No Oscar For You: Matt Damon’s Iraq Critique Moved to March
by John NolteWhy would a company interested in making money (so they say) make yet another film trashing the Iraq War? By my count (narratives and documentaries), 13 have already flopped miserably and yet Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass team up for number 14, this one a big-budget studio critique of a war that successfully liberated 25 million innocent people.
Companies truly interested in making a profit don’t behave this way, which is why there’s never been a New Coke 2, much less a New Coke 14. And yet, Universal doubles down on more anti-Americanism using the fig-leaf of “based on a true story” to hide their malicious intentions which — to anyone paying attention — are always exposed by which “true stories” they choose to drop in theaters all over the world.
Here’s the New Yorker description of the book “Green Zone” is based on:
There the Halliburton-run (and Muslim-staffed) cafeteria served pork at every meal—a cultural misstep typical of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had sidelined old Arab hands in favor of Bush loyalists. Not only did many of them have no previous exposure to the Middle East; more than half had never before applied for a passport. While Baghdad burned, American officials revamped the Iraqi tax code and mounted an anti-smoking campaign.
No real need to read beyond “Halliburton.”
But there appears to be trouble in MattDamonLand. Hidden deep within Universal’s announcement that Benicio del Toro’s “Wolfman” (the two-part story of a hairy revolutionary determined to overthrow Transylvania) has been moved to February, comes this:
Universal has moved the release of Paul Greengrass’s Matt Damon–starring Iraq-war drama (and former ostensible Best Picture contender) Green Zone from this fall all the way to March 12. Why? Maybe it’s no good! But more likely, after the box-office failures of Land of the Lost, Public Enemies, and Brüno, Universal just couldn’t withstand another flop in 2009 (and Green Zone, about the fruitless search for WMDs, hardly seems like a blockbuster).
Yanking this from award season (when Oscar-buzz was probably the best hope to not look foolish for making it in the first place) and dumping it in the dog days of March, signals a major lack of confidence. One is left to wonder how Damon likes those apples.
But only now is Universal worried “Green Zone” will flop, even though production began in January of 2008, long after it became obvious this genre was box-office poison. But there were only five Iraq floppers then. Maybe it does take thirteen.
Actually, it doesn’t matter how many fail. This is an ideological war, not a drive for profit.
Ultimately, no one knows how “Green Zone” will do at the box office. Maybe, like the Iraq War, it will prove its harshest critics wrong and end up a successful venture worth the investment.
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190 Comments
Hollywood should be ashamed of their constant portrayal of our brave guys and girls as dumb thugs.
The founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves.
How the hell can the Wolfman be 2 parts?
God…the "fruitless search for WMDs" again?
They just aren't searching in the right places…they've probably arrived at the Miami Port Authority by now.
Anyone notice that Matt Damon is really, really fat? I mean, he has the money and the fame, so he'll always get the girls. But the dude is encroaching on whale territory. I'm sure he would say he's putting on the pounds for a role. I say, more like a roll…hahahaha. I crack myself up.
John: That's an interesting development. It may just be that they can't make enough cheap money-makers to pay for their anti-American flops anymore. It's not a lack of desire to slap America in the face, it's that they've reached the point of diminishing returns.
I pretty much wrote Damon off when he went after Palin right after she was announced as McCain's running mate. I'm sure he thought it was very intellectual to question whether on not Palin believed dinosaurs existed in the Jurassic age, but really he just looked like an a**hat. This is the guy they like to make a big deal over because he went to Harvard. Does anyone remember that he didn't graduate after 4 years there? I'd love to ask him if he found the Enlgish program at Harvard to be too difficult. Was Shakespeare beyond his grasp? Is that why he tries so hard to malign someone else's intelligence? To convince himself that he has some?
I think Nolte was joking about Che (both film star Benicio del Toro).
I think Nolte was joking about Che (both film star Benicio del Toro).
If you were being sarcastic, please disregard this comment.
I think Nolte was joking about Che (both films star Benicio del Toro).
If you were being sarcastic, please disregard this comment.
I wouldn't say all Iraq war movies are clunkers. The Hurt Locker is quite good, performing well, and not at all a political take on the situation. I recomend it highly.
