“Official Secrets”

 

So I’m watching the movie “Official Secrets” on Netflix, and I’m up to the “largest anti-war demonstration” in British history (the story is set in Britain), a demonstration against the invasion of Iraq. More people than ever attended a Trump rally, by the way. And about as much impact on the government.

The basic story is about a British government employee who is given an NSA memo asking for information that can be used as leverage (i.e., blackmail) against representatives of certain countries to force a vote in favor of war against Iraq, a memo she then leaks to the press. Yes, it’s a movie ‘based on true events.”  It interweaves news footage with fictional responses of the characters as war approaches. What I had forgotten was how blatant, in retrospect, the lies were that led to war.  Lies from Blair, lies from Bush, lies about “mobile weapons labs,” lies about WMD, etc., etc., etc.  None of that was found, of course.  No connection between Hussein and Al Qaddafi ever existed. No excuse for the war existed, either.  We would later euphemism the lies as “stovepiping” and “misrepresentation” but never, ever, as outright lies.

And yet this was not a “Constitutional crisis” and we sailed blithely on and no one feared re-electing W. or considers him a danger to democracy now.  Yet he lied as surely as Trump did, and on much more important matters than some of the nonsense lies Trump spewed.  Trump got people to lie for him.  Bush got Colin Powell to lie about WMD and “mobile chemical weapons labs.”  Or at least to present evidence based on very unreliable sources.  He got George Tenet (the head.of CIA) to do the same thing. And we know this for a certainty.

“Crisis” is not a definitive thing, it’s a term.  It is defined by those who use it.  And the question, as ever, is who is allowed to use it, and why.  George W. Bush did not represent a threat to the republic or our democracy, despite the scope and depth of his lies.  At least that’s what’s everyone said, first by their support for war, then by their indifference to the result of the war (that clearly the heads of two governments and their underlings were lying to the world). Indeed, what did him in was Katrina, and his inability to cope with a crisis that was a real crisis.  But was he guilty of a crime against democracy?

Why not?  Well, mostly because nobody “serious” ever said so.

This film, by the way, is 2 years old.  No one is really surprised by it.  In the movies, the bad guys always fear exposure; going to the press always undoes the conspiracy, brings justice to bear, brings the guilty before the bar for justice to be done.

Don’t you wish real life was like that?