"Control Room" and "Hijacking Catastrophe"

[Synnical]

Playing on Satellite/Direct TV this weekend.

I was going to rent them via Netflix, but here they are . . .

Just a heads up for those who have the service. I've scheduled both to be recorded via Tivo. I think both films are available on DVD.

Hijacking Catastrophe
http://linktv.com/programming/programDescription.php4?c...

This film contends that a group of Bush Administration insiders used the trauma of the 9/11 terror attacks to transform American foreign policy and shows how the plan was sold to the American public. The documentary places the Bush Administration's justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neoconservatives to dramatically increase military spending in the wake of the Cold War, and to expand American power globally by means of military force. The documentary argues that the Bush Administration has sold this controversial plan by deliberately manipulating intelligence, political imagery, and the fears of the American people after 9/11.

Narrated by Julian Bond, Hijacking Catastrophe features interviews with more than twenty prominent political observers, including Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who witnessed first-hand how the Bush Administration set up a sophisticated propaganda operation to link the anxieties generated by 9/11 to a pre-existing foreign policy agenda that included a preemptive war on Iraq. Joining Kwiatkowski in a wide-ranging, accessible, and ultimately empowering analysis of American foreign policy, media manipulation, and their global and domestic implications, are former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams, author Norman Mailer, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, defense policy analyst William Hartung, author Chalmers Johnson, and Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff (Ret.)

CONTROL ROOM
On the Sundance Channel

http://www.sundancechannel.com/schedule/?schedDate=03/0...
directed by Jehane Noujaim

83 MINS, Color

Appeared at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival
Jehane Noujaim's (STARTUP.COM) behind-the-scenes look at the independent Arab news station Al Jazeera follows the channel's management and reporters as they cover the unfolding story of the second Iraq War. At the U.S. military's Central Command (CentCom) media center in Qatar, old acquaintances are renewed and new relationships forged as the Al Jazeera reporters - including a BBC veteran - take their places alongside Western journalists. But with the war underway, all the journalists must deal with the realities of CentCom, which controls access to information. (2004) TV14

[mmonk]

1. I have Hijacking Castrophe

on DVD.