Another new MOVIE giving credit to our troops… and will miserably fail!!!! Have to love what the HOLLYWOOD elite think of our BRAVE soliders….. they should be ashamed of themselves….
Why, can't there be movies like the old John Wayne movies showing our soliders in a differnt light!!!
Another LIBERAL movie I will not be seeing this year!
All these clowns are searching for their Hanoi Jane moment to mark their scent on the fire hydrant of history as a radical. It is the perfect emblem of Hollywood to be a radical and successful at the same time. The "hey I beat the man at his own game with out selling out" stripe. Damon, Penn, Clooney, Pitt, all of them seek it. Problem is that the 60s have gone forever and will never be replicated. The anti-whateverists have to contend with the fact that the silent majority is not silent anymore. (1/3)
So the fat and gristle of ignorance that they need to help their silly notions slide under the gaze of serious analysis is not there anymore. They will be ridiculed for the silly people that they are. Plus the tabloidization of their media (thank you MTv) is really show what perfect ass-hats these people are (as people) far removed from their romantic screen/stage personas. (2/3)
So keep tilting at the windmills, you fundamentally unserious two bit hacks. We've moved on. We like our creature comforts, we like our McMansions, our 2.3 kids, 3 car garages and fantasy football pools. And we will not listen to ambassadors of whine who seek to disrupt the system that gave us these things. No matter how edgy and hip you try to make your case out to be. Screw you, screw your global warming, screw your victimology.
The only thing worth paying for from LA is porn. (3/3)
Holy, freankin' COW!! Another one! (That is, another anti-American Iraq-war flick. How completely stupid must the current residents of Hollywood be.)
Un-freakin'-believable! Too funny.
Thx for the tip. I will be sure NOT to be lured by the smart previews. (Actually, it will be interesting to see how they bill this movie during the previews. In fact, that would be a fantastic bit of investigative reporting: In all of those full-length-film box-office failures, where the US is the immoral or blood-thirsty antagonist… how often was the anti-war bias clearly communicated in the trailers? Was it billed as just a basic "war movie"? I remember thinking Jarheads was going to be a good, red-blooded look at the GI's. Very disappointed with that one.)
Eagerly awaiting the New Hollywood.
'Wonder how Damon likes those apples …'
Best line of the week, if not the month.
I also liked Hurt Locker. It was very well made, the action and explosions, etc. with minimal gratuitous political messages.
Never mind that it is nothing like what was happening in Iraq at the time and all the Iraq vets have denouced it as Hollywood BS.
The best Iraq War doc you will see is The Last 600 Meters by Stephen K. Bannon. I saw it about a month ago. Non-political. Just about the troops. Specifically the first battle of Fallujah, then Najaf, then back to Fallujah. It does however show how politics effect the troops. Like one of the soldiers said, "i don't make foreign policy. I just deliver the last 600 meters of it." (the range of a sniper's rifle) it should be getting a theatrical release soon.
http://www.popmodal.com/video/2697/p2-The-Last-60...
I'm just amused by the idea of New Coke 2: "Taste-tests really, really secret-pinky swear that you're going to like it this time."
There's no doubt it's hollywood fiction. Especially the part where he breaks into that guys house looking for the kid. Of course the guy is a college professor who speaks 50 different languages and graciously treats the intruder like a prince. Iraqi's are so much better than us.
Just before the invasion, Iraq sent a caravan of "humanitarian aid" into Syria that went unchecked. Hmm . . . i wonder.
John, seriously?!? A movie about mercenaries looking for WMDs? Lemme guess….two hours of footage of 3 guys in a helicopter scoping out hundreds of square miles of desert looking for something everyone in the audience KNOWS they don't find. This goes way beyond ideology. It is a sickness. There are so many compelling storylines out there that have never been considered for a film. (I can give any hollywood producer several off the top of my head.) All I can say is don't go to these ridiculous movies, which is quite easy considering how bad they are.
I quit giving a crap about what Matt Damon says after he decided to weigh-in on Sarah Palin last fall (Oh wait! I NEVER gave a crap about what Matt Damon says let alone thinks). He is nothing more than a slightly better looking Sean Penn with the political IQ of Michael Moore. I doubt I will ever buy one or even go see his movies again. What a pitty, and Universal used to make decent movies too.
