You know the kind of film I mean: those thrillers you catch at 3 or 4am when you’ve got home from clubbing. In the film, there’s a government conspiracy which is orchestrated by cynically amoral elites. What makes the film bad is the fact that these shadowy organisations are getting away with quite astounding manipulation and outright lying. As you watch the film, you think “As if this could bloody happen! Yeah, right! The whole of the media just turns a blind eye to these shenanigans and the bad guys keep ruling the world, puffing cigars in back rooms.”
And yet…
In the real world we have the Saving Of Private Lynch. That plucky, young woman who was grasped from the slavering jaws of bestial Iraqis by a crack covert team. But the truth?
“On April 4 The Washington Post reported that Lynch was rescued from the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah by “navy special operations forces, or Seals, extract[ing] Private Lynch while under fire”. In fact, there were no Iraqi soldiers in or near the hospital.” (Malcolm Knox, Sydney Herald)
She hadn’t been the victim of a sneak attack but had actually been in a car crash. Iraqi doctors had treated her wounds and actually tried to hand her back before the “daring rescue”
But nevermind, the whole story is being made into a telemovie and doubtless it’ll be as inaccurate as the rest of the fantasy narrative behind the illegal invasion of Iraq. If you saw the Private Lynch story, the real one, in a film, you’d think, ‘what a bad film – they’re laying it on a bit thick! Who’d fall for this bullshit?’ Well, millions of people, apparently, if they’re fed lies from the stage managers of the war via a comatose, lapdog media.
Imagine a bad film where the leader of a country blustered that a pre-emptive attack must be launched against another nation because he had concrete evidence that said country could attack his nation within 45 minutes. Stirring stuff, makes for a great buildup to when the heroic forces invade the nasty country and seize hundreds of tonnes of these hideous weapons of mass destruction..
..only they aren’t there. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Nihil. Fuck all. Launch an attack in 45 minutes? Hell, make that more like four or five years, to get a weapons program going, design the things, build them, deploy them.
So the brave, bellicose leader changes the goalposts. We actually went in there certain we’d find evidence of a weapons program. Who ever mentioned actual weapons? Not the brave leader! No sirree!
And what happens in the bad film? Well, the leader’s country accepts this with a slight murmur and the docile populace go back to worrying about reality TV shows and lottery numbers.
Ridiculous, eh? It’d never happen in real life, would it? Step forward, Tony Blair. Well-respected and lauded leader of the British government even though he’s a mendacious scumbag who sanctioned the murder of thousands of Iraqi civilians based on cobbled-together evidence he knew was fictitious.
How can this evil man sleep at night, knowing that he is responsible for the death of so many innocent people? All of them sacrificed in the hope of getting some crumbs from his master’s table. Bush must be astounded at his good fortune in having a British PM who’ll cheerfully break the Geneva Convention without so much as a second thought.
But wait, just when the viewer’s credulity is stretched to breaking point – SHOCK! HORROR! The bad guy is making shady deals in Niger, trying to get some uranium. TO BLOW US ALL TO HELL! Just like he did in 9/11! (Okay, that wasn’t him, or even his countrymen but why let facts get in the way of a truly bad film?)
Only… um, he isn’t. There’s no proof whatsoever and all the leading intelligence agencies start pointing the finger at the politicians, claiming their political agenda superseded accuracy. Comical Ari (he’s a great character, you’ll love him – a complete fucking liar) does his usual great comeback:
A week ago, the White House acknowledged that the evidence supporting the statement did not meet the standards of a presidential address to the nation. But Fleischer said Monday that the statement “very well may be true. We don’t know if it’s true, but nobody can say it is wrong.” (Edwin Chen, LA Times)
Pure brilliance! Hey – you can’t prove there was no uranium buying going on so we were right to say it was happening. Comical Ari here does the classic burden-of-proof switcheroo. As follows:
Comical Ari: There are tiny pink hippos flying out my butt.
Sceptical World: What? I don’t believe you – where’s your evidence?
Comical Ari: Hey – what evidence?? You can’t prove there aren’t tiny pink hippos flying out my butt, can you?! Ha, gotcha! Now we must invade a small, impoverished country, slaughter its occupants till the truckloads of dis-membered corses make even Red Cross workers puke and then annexe its oil via a puppet government!
He’s a card, isn’t he? He’s just resigned from his post as chief disseminator of American Lies. I wish him well in his new career and hope he lives happily with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dripping from his hands. What a swell guy!
There is a divergence between reality and the bad film but sadly it’s in the wrong place. In the bad film, all the above, totally unrealistic things happen and then in the final half hour or so, there’s a magic denouement wherein the courageous protagonist singlehandedly exposes the evil. The bad guys retreat into the shadows, hissing their disdain and the world is once again a safe place where good triumphs. Yeah, it’s corny – but it’s a bad film, what do you expect?
If only real life had that bad film ending. In our ending, the bad guys invade a country devastated by a despot, war and punitive sanctions, kill thousands and get away with it totally. Yes, we’re now seeing a few minor kerfuffles and the press is reporting them because, to be blunt, what does it matter now? The press can be as free and investigative as it likes now, now that the USK has won its prize.
A few people will resign. Minor figures, of course, not the actual players. Blair will probably end up being made a Lord. Bush will no doubt end up a fatcat captain of industry. Some fingers will be wagged. There’ll be some tut-tutting but overall, we’ll be fed the notion that we acted with the best of intentions. The real truth, the horrific pictures of torn bodies that the Western media were censored from transmitting, won’t be seen till years from now. When it’s too late.
And a great evil, the baseless invasion and occupation of a non-aggressor country to appropriate its oil reserves, will be whitewashed away.
love and kisses,
Jyoti