Dec. 26, 2007 4:30 p.m. EST – TAB
Posted for FlAttorney by TAB
Posted on 12/21/2007 7:32:45 PM PST by flattorney
Of course not. We look forward to your posted review. - TAB
Posted for FlAttorney by TAB
Thanks for the update.
I’m old enough to recall hearing about Charlie Wilson - especially since I was living in SE Texas starting in 1979.
This topic has spurred my interest in reading the book. However, we checked with the local library in College Station & it seems their only book is in the “reference” section - unavailable for checkout.
I cant figure that reasoning. Will look further for it.
Oh yeah, another thing - we missed the earlier showings on History Channel, but we definitely got our DVR set to record the showing this coming Friday.
Thanks!
Thanks for the up-date post on boxoffice of “Charlie Wilson’s War”...
great follow-up to the discussion on the thread!
This pure unadulterated self serving horsesh*t.
Right out of the box making a statement that Carter lured the Soviets into Afghanistan with about $5 million worth of old guns is absurd. Brzezinski and Carter have run around the world trying to make people believe the four years they spent in power had any relevance.
Sorry please tell Stanley Heller to hit the road because he can’t sell this crap here.
The Kite Runner book was recommended to me about a year ago, I looked briefly at the subject matter and was not interested; to my surprise, book seemed highly praised and celebrated in literati circles - I don't understand the reason, but I don't travel in those circles.
Movie was also fairly widely advertised, though not nearly with as much vigor as CWW, and it's not doing much in BO - less than $3M to date, though I assume the budget for it was very small. Whatever they are trying to say in this particular movie (something about Afghans and their culture, maybe?), it doesn't seem to have a widespread audience, and from a momentary familiarity with the subject of the book, I didn't think it would.
Oh, it had relevance. It had so much, that 12 years "under new management" couldn't clean up all of it. We still have Carter-appointed judges, and Iran, and... more recently, Carter himself resurfaced (good thing, too, probably - to remind people that we still have cleaning up to do).
That was my intended message.
Just thought I would say it out loud :)
I also have a real problem with Heller's take on things and the above is a pointed example. I will take the word of our boots and brass on the ground in Afghanistan for how things are going there and I listened to a whole slew of them this weekend on FOX News giving an entirely different picture than Heller's.
I really appreciate all of your posts, flattorney, as they are filling in the picture about CW and the Afghan/Soviet war very well. But I would say every article you have posted has to be strained just as carefully as any leftist (and some of it is) propaganda. We love to tell singers to shut up and sing. Maybe we ought to start telling reporters to shut up and report.
The Taliban are not making a comeback because of a Northern Alliance government. The present government is not Northern Alliance. Karzi is a Pashtun from Kandahar. The Taliban are coming back the same way they came in, with the barrel of a gun, they want the drugs in the South where they come from.
[snip]
. . . Let us top summary review. Democrats-George Soro Shadow Party's movie company "Participant Productions" released their:
1) Jimmy Carter “saving the world” movie on October, 26, 2007;
2) First, "we want to rebuilt" Afghanistan movie, "The Kite Runner", on December 14, 2007; and
3) Second, "an alky and drug addict Democrat single handedly saved" Afghanistan (“send us money to rebuild it”) and beat the Soviets movie , "Charlie Wilson's War", on December 21, 2007.
And let us further understand that “Participant Productions" is the same SSP fraudulent front-company, in my and others humble opinion, that produced Al Gore's highly fraudulent "An Inconvenient Truth", which they released on May 24, 2006. Yeah right, we Republican “Save our Great Country” fighters are just too ignorant to figure out the game here that even a blind hog could see.
It is very important to read and understand Republican U.S. Senator James Inhofe following speech to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, in which Jim is current Minority Leader (previous Majority Leader.) , 10.04.04: James Inhofe EPW Committee Speech - - Re: Environmental groups using their tax-exempt IRS registered 501(c)(3) charitable organizations as undisclosed front operations for the Democrats-Soros Shadow Party.
This is all these worthless maggots SSP organizations like Participant Productions are doing. They use bogus and/or ultra liberal causes to raise substantial funds for Democratic candidates and other scumbag front-organization to help them destroy our great Country. And they are doing it using tax-exempt non-profit 501(C)(3) charitable organizations, where they are not disclosing individual donations, with such donations tax deductible to the individual giving party. When in fact, these SSP organization should legally be a 501(C)(4), like SSP ultra radical MoveOn.org, in which individual donations disclosure is closely IRS audited mandatory and are not tax deductible to the giving party.
