Excellent, a Must See

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Filmmaker Danny Schechter dismisses news coverage of the budding Iraq insurgency in 2003 as "a catalog of incidents" without context or analysis by war reporters. Ironically, Danny Schechter's documentary is so poorly organized that his film comes across as a "catalog of incidents" itself: first here's a clip of Bill O'Reilly saying something pro-war, now here's a CNN reporter criticizing the embedding of reporters within military units, and here's a graphic of a Time magazine cover that he Schecter finds questionable, now look at some Abu Ghraib photos. "WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception," has a hard time staying on any one topic longer than five minutes. The only common thread is that Schecter thinks all the Iraq war journalism was crummy war boosterism.Schechter, the self-professed "news dissector," burnishes some selectively chosen evidence to support his argument. He cites the lack of coverage of the Feb. 15, 2003, world-wide peace protests as evidence that the media did not take the opposing views of war critics seriously. Fair enough, but most adults remember that, although most Americans supported the impending war at that time, the prospect of preemptive war was controversial and was being hotly debated in Congress, on talk shows, and among citizens. The idea that dissenting voices were muzzled in a country with as much free speech as we enjoy is absurd.Ultimately, "WMD" breaks little new ground. Schechter's analysis would resonate with some Democrats, but it will ring utterly hollow with conservatives who know that the only real media bias is a liberal anti-war orientation from Vietnam right up to today. This film would change very few minds, if any. Documentaries like "Hearts and Minds" and "Farenheit 911," are seriously misguided politically, but they contain far more emotional power and narrative appeal than this effort.A stronger approach would have been for Schechter to focus in on one particular aspect of Iraq war journalism, such as coverage of weapons of mass destruction. The misleading title certainly indicated that would be the focus. The U.S. ultimately concluded that Sadam maintained weapons programs for a "surge capacity," but we did not find WMD stockpiles. This was a serious mistake that all countries (even France, Egypt, and Iraq itself believed Sadam had WMDs!) need to examine about themselves, their intelligence services, their politicians, and yes, their journalists. The documentary would have been far more enlightening if Schechter stuck to "dissecting" the WMD story.

This movie tells you a lot about how the media worked hand in hand with the government to pump up the war, and does an excellent job of conveying information about how the government was able to control the media. So you have to admire it for that. But if you try and look at it objectively, not as a movie that says stuff you feel should be said but just as a movie to watch, it's not really that good. Cutesy stuff like the Apocalypse Now-themed opener really adds nothing to the movie and comes across as rather film-studentish. Danny Schechter lacks the personality that allows someone like Michael Moore to stand front and center in his films, and unlike Moor Schechter fails to create a story, but basically just throws a lot of information and talking heads at the viewer with occasional whimsical bits that don't come off that well.The movie also has a preaching-to-the-faithful quality. While Moore (you really can't talk about a modern political documentary without comparing it with Moore's films) aims to tap into a general dissatisfaction with and distrust of power and government, thus trying to connect with people outside the left (I'm not sure if he's successful, but he does try), Schechter seems to just be handing out talking points to the left. There's good information that will help you out if you start arguing in a bar with a Republican, but there's nothing that would make a Republican bother watching this.That's a shame, because this stuff is worth knowing, and if you are one of the faithful he's preaching you will be shocked and outraged, because it's actually even worse than you might think. But in the end it's just not much of a documentary.

In his latest offering, newsroom veteran Danny Schechter takes a critical look at the media coverage of the war in Iraq and the lead-up to the war. Whether you are for or against the war itself, Schechter shows how the domestic media allowed itself to be seduced by the Bush administration into supporting the official government view of things.While Al-Jazeera was frequently criticized for showing too much gore, the US news consumer was shown, with the aid of high-quality graphics just how our forces would be able to attack with "surgical precision". I guess we all love cartoons.Danny Schechter is routinely compared to Michael Moore (of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame). Like Moore, Schechter is critical of the current administration and personally involves himself in the storytelling. Yet I found the narrative to be somewhat more coherent than the Michael Moore movies I've seen, and it didn't include the typical personal confrontation scenes for which Moore is famous.This is a very interesting movie. I recommend it.

This is a documentary about the American media and their relationship to the military. It's all about spin. Why were newspapers and TV news so strongly pro-war in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq? One obvious reason is that they believed what the Bush administration told them about weapons of mass destruction, but others are suggested.Parts of this movie are quite chilling, such as the footage of an American tank firing on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which resulted in death and injuries to journalists staying there. The film reports on some very interesting facts, such as the relationship between which news networks a person watches and how misinformed they are.One thing this movie is NOT about is the brutality of Saddam