The link to the New Yorker is no good. I could not find the one he wanted to link to on the web.
of a war that successfully liberated 25 million innocent people
As well as the 60,000+ Iraqis who were also liberated -from breathing.
Maaaaaaaaaaatttttttt Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamon
Maaaaaaaaaaattttttt Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamon
MATT DAMON!!!!!!
Ya, a lobsta roll
Hollywood….
I just don’t understand. Acting is an occupation just as teaching, business, nursing, posthole diggers etc..,
They seem to have self importance problem. I love a good movie and will continue to watch on cable or when a DVD can be borrowed but that’s as far as that goes. Look what happens to folks that come from nothing as did Damon and get fat paychecks fast and furious. They act like King Kong and they think it too. Allow me to let you in on something here Boys, you aint all that let alone more. Take away your simplistic “cry on cue” money and those wide eyed nymphets’ who support your self importance; you’re only a number just like the rest of us.
I like Damon's acting just as I like my architect. The difference here is that my architect is going to get paid as I will watch Mat Damon for the rest of my life knowing not one of my dollars will be gracing his ignorant pocket.
I guess Universal thought they might be able to sneak the movie in as part of a nostalgia tour. A dicey move at best since the press does not even mention Iraq anymore.
Maybe they should just reconsign themselves to positive propaganda for Obama, government healthcare, global warming, and calling for the mass extinction of the evil we call the human race.
But don't we all need a villain… a singular villain on which to focus our hate and shoot darts at on Friday night's at the pub? Hey, break Jesus out of the storage shed.
Ah, that's better.
I thought Maaaaaaaaaaaatttttttt Daaaaaaaaaaamon was killed off at the end of Team America World Police. WTF is he doing in another movie?
Yes… after that earthquake…you gotta good memory. The UN stupidly let them fly aid sorties into Syria. I forget the exact number of sorties but there were a lot. By now, they are no longer in Syria.
Matt Damon must have missed this headline: "Iraqis Celebrate Second Anniversary of 'Wonderful, Colossal' Erroneous Prediction of U.S. Senator Harry Reid": http://optoons.blogspot.com/2009/04/iraqis-celebr...
He'll make up some lame excuse that it wasn't a challenging curriculum, not enough required material with the word "People's" in the title.
And who killed those Iraqis, numbnuts? WHO?
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatt Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamon. Enough said.
Does he ever have an original thought about anything? Then again, most ultra-left kooks don't.
And this is the same Matt Damon who is also making a movie- I kid you not- of Howard Zinn's <s>Pinko's</s> People's History of the United States.
I believe I just read somewhere that they just found papers that proved Saddam Hussein was perpetuating the ruse that he had WMD to scare off Iran. I guess his PR (or is it PM) team was very effective!
John's made a post almost every day this week. It's been a good week.
here, here.
I respect when an artist wants to make a statement in their work. I appreciate that Damon may have things he believes to be of great importance, and wants to use his position to influence the world for the better (or, at least, what he believes would be better). So I won't begrudge him that, even though I probably disagree with most of what he believes.
But if his movie isn't entertaining, he's failed. If he can't convince me of the rightness of his position through solid, deep, sympathetic characters; if he can't present the opposing view as anything more than straw men or cackling, moustache-twirling villains; if he can't inspire me to rethink the entire issue; then he's failed.
I have no problem with message movies, but they'd better be pretty well-done in order to work.
And, as you've said, the moment actors believe that their voices are more important because they're famous (and not because they're experts on the subjects they're speaking about), I'm far less likely to lend them an ear in regards to anything. Besides, I've known too many actors to give them much credit to begin with…
Man. On. FIRE!
Maybe they should try to sneak this film in for "Cash for Clunkers".
What can I say? I still like Matt Damon. I also think it's pretty much common knowledge now that the first years in Iraq were fraught with mismanagement and flagrant waste of billions of our tax dollars. (remember those pallets of cash) Doesn't detract from the good that was and is being done, but there _were_ a lot of inexperienced people there. I think it's a legitimate subject. I don't think Damon's too worried about his Oscar chances…he's already got one. As Iraq movies go, I thought "Hurt Locker" was excellent, and it's making a pretty good profit. We'll see…
I was always under the impression that they didn't give failing grades at the vast majority of Ivy League schools. In fact, most have told me that the Ivies are hard to get into, but are cake once there (not the case for grad schools, for the most part, I've been told). Chances are, he just couldn't be bothered going to class and fulfilling his requirements.
How typical – just another egocentric Hollywood-ite who is more into himself, it appears, than doing "what someone else wants or thinks he should do."
the sinner,
Patrick
Greengrass is the director of "United 93," which was a well-done, "real-time" narrative of the fate of the flight that crashed into a Pennsylvania field after the passengers attempted to wrest control of the plane on September 11th. It was an effective, un-apologetic look at the murdering terrorists and heroic spirit of the handful of passengers. So, it's possible that Greengrass may bring a more even-handed approach to the material than directors of previous Iraq-themed projects. Possibly. Maybe.
Yes.. I heard that too. And I believe I saw an interview with a former army general of Saddam Hussein's state that they had wmd's and moved them during the earthquake crisis. So… there we are.
More likely Syria and/or Lebanon.
Silly me, I worked my butt off to get through community college, and ended up with 15 job offers upon graduating. I settled on the first one, IBM, Burlington, Vermont.
Do you have any idea how friggin cold it gets up there? I had my engine freeze up once, nursed my car to a service station where they thawed it out. The mechanic told me the problem was the anti-freeze was only set to 45 below zero.
Silly me.
There are a lot of questions to this. At least one high-ranking Iraqi air force general claims he was in charge of moving WMD's out of the country and into Syria (and not long after the invasion, wasn't there a truck captured in Syria with a bunch of chemical weapons that no one could identify the origin of?). It wasn't just *having* WMDs, it was trying to procure them. There were the tons and tons of yellowcake finally moved out of Iraq last year, I believe. (I know some left-wing pundits have attempted to claim that "we knew" about that stuff, but here's the problem: it was prohibited material by the cease-fire, and Iraq, in its reports to the UN, didn't declare it. These are exactly the violations of the cease-fire the Bush admin was talking about).
Oh, and let's also not forget that Iraq had several terrorist training camp, where foreign-born terrorists (2,000 a year for four years) were trained inside Iraq and then release out onto the world. (National Review Online has those articles from a few years back in the archives, I think).
The fact is, there are hundreds of thousands of documents still left untranslated. We have no clue as to the exact extent of Iraq's WMD program, capabilities or stockpiles (or where they may/may not be). I DO know that before the 2006 mid-term elections, the NY Times, of all places, ran an article blasting Bush for putting documents seized by our troops from Iraq online, hoping to get help in translating them.
Why blast Bush? Because, at the time, reports came out that Iran was far, far closer to a nuclear weapon than we had thought. NYT blamed Bush for putting docs online, for public perusal, that included detailed schematics for nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In fact, the NYT claimed that Iraq was much farther along in its WMD program than anyone knew.
Of course, the next week, the NYT published a pathetic "clarification" in which it basically said "we know we said Iraq had WMD programs, but that's not what we meant." Didn't explain exactly what they meant, just that the NYT didn't mean to say anything that might be seen as vindicating Bush.
End story: there is a lot o' information yet to be sifted through. We may not know the whole truth for years, if ever.
the sinner,
Patrick
The last war movie I liked was Full Metal Jacket. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
You very well may have a valid point, but I think its something more. I think they've got their eyes on the world wide market, international sales.
When Bush was President, the US had terrible polling numbers internationally. Of course the fact the MSM pounded him daily, which the rest of the world watched, no doubt had a huge impact on the numbers. But with Obama in office, and unbelievably positive press coverage, those numbers are going up. Which does not bode well for anti-American themes.
During the two yeas I've spent directing my own (non-political) documentary and attending writing classes at UCLA, I've often broached the topic of these money-losing Iraq war movies to entertaininment industry aquaintences. The answer I have received, almost without fail: Those films DID make money, and anyone who says otherwise is either a right-wing propagandist or doesn't understand "Hollywood accounting." They also tell me that those films (Redacted, Rendition, Valley of Ellah, etc) rake in megabucks overseas.
Now, I'd much sooner believe John Nolte than any brain-dead LA Kiddie Kommie Obama-worshipper. But even so, they SEEM to know what they are talking about.
Or, maybe, this is his leftist "mea culpa" for making "United 93." I remember watching that film in Orange, CA. I left the theater with knots in my stomach – like coming away from a confrontation that verges on a fight but doesn't quite explode. During the film, a bunch of kids were in the audience and laughing. My wife verbally bitch-slapped them, leaving the theater in silence the rest of the film, until the end. Those same kids, when the group charged the cabin, were yelling things like "kill that m-f-'er! Break his f-in' head!" It was quite the turnaround and, to be honest, kinda chill-inducing to hear a bunch of "yo, yo homey's" suddenly get into a film like that after acting like stereotypical teens at the beginning.
the sinner,
Patrick
Iraq has been Liberated? You mean from Hussein, the man that received billions of dollars in aid in support and was only in power to begin with because the West installed him in power and made sure that he was supplied with all the military weapons he needed? You mean the man that still received aid and support from the United States even after the Kurds were killed? You mean, that guy? Seriously? That's why we went to Iraq? To liberate them from a man that had our full help and support and billions of our dollars for over 20 years? Seriously? You're not even joking a little? Not even cracking a smile at the absurdity of your comment?
Is your point that we shouldn't have taken him out? Your argument seems to be that it's our fault he was in power anyway, so wouldn't the Iraq War just have been cleaning up our own mess in your view?
Or is your point that we should have left him in power despite his crimes, because U.S. intervention is always bad no matter the reasoning behind it?
Because only pinkos acknowledge that millions and millions of natives were slaughtered when the Europeans came to take their lands?
Because only pinkos acknowledge that there was a time when millions and millions of human beings were bought and sold as slaves right here in the United States less than 150 years ago?
Because only pinkos acknowledge that women had no power to work or vote, let alone lead, for hundreds of years in the United States?
It's possible to acknowledge the sins and mistakes of the United States and not be a pinko. I'm a libertarian and a conservative and I have no problem reading history and seeing the times where Americans allowed human rights abuses to go on and in some places even encouraged them.
No real need to read beyond “Halliburton.”
Of course not.
John,
As a former political campaign aide, my first instinct is to say that the March 2010 release date would be well-chosen for setting the terms of an election issue.
Although, I don't really see how Dems can use the Iraq war for a 2010 House or Senate race, there may be issues that we are unaware of. Perhaps this is being set up as a bulwark for possible future confrontation with Iran. Can you imagine trying to argue the use of force against Iran and all the libs referencing this movie as a clear argument against?
This wouldn't be my first hunch as a general observer, but as a political observer, I would assume the release date has some kind of election import.
Yes but this has happened in every country in the world — some further back in history and some fairly recent. Why is it that you guys think that only the USA has to apologize? No country can go backward and change their history, we can only move forward. The relentless focus on slavery, which has been illegal in this country for some time, serves what purpose? Your time would be better spent condemning the atrocities that are happening NOW such as the honor killings of Muslim women right here in the USA and in many other countries around the world.
may it go the way of Che!
Indeed.. have always been a big fan of werewolf related movies (especially the old Lon Chaney ones), but with benicio in it, it might have soured the taste.
but it's Harvard.. I thought all classes there had "People's" in the title. Oh wait.. that's Berkley..
my bad.
And the 3500 brave young men following orders that died on our side. The war has caused the deaths of more Iraqi civilians than died during the entire time Saddam was in power.
It wasn't a war to liberate the people from Saddam. It never was. Nobody even thought of suggesting that as a reason until well after the bombs had fallen and the tanks moved in. We were told we went to Iraq to prevent the use and spread of WMDs by Saddam, not to protect the brown skinned people there, who Bush could give two shits about, else he'd have been in Sudan stopping the genocide of millions of people that were actually being slaughtered right then.
Try North Dakota.. spent 4 years there. We had electric heaters attached to our engines to keep them from freezing up at night.
Paul_D
Freedom has a cost! How many American lives do you think it cost through the years to give you the freedom to post a comment on a website and make an a** out of yourself. You do this without fear of retribution, imprisonment or death all because of the sacrifices of others…………………….. So piss off……….
They rebuilt him… He is just a puppet after all.
They should rename it "Can't Make Any Green Zone". -HA
Jesus… Someone needs to let Matt Damon know that he's really not Jason Bourne or some super hero that will enlighten anyone with his liberal crybaby propaganda garbage. But he really IS more like the puppet/marionette of himself from "Team America: World Police."
Agreed….the older werewolf movies relied on suspense. This one will be some crap about how the werewolf is the result of some warmongering HalliBushCheney cabal that dumped excess pollutants into the river in which his mother bathed him, and damn the endangered two-toed salamader which was in turn mutated into Godzilla….
Oh, they made that one already.
Ah, the "what about THIS country" fallacy.
The usual excuse for doing nothing at all anywhere.
Yeah, but when has a real Marine ever shot his DI in cold blood?
Because only "pinkos" slaughter strawmen in such great numbers?
Maybe the blue fairy turned him into a "real boy". ;P
And they can always delay it further…say, late October 2010.
I agree Elaine C, I say, Pishaw on all that "white guilt" nonsense.
LOL! Shoulda been here LAST winter…
I never had any use for him. I first heard of him from Good Will Hunting where he gives this huge idiotic speech (which he and AFLAC wrote) that crams every liberal idea you can think of it into one speech. "I crack a code, and we bomb some people who never hurt me, and it's all for the oil companies." Blah blah blah.
This is the only way to get an "award" from the Academy now. If you kick your country around, stomp all over the "crazy – redneck – unstable" troops that actually protect their freedom to produce and star in this crap, YOU get an Academy Award nomination. Plus, it's a good way to look cool to the Europeans, this way they can get their free ticket to Cannes. That's why I can't even watch them anymore, I get physically ill seeing these lousy, backstabbing, so-called "citizens of the world" patting themselves on the back.
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Try Navy boot camp at Great Lakes. Reputed to be the coldest spot in the western hemisphere with wind chill factor included.
When will Hollywood learn from its mistakes. There are so many stories that can be told that would grab the interest of movie goers. There are so many books that have been written by our great service members that would tell a powerful message available to be shown on the big screen. Ones that we all could learn from. I read a book recently titled Joker One easily could be a movie. Many of us know of Lone Survivor that at one time was going to be made into a movie but appears to be in Hollywood limbo.
I guess Hollywood just can't accept the fact that Americans respect and Honor our service members. Or Hollywood does not want to upset Jihadist that they seem to support. Thank God for book publishers anyway, the stories can still get out and Hollywood can't bastardize the truth.
I don't know, I'm just a state college grad– though I did actually finish. I went to school in Japan for a semester and there were a lot of students there from Ivy League colleges–one in fact was from Harvard. She told me that being a Harvard undergrad was nothing, only grad school mattered. She also said that it wasn't as hard as people think to get into the undergrad program– again, it was the grad school program that had all the hurdles.
Thing is that they did find a mess of WMDs. But the mainstream media and the democrats say things like, they were old or some other crap like that so they didn't count.
Just like the dems, moving the goalposts during the game.
When the hell are the money changers in Hollywood going to put a stop to these anti-war crap movies? I mean, come on. Hollywood is a 'BUSINESS' , not a fricking hobby. And in business, you have to make money. So when are the money changers going to finally get it through their heads that the jerks they've put in charge of deciding which films get made are pouring the money changers' money down a rat hole? Come on. This is beyond stupid – this is insane.
I look forward to seeing Matt Damon's DVD in the .99 cent bargain rack.
Well ultimately it was backed by GE. That's a surprise. You can looked forward to them repeating the crap out of it on USA & Bravo. There's got to be a message in there someplace. MAAAAAAAAT DAMOOOOOOOONNNN – blockhead.
"fraught with mismanagement and flagrant waste of billions of our tax dollars" just like every other large govt program.
however, unlike almost all other govt operations, it eventually accomplished some positive things.
nations do not have permanent allies.
nations do not have permanent enemies.
nations only have permanent interests.