NOTE: As discussed further on my Free Republic "Straight Talk" page, James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) is up for 2008 U.S. Senate re-election. His U.S. Senate race is the #1 George Soros Shadow Party National defeat initiative. They will do everything in their power to defeat Jim and drag him down like they did Tom “still The Hammer” DeLay. It will be the toughest and dirtiest ’08 re-election in the Country. <> Please excuse typos, grammar, etc. I’m not worried about winning “style points” only pushing this information our to the Network. - 12.21.07, FlA
See Al Gore, Global Warming, James Inhofe and Tom DeLay sections on FlAttorney's FR "Straight Talk" page - TAB
Aaron Sorkin's War
FrontPageMagazine.com
By Lloyd Billingsley
Thursday, December 27, 2007
In the typical bad film one can see the actors acting, at which point it's all over for the audience. In Charlie Wilson's War the adept viewer can see the screenplay, by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing fame. The script might contain three laughs and is also incoherent, but there is a lot going on worthy of notice. Based on a book by George Crile, the story involves Charlie Wilson, a swinging bachelor congressman from Texas, here played by Tom Hanks, here at his best but looking rather like Joe Don Baker. When not getting drunk or cavorting with strippers, Wilson uses his leverage to get missiles to the Afghan rebels so they can shoot down the helicopters of the Soviet invaders. The real villains, however, are not the Soviets, nor even, as one would expect, the CIA, though most are buffoons straight from central casting. The real villains are American religious conservatives.
"America doesn't fight religious wars," explains Gust Avrakatos, a CIA man played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, to Joanne Herring, a wealthy Texan played by Julia Roberts. Joanne is a staunch Christian conservative and anti-communist but also a boozer and sex maniac. Gust is concerned that she is portraying the Afghan conflict as a religious war. "Dial down the religion," he tells her. Like the rest of the movie, this is Aaron Sorkin, bard of the secular left, talking down to People Who Aren't Like Him. Viewers may recognize the theme from The West Wing. The issue also comes up when one of Wilson's paunchy constituents complains that the ACLU wants to remove a Christmas crèche from the firehouse. Wilson says move it to a church lawn and no problem.
In the early going, Wilson is fielding a pitch for a television show along the lines of "Dallas Goes to Washington," which much of this movie is, though it will remind some of Ishtar. Boobs and bare asses abound but on some key points Sorkin remains squeamish. Wilson visits Afghan refugee camps to see their plight for himself. They tell him about Soviet atrocities but viewers do not see children blown up by bombs disguised as toys. They don't see the Soviet invaders running over captives with tanks. These things happened but someone talking about it doesn't quite convey the effect. Only a few fleeting scenes show Soviet helicopters launching random attacks.
Wilson returns determined to boost the budget for the Afghan rebels but he is being investigated for cocaine by an ambitious politician named Rudy Giuliani . Like Lions for Lambs, this signals the use of cinema as an election tool, but it's not all negative. John Murtha, the Democrats anti-Iraq-war critic, is a Good Guy, though viewers see neither politician. The only view of Ronald Reagan, the president of the time, is in a framed picture, obscured by a CIA man dressing up as Santa Claus. Viewers do get to see Dan Rather, disguised as an Afghan warrior. To its credit, this may be the first American movie to mention the Washington Times.
Thanks largely to Wilson, with help from Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the Afghans get the missiles and start shooting down helicopters. The defeated Soviets withdraw. The covert community recognizes Wilson's contribution. Music up with a swell, but the story doesn't end there. Sorkin can't bring himself to say it outright, but the film implies that American conservatives are responsible for empowering those Afghans who later became terrorists. One scene implies that if America had only built more schools in Afghanistan, all would be well. At the end a screen-wide quotation explains that we "f---ed up the end game." It should have said "the film."
Nearly two decades after the fall, the Hollywood left is not yet up to cinema verite on communism and the USSR. This film implies that the Cold War was something of a joke. On the other hand, Charlie Wilson's War, like Lions for Lambs, constitutes evidence that, even with Star Power, films by left-wing Democrats will not become players in the 2008 election.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=93A011B5-CB13-44B9-B7D2-442B44E1B49A
Posted for FlAttorney by TAB
Aaron Sorkin Goes to War
National Review by Peter Suderman
December 24, 2007
Charlie Wilson’s War, the new film from director Mike Nichols and West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, begins in one of those cavernous military airplane hangars, the kind so gargantuan you feel like you can’t actually look all the way to the other side. Across the floor, the camera slowly glides toward Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a Democrat from Texas, who is speaking from a portable stage. He’s just a speck in the center of the frame, but behind him hangs an enormous American flag, one whose presence dominates the room. It’s a striking image, and an apt one as well, the great big symbol and its tiny representative: Even as a congressman, he’s just a little man almost completely dwarfed both by his country and the ideas it stands for.
