Today’s story from Democracy Now, “Arab American Publisher Says Bush Told Him in May 2000 He Planned to ‘Take Out’ Iraq” reminded me of this claim by director David O. Russell (Three Kings, I (Heart) Huckabees, etc.):
“I met George Bush. Terry Semel was running Warner Bros. and had him over in the summer of ’99. He hadn’t even gotten the nomination yet. I was invited to meet him with a small group of people. I told him, ‘I’m editing a movie right now that questions your father’s legacy in Iraq.’ And his face for a moment was like, What the tuck is this? And then he immediately said, ‘Well, then, I guess I’m gonna have to go back and finish the job.’ I guess they had been planning this for a long time, he and his cronies.”
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Speaking of movies… I just saw Downfall, the Academy Award-nominated German film about the last days in Hitler’s bunker. It’s a little slow, being European and all, and you know the ending, but that aside it’s a powerful antiwar film: great acting, historical accuracy, & German dialog, rather than German-accented English — and unlike other antiwar films it doesn’t glamorize war: you can’t wait for the idealistic nihilistic nightmare to end and mundane everyday life to begin.