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, the Iranian regime and others actually have done to the civilians and soldiers they have seized. The videotaped pleas for mercy, the forced confessions, the use of hostages to blackmail governments, the beatings, the beheadings, the bodies dumped by the road, etc.

We’re now done with Afghanistan, which apparently is not part of Bush’s war except to the extent it enabled the Cheney-Rumsfeld regime’s Iraq agenda.

Frontline moves on to offer some detail on the stock versions of the pre-war intelligence failures and supposed distortions. It is largely an unquestioning review of conventional wisdom, and you’ll learn nothing here. The belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction is presented largely as a fact pushed by Cheney rather than as something believed by every major intelligence agency in the world, including those of nations that vehemently opposed this war. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is once again allowed to oppose the war on humanitarian grounds with no mention of France’s keen interest in doing business with Saddam. The “16 words” controversy is presented by none other than Joe Wilson, with no mention of the view that – yellowcake deal or no yellowcake deal — Saddam Hussein in fact had been in the market for uranium in Africa. You can also remain innocent of the fact that Joe Wilson is himself a controversial figure whose qualifications for his task are highly questionable and were in fact a bizarre case of nepotism.

Read the full article here.