It’s also a fitting picture of the film itself, a relatively small, and too often small-minded, movie that attempts to wrap its arms around a sizable chunk of America’s foreign-policy history. By the end of the film, Wilson has proven himself a rather savvy defender of what he sees as America’s ideals. Sorkin and Nichols, however, are less successful. Though intermittently amusing, War is unconvincing and largely superficial, marred by Sorkin’s various tics and hampered by the competing interests of public accessibility and political passion.
Partly this is due to Sorkin and Nichols trying to pack too much into too short a running time. Sorkin has a reputation for writing very fast dialog, but it’s just not quick enough to do more than gloss over the issue at hand. The story, which is loosely based on true events, centers primarily on Wilson’s efforts throughout the 1980s to fund the arming of Afghanis under siege from the Soviet Union. As Sorkin would have it, Wilson, a mildly corrupt, carefree congressional bachelor (much of the exposition occurs while he’s immersed in Vegas hot tub with a pair of Playboy bunnies), saw a short report on the evening news, made a few inquiries, hopped off on a jaunt to Pakistan, and then decided to do everything he could to push for more funding and better weaponry for the Afghan fighters. The assumption, essentially, was that the Cold War couldn’t be fought in the open, but the U.S. could kill Commies by proxy — and under Wilson’s direction, it did.
Sounds familiar, does it? That’s not surprising, really, because we’ve all seen this scenario before: The cocky, carefree protagonist stumbles on an international political cause and decides to make his empty life mean something. (Was this, perhaps, ghostwritten by Michael Gerson?) And, because even Tom Hanks needs sidekicks, he’s flanked on his journey toward meaning by a quirky male friend and a strong-willed woman. In this case, that means Gust, a temperamental CIA agent played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a feisty conservative — or, as the film would have it, “ultra right wing” — socialite from Houston.
All of this is delivered in a style that will be familiar to anyone who’s caught even a few minutes of The West Wing, Sports Night, or any previous Sorkin production. There’s a zesty, high-energy tone to the proceedings, and every scene is laced with impassioned, suspiciously well-prepared monologues and rat-a-tat dialog that ricochets off the walls until finally coalescing unexpectedly into some sort of a (hopefully) stinging point.
Rousing dialog has always been Sorkin’s forte, and here it zips along, half clever quips, half easily Googled statistics, nimbly dancing from topic to topic. Some of it’s rather funny (Hanks is asked “Why is Congress saying something and doing another?” to which he responds, “Well, tradition mostly.”), and it might be impressive, except that Sorkin can’t control it. It’s not just a trademark, it’s a tic. In Sorkin-land, every single person talks in smarty-pants bullet points, as if he lives in a world where all people, the world over, might as well be Simpsons writers with post-graduate degrees in economics. It’s one thing to give us a smart-aleck congressman and a handful of wisecracking CIA officers; it’s quite another when Pakistan’s top political and military officials snark through a diplomatic meeting like overeducated Gawker contributors.
Equally problematic is that not all of the performers can deliver Sorkin’s zippy chatter with the requisite flair. Sure, Philip Seymour Hoffman pulls off a pitch-perfect wonky Washington weirdo, chewing through his lines with the gawky ferocity of an exotic animal on the hunt. But this is hardly a surprise considering Hoffman serves up stunning performances like McDonald’s serves up hamburgers. Hanks, however, has always excelled at taking underwritten parts and imbuing them with a kind of everyman’s grace. But, as he showed in the Coen brothers’ Ladykillers, he’s got little talent for upbeat, rhythmic dialog. As for Julia Roberts, I just wonder: Could anyone really find her believable as a rich, tenacious, religiously conservative political powerbroker? Let’s just say her performance will make you pine for the days of Mystic Pizza.
Fortunately, Roberts has far less screen time that one might expect given the magnitude of her star power. Perhaps this was a result of the changes made to the film after its real-life subjects complained about their portrayals, but it also seems possible that it’s due to a problem more endemic to the film. Roberts’s high-powered, southern, Christian conservative seems at least partially intended to be a disreputable figure engaged in all sorts of hypocritical behavior, talking about honor and Christian morals on one hand while casually sleeping around and cashing in political favors on the other. But the rules of Tinseltown don’t allow Julia Roberts, as the pretty-faced female lead, to really be all that slimy. She’s Julia Roberts fercryinoutloud! The audience simply has to be able to identify with her. So we get the setup for the character, but no payoff.
