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I watched the documentary about this subject last week on the History Channel. Charlie Wilson made it very clear in the History Channel interview with him that it was President Reagan who made the great decision of arming the Afghani with Stinger missiles that destroyed the Soviets control of the air and hence made them lose the war. Wilson said that it was President Reagan who went against the advice of the CIA, State Department and others and authorized the Stinger missiles for the Afghanis. Wilson himself acknowledged that he played an important role in the Afghan campaign against the soviets but he was realistic and honest enough to give most of the credit to President Reagan and some other CIA fellow that was the head of the Afghanistan operation.

Hollywood has zero impact on changing history no matter how the idiotic leftists in Hollywood delude themselves that they can.

I watched THC production, unfortunately told by Charlie Wilson and Aaron Sorkin instead of THC's usual "what really happened" and Hollywood vs Reality programs, and sounded more like a commercial for the movie. Reagan's decision on Stingers was but one line, more of a footnote in the program, and the totality of administration involvement as described in this articles not even touched on. In THS program they even went further and showed 9/11 attack, as if tying it to Afghanistan operation, before backing off and blaming it on "crazies". They were forced to redact that from the movie, but actually introduced it in THC program, and it might make it into "director's cut" of the movie (on cable, and definitely, on DVD)

Even at that, how many people watch THC, and how many that watched know the real history, instead of just focusing on the hero of the movie, told by the hero and the script writer? That was the real purpose of the movie and it's all-star cast, and the naming of it "Charlie Wilson's War" - to shift the focus and take the credit for the success and thus try and alter the entire truth about our role in covert Afghanistan resistance.

Hollywood has zero impact on changing history no matter how the idiotic leftists in Hollywood delude themselves that they can.

Not changing real history, but polluting the history - Hollywood has a lot of impact on perception and thus people's knowledge and understanding of history. Oliver Stone's JFK and Nixon are what people think the real history is, I've experienced it firsthand in conversations with people who should know better. Liberals (and Hollywood) figured out that they don't have to or can't (in the age Internet) outright lie, that while being accurate, they don't have to be really truthful. The conclusions they can make from the set of facts or, more often, from the subset of facts are not necessarily what actually follows from the facts - that's the real Inconvenient Truth. They are making it subtler and subtler, Aaron Sorkin's own West Wing's President Josiah "Jed" Bartlett was an attempt to influence Bill Clinton in his waning days of Presidency, and set up alternate reality and "what the President should really do" scenarios to influence many during Bush Presidency.

Merry Christmas, my FRiend.

IMO Sporkin's failure here was due to too many compromises in paring the book down to a movie script. I agree the script had to leave the Reagan administration out of it, but they should also have turned the CIA guy, Gust, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, into a faceless bureaucrat. Hoffman is too good an actor and Gust was too colorful a character not to be a distraction.

The script should have focused entirely on Charlie Wilson and pretended that he was the only man who made things happen. At least then the movie's pacing would have been faster, the plot more understandable, and Hanks would not have had to compete with Hoffman for the audience's attention. Sure the movie would then have been purely fictitious, but it would have been more entertaining.