Posted on 02/26/2013 2:18:09 AM PST by Kaslin
You've got to admit that it's awfully precious that there was a huge controversy about "Zero Dark Thirty" because Kathryn Bigelow's film suggested that enhanced interrogation techniques helped intelligence officials find Osama bin Laden but no controversy about the final mission in the movie -- to kill, but not capture, the al-Qaida leader.
Some of the film's defenders believe that the controversy robbed "Zero Dark Thirty," Bigelow, actress Jessica Chastain and screenwriter Mark Boal of well-deserved Oscars. Maybe so but maybe not; a number of fine films were up for best picture this year.
But it cannot have helped that Ed Asner and other Hollywood lefties urged Academy members not to vote for the film, because they believed that it glorified "torture." And it probably didn't help that author Naomi Wolf called Bigelow a "Leni Riefenstahl-like propagandist of torture."
It also cannot have helped that the family of Sept. 11 flight attendant Betty Ann Ong -- who alerted American Airlines that her plane was being hijacked --was demanding that filmmakers apologize for using Ong's voice, list her name among the credits and include a disclaimer that the Ong family does not endorse torture.
Other critics have acknowledged that Bigelow and Boal depicted the ugly side of intelligence extraction, but they expressed dismay that the film did not depict more hand-wringing on the part of CIA interrogators and decision-makers.
It also cannot have helped the film's Oscar prospects that three senators -- Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin and Republican John McCain -- sent a letter to Sony Pictures to voice their "deep disappointment" in the film's "suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location of ... bin Laden." The three senators also harrumphed that the movie was "factually inaccurate."
The irony here is that the letter prompted acting CIA Director Michael Morell to acknowledge that though he thought the film had sold the agency's dogged teamwork short in many ways and falsely left the impression that the agency's "former detention and interrogation program were the key to finding bin Laden," some of the intelligence that led to bin Laden indeed "came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques."
The controversy also dredged up a 2011 letter that Leon Panetta, defense secretary and former CIA director, sent to McCain. The Washington Post reported that Panetta wrote, "Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier's role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques." Panetta also has said he believes that the information could have been extracted without enhanced interrogation techniques.
Both letters suggest that on the senators' big sticking point -- whether enhanced techniques helped bring bin Laden to justice -- "Zero Dark Thirty" was on the money. What they call torture produced results, and they don't want the public to know that. That's why some heavyweights in Washington and Hollywood were rooting for Bigelow and company to fail.
I’m sure it is a great work of fiction. Kind of like the Die Hard movies.
Here’s Joel Rosenberg’s take: http://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/best-picture-goes-to-argo-bravo-its-the-first-serious-film-to-take-americans-inside-the-islamic-revolution-and-the-life-of-a-cia-team-trying-to-do-the-impossible/
I retired in 1986.
I tried to change from “Tin Hut” to “Attention”, I really did. It usually came out as “A ten hut”. My troops seemed to prefer the old style, being much snappier with it.
In the Army, when I was in, the drill sergeants quickly tried to cure the recruits of what they had learned in movies in using ‘tin hut’ letting them know that it was a building, not a command.
I never used it in commands.
A Ten Shun never had the punch as did A ten Hut.
I didn’t respect someone who would confuse tin hut with a command, and I never used it.
You were an officr?
Good Lord, what military were you in?
You think that one has to be an officer to move troops, or call formations to attention, or to command soldiers to attention?
How was basic training for you? Only officers called you to attention?
I was in the US Army from 1965 to 1986. Very seldom did officers drill the troops, the closest they came was when we’d have a pass in review parade. The only people I heard use “attention” were young officers and very young NCOs.
We seldom saw officers in Basic, they were only involved if major disciplinary action was needed.
Then I don’t know how you got confused about officers and calling people to attention, but my experience was different from yours, I would have laughed at you for yelling tin huts at me.
I would have laughed at you for yelling tin huts at me.
If you were in my formation you would only have laughed once. I was old school.
I did humiliate a few NCOs in my time and left a couple of officers frustrated and impotent, a simple and legal request to please be able to speak to the man in private about the issue, preferably in the woods across the street or elsewhere out of sight, while in front of the other troops, and that sincere plea always being rejected, was a clear message to the other soldiers, for officers the double entendre and veiled condescension would suffice to get them to avoid you if they were the kind who didn’t belong in their position.
Luckily most NCOs were of better quality and less bitchy than you sound, weak officers knew to avoid me, the military is strict and rule bound, but that kind of legalism is so easy to use to one’s benefit when humiliating a weak leader who is so thin-skinned and prissy as you sound.
You sound like the kind of guy who knew the sound of chuckling and snorts behind your back. Tin hut little buddy.
So I was a traditionalist, live with it.
A traditionalist was the man trying to cure you, you were weak and inadequate.
Weak and inadequate?
You claim to be a badass comedian Whoopee. I never had to resort to physical violence.
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