In fact, a similar confusion infects the entirety of the film. Sorkin never shied from making his straightforwardly liberal sentiments a core part of The West Wing. Aside from a few outliers, you could pretty much define that show’s moral center by looking at the Democratic-party platform. In fact, this arguably made the series better. For one thing, it directed its obvious underlying passions toward an actual political target rather than some vague sense of change. And for another, by never claiming to be politically neutral, it could be judged on its own terms.
Here, perhaps because of the aforementioned changes, Sorkin’s politics seem constrained, hovering in the background, but never made fully clear. Sorkin clearly wants to come out and blame American foreign policy (and especially conservatives like those represented by Roberts) for fueling, through arms and cash, the rise of the militant Islam in Afghanistan (and thus, by implication, for 9/11), but he flakes out, choosing only to vaguely point toward some possible connections. (Only because of the major editing demanded by Universal Studios brass to avoid the Joanne Herring-GOP interests threatened lawsuits. There is a whole back-story here but in short if Herring & Co. wanted to stop this movie from being released, they easily could have by using a Harris County (Houston) judicial venue. And, there was significant discussion on this point. – FlA)
Whether to blame the last-minute edits, studio worries about problems of controversy and mass-accessibility, or just plain poor screenwriting isn’t clear. But no matter what, the result is a movie that spends a lot of time indicating that it has something really important to say, but never quite comes out and says it. Instead, it just sort of limps along and hopes you’ll get the idea. Some might call this tactful, but too often it comes off as merely timid, a needless and dishonest dodge that keeps the film from ever living up to the grandiosity of its ideas.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzViZjYwMGMxNGU1N2IxMTNjMDMzM2E5YmMwYTI2NDg=
Posted for FlAttorney by TAB
Hubby and I are looking forward to watching the movie tonight so we may form our own opinions. I was checking out Charlie Wilson’s War at The Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472062/ and saw several posts on the movie’s message board that highly recommended this Flattorney Free Republic thread. Congrats all! This is one of the posts http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472062/board/thread/92920831 You have to join the site to view the message movie’s message board.
What the Hell is that Post supposed to mean?
--------------------
Dec 21, 2007: Charlie Wilson’s War Movie:
Line from movie review comment: “I saw the movie last night, and the scene where Julia Roberts (as Joanne Herring) has Pakistan’s President Zia, (Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq) as her guest at the presentation,…. she introduced him as the guy that did not have (Zulfikar Ali) Bhutto assassinated”
Dec 27, 2007: Intel Headline: Two time prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto's - - the daughter of ex-prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was hanged and killed in 1979 by President Zia (Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq a) - - was assassinated today in a shooting and bombing at her Pakistan Prime Minister reelection political rally.
The Theater Movie: “Charlie Wilson's War” Production Notes
From the book, "Charlie Wilson's War by George Criles (RIP) - - In July 1977, the head of Pakistan's army, Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, seized power and declared martial law. In 1979, he hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president who had promoted him. In retaliation, Carter cut off U.S. aid to Pakistan. In 1980, Herring went to Islamabad and was so entranced by Zia and his support for the Afghan freedom fighters that on her return to the United States, she encouraged Wilson to go to Pakistan. There he met Zia, learned about the Afghan moujahedeen and became a convert to the cause. Once Reagan replaced Carter, Wilson was able to restore Zia's aid money and added several millions to the CIA's funds for secretly arming the Afghan guerrillas, each dollar of which the Saudi government secretly matched.
