WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception

Even into George W. Bush's second term, the fertile genre of Bush-bashing documentaries shows no signs of abating. One vigorous entry is Danny Schechter's new dissection of how the American media threw its objectivity to the desert winds and allowed itself to become a propaganda tool for the 2003 invasion and subsequent military occupation of Iraq. Despite the overwhelming lack of evidence that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed any threat to American interests (let alone the mainland), the vast majority of the U.S. media (according to Schechter) embraced the White House's call for war and immediately packaged the conflict as a patriotic effort. Critics of the war, both within the U.S. and overseas, were either blithely ignored or crudely caricatured as traitors and weasels. Television news was the most shameless culprit, creating an entertainment event complete with photogenic reporters "embedded" with the troops who relayed heavily censored video dispatches from the battlefields. Some newspapers that openly questioned the war and how it was conducted were brushed by a sneer-and-smear campaign which dubbed them elitists and liberal (and are there worse epithets imaginable in today's America?). In comparison, foreign media coverage of the Iraq War was less jingoistic and more thorough in detailing America's military shortcomings and its abuses of Iraqis. As the situation in Iraq devolves on a daily basis, Schechter's documentary provides a chilling reminder of what happens when the media allows itself to be manipulated to such shameful and reprehensible ends. A powerful and jolting film, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)