The Control Room

Went to see The Control Room last night. I thought I had some inkling into how the media is involved in a war. I obviously did not.

The Control Room is basically about Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Iraq war. Al Jazeera is the largest media organization in Iraq. There are for all intensive purposes, the Middle East’s CNN.

Whenever I am overseas, I am always taken by the coverage in the European press vs. coverage by the American press on a topic. Al Jazeera tells a very different angle about the war in Iraq. The US media never told that angle. I guess it depends on which angle you want to believe.

I walked away from that movie feeling that once again, the Bush administration has spun a war to make them look like the good guys. I am not so sure we are. I actually believe that there is more hatred of Americans in Iraq now than there ever was. I believe that there is more anti-American sentiment overseas than there has ever been. The pictures shown by the press over here of people cheering the Americans coming into Iraq were all staged by our military. All bullshit. There were not cheering “yeah” but cheering “get the hell out of our country”.

This administration/military actually directed bombs in Bagdad directly at 3 media outlets which are controlled by the Iraqi’s, one being Al Jazeera. Why? Because they don’t like how the Iraqi’s are reporting the situation. The information isn’t being controlled by them. They try to control the information by having conversations, with our military, with their journalists at the Media Center in Iraq. At the Media Center, every single news organization in the world has a tiny office at but everybody reports their own news. The Bush Administration obviously did not like what they were reporting so they blew up their stations so that they could not cover what was going to happen in Bagdad. Not very American of us, is it?

This administration has taken our values of free thinking, democracy and checks and balances and distorted them to fit their moral agenda. It is absolutely repulsive and scary at the same time. These guys are right wing maniacs who believe their shit doesn’t stink.

The movie was only 83 minutes. The minutes don’t go by that fast. But, this is a must see movie. I wish HBO would air this over and over in the fall so people could see another example of this Administration’s control of information. It might be a help to boot these evil doers out come this fall.