# # # # #
<> Draft, General Distribution <> I was just pulled out of a business meeting and briefed on the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Very disturbing news to say the least. Unfortunately, it fits within my November 15, 2007 U.S.-Middle East War “white paper” update as to the Intel forecast for the next twelve (12) months in the M.E. Region, - in which I have substantial expert knowledge going back twenty (23) years. According to reliable sources, Benazir Bhutto death was a prelude to an extremely violent and bloody 2008. A year where there will be a massive push by Islamic Extremists, and other anti-U.S. powers, to inflict heavy casualties on U.S. troops, and other targets in the Region and around the World. The macro purpose being a global push to get a Democrat elected to the U.S. Presidency in November 2008 – A Democrat that will officially cease the U.S.-Iraq~Afghanistan War and withdraw our troops from the Region. [snip to end] . . . It’s a sad day and there will be hell to pay for this event, generally not understood by the American public. Of course, I’m sure the George Soros Shadow Party is secretly quite happy with today’s events, may they rot in hell. ~ 12.27.07-0930, FlA - 2008 First Quarter Chairman, “South Florida Attorney’s for Fred” (Thompson for ’08 President)
Benazir Bhutto's Death is Victory for Islamic Hardliners
The Daily Telegraph (UK)
By Con Coughlin
27, December 2007 - Last Updated: 4:01pm GMT
Timeline: Pakistan's Tumultuous 2007
Benazir Bhutto's Assassination Leaves Pakistan in Turmoil
- - Pakistani Civil War becomes a serious possibility
The Scotsman (Scottish national newspaper, Edinburgh)
by Alastair Jamieson
27 December 2007 - 10:08 PM
Bhutto Assassination Sparks Disarray
International Herald Tribune (Paris)
by Salman Masood and Carlotta Gall
Friday, 28, December, 2007
Bhutto shot in the neck before her killer blew himself up
- - Pakistan teetering on the brink of civil war
The Scotsman
by Margaret Neighbour
Friday, 28 December 2007
Pakistan faces horror of civil war after Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in suicide attack
The Daily Telegraph
By Isambard Wilkinson, Pakistan Correspondent, Richard Edwards and David Blair
28, December 2007 - 2:37am GMT
- - Comprehensive update article with support articles links, photos, and video of Benazir Bhutto addressing political rally minutes before her death.
Articles Abstract: Pakistan leader Benazir Bhutto was assasinated as she left a public rally in the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, threatening to plunge Pakistan into a civil war. Ms Bhutto, 54, twice the country's prime minister, was shot in the neck and chest - - according to different accounts - - as she stood in the open sunroof of a car and waved to crowds. Seconds later a suicide attacker detonated a bomb, damaging one of the cars in her motorcade, killing more than 20 people and wounding 50, the Interior Ministry said. She had just addressed thousands of people in the public park as part of her campaign for the country's parliamentary elections which are due on January 8. Her death threw the election campaign into chaos and created fears of mass protests and an eruption of violence across the country. Her death now presents President Pervez Musharraf with one of the most potent crises of his turbulent eight years in power, and Bush administration officials with a new challenge in their efforts to stabilize a front-line state — home to both Al Qaeda and nuclear arms — in their fight against terrorism.
12.27.07: From Obituary: Benazir Bhutto often referred to the example she said had been set by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was a charismatic and often demagogic politician who was president and prime minister from 1971 to 1977, before being hanged in April 1979 on charges of having ordered the murder of a minor political opponent. Mr. Bhutto was the founder in 1967 of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the political vehicle that he, and later his daughter, rode to power. Like his daughter, Mr. Bhutto battled for years with Pakistan’s powerful generals. He was ousted from office, and ultimately executed, on the orders of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, one of the long succession of military rulers who have dominated Pakistan for most of the 60 years since it emerged as an independent state from the partition of British India. Under house arrest at the time, Ms. Bhutto was allowed to visit her father before his execution in the death cell at Rawalpindi’s central prison, only a short distance from the site of the rally where she was killed nearly three decades later. In a BBC radio interview in the 1990s, she said seeing her father preparing to die steeled her for her own political career, which some biographers have suggested was driven, in part, by a determination to avenge him by outmaneuvering the generals. “After having to go through that last meeting with him in the death cell, I don’t think anything they could do would be worse than that,” she said.
BENAZIR BHUTTO FACTFILE
* Born June 21, 1953. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founded the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and was president and later prime minister of Pakistan from 1971 to 1977.
* Educated at Harvard and Oxford universities. Returned to Pakistan in 1977. Inherited leadership of the PPP after her father's execution in 1979 under military ruler General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.
* First voted in as prime minister in 1988. Sacked on corruption charges in 1990. Took power again in 1993 after her successor, Nawaz Sharif, was forced to resign. Removed from power in 1996 by Sharif.
* 1999: Bhutto and husband Asif Ali Zardari sentenced to five years in jail and fined 8.6 million on charges of taking kickbacks from a Swiss company hired to fight customs fraud. Conviction overturned by higher court.
* Joined an Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy with her arch-rival Sharif in 2006.
* Returned to Pakistan in October 2007 from eight years of self-imposed exile. Military president Pervez Musharraf granted her protection from prosecution in old corruption cases.
* On her return, as she was driving through Karachi, a suicide bomber struck killing 139 supporters and members of her security team.
Posted for FlAttorney by TAB
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