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Showing Original Post only (View all)In Defense of Zero Dark Thirty by Michael Moore [View all]
There comes a point about two-thirds of the way through Zero Dark Thirty where it is clear something, or someone, on high has changed. The mood at the CIA has shifted, become subdued. It appears that the torture-approving guy who's been president for the past eight years seems to be, well, gone. And, just as a fish rots from the head down, the stench also seems to be gone. Word then comes down that - get this! - we can't torture any more! The CIA agents seem a bit disgruntled and dumbfounded. I mean, torture has worked soooo well these past eight years! Why can't we torture any more???
The answer is provided on a TV screen in the background where you see a black man (who apparently is the new president) and he's saying, in plain English, that America's torturing days are over, done, finished. There's an "aw, shit" look on their faces and then some new boss comes into the meeting room, slams his fist on the table and says, essentially, you've had eight years to find bin Laden - and all you've got to show for it are a bunch of photos of naked Arab men peeing on themselves and wearing dog collars and black hoods. Well, he shouts, those days are over! There's no secret group up on the top floor looking for bin Laden, you're it, and goddammit do your job and find him.
He is there to put the fear of God in them, probably because his boss, the new president, has (as we can presume) on his first day in office, ordered that bin Laden be found and killed. Unlike his frat boy predecessor who had little interest in finding bin Laden (even to the point of joking that "I really just don't spend that much time on him" , this new president was not an imbecile and all about business. Go find bin Laden - and don't use torture. Torture is morally wrong. Torture is the coward's way. C'mon - we're smart, we're the USA, and you're telling me we can't find a six-and-a-half-foot tall Saudi who's got a $25 million bounty on his head? Use your brains (like I do) and, goddammit, get to work! And then, as the movie shows the CIA abruptly shifts from torture porn to - are you sitting down? - detective work. Like cops do to find killers. Bin Laden was a killer - a mass killer - not a general of an army of soldiers, or the head of a country call Terrorstan.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/15716-in-defense-of-zero-dark-thirty
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Updated inside: If that's the point the film was trying to make, among others,....
OldDem2012
Jan 2013
#2
The director did say that but the media dismissed her comments as unimportant.
Kablooie
Jan 2013
#26
Good to know. The Cheneys acting like the movie proved they were right completely
Pirate Smile
Jan 2013
#22
Then you should be hearing the sound of "woooosh" sailing over your head at 50,000 feet. nt.
OldDem2012
Jan 2013
#15
Tracking down an allusive person is long and boring. 99% of the effort is shifting to
bluestate10
Jan 2013
#23
Tracking down "allusive" persons is interesting, as they're constantly
coalition_unwilling
Jan 2013
#25
usually most people commenting and attacking the film in the media have not seen it. nt
TeamPooka
Jan 2013
#11