LOL!
If only there were a "Team America: World Police" version that was safe for kids.
I laughed until I almost threw up, myself, but I can't let the kids watch it. I'm sad.
John Noble's a sly one.
"The war has caused the deaths of more Iraqi civilians than died during the entire time Saddam was in power."
Wrong.
It is estimated that Saddam killed up to 1 million of his own people during his rule.
I didn't mind Hurt Locker so much, and it's true that it wasn't really political, though I don't think it was devoid of politics either. I also couldn't help asking myself over and over again why that sergeant that Jeremy Renner played hadn't been fired yet! I mean, you can get fired from any job for not following safety requirements, surely you'd get discharged from the military for it. And I read an article about soldiers having seen the film who said, yeah, that guy wouldn't have lasted long, that kind of unprofessionalism is not tolerated. So, in a way, it's still portraying the military in a bad light; it makes it seem like they're perfectly okay with adrenaline junkies.
Exactly.
The paramilitary death squads that the MSM told us to refer to as 'insurgents', had a sweet deal for many years during the war.
No matter how many innocent people THEY killed, it was always blamed on 'our presence'.
I was about halfway through this post and thought it was a joke. Another anti-Iraq movie? I was convinced it was a joke when I read about Benicio del Toro making a 2-parter about a Wolfman taking over Transylvania. Wasn't that Che? But no, apparently it's for real. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and realize it was all a dream, all along.
No matter how you run the numbers, since that what you seem to want to do, nothing compares to the rate, and volume, the "pinkos" achieved (and are continuing to pile up). The former USSR killed around 50 million of its own people. And, yes, under the Geneva Code, that former government's systematic attempt to eliminate all of the Orthodox was genocide. What the Chinese, the Vietnamese, and the Cubans have done to their own people far outweighs anything done by those eeeeeeevil white Europeans over the centuries. I mean, even the African tin-pot dictators have far surpassed the eeeeeeevil white colonialists in slaughter and abuse.
Evil is evil, it has no racial preferences. And those slaves? Captured and sold into slavery by other Africans. Even more to the point, the West African slave trade wasn't nearly on the same level as the East African slave trade. But those were Muslims, so we really don't talk about that these days. In fact, Swahili is basically a slave trade language that dominates the East Coast that is a mix of various local dialects and Arabic.
And that millions and millions? I think that might be a *teeny* bit of an exaggeration, don't you? Doesn't mean anything about the slave trade was right, but bombast does not a solid argument make.
the sinner,
Patrick
LOL
And if poor GWB had gone into Sudan and each and every other genocidal hellhole that the George Clooney types demand intervention for, a new web of political lies would be spun to explain his "true intentions" for such action. Oh look! You used accusations of racism as a crutch for your argument. I'm shocked. I guess Condi, Powell and Gonzalez are not brown. Funny how that works.
Who's to say a trip to Sudan would not have resulted in the rising of another foreignly funded, staffed and armed ideological insurgency to create another seemingly devious statistic such as the one Paul D quoted?
Guess what? The American Revolution killed more Americans than the entire amount killed by British governance. The French Revolution killed more French than the French monarchy it overthrew.
On the flip side, regime changes in Grenada and a host of other countires (many of which were supported or administered by us) were relatively bloodless.
It ain't an exact science.
I'm not saying us adminstering someone else's regime change is a good thing, but the points you make are very weak. The war may have caused more civilian deaths, but the Republic that replaces Saddam's regime will almost certainly be more stable and clean, radical Islamic fundamentalism has been widely discredited among the population, and the U.S. now posseses the most tested, advanced and effective anti-insurgency program in the world. More people also died in the war with Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany than before, you know….
We're being sarcastic but imagine if they really did make him become a werewolf because of some evil corporation or the military doing experiments.
Since Bill Clinton's gutless cowardly policy of extending sanctions against Iraq for eight years led to the death of 650,000 Iraqi's, Bush's move to end the stalemate therefore saved 590,000 lives.__http://www.activategr.org/news/clinton-protest-06...
Like Economics, Foreigh Policy is beyond the intellectual capacity of the thoughtless factoid spewing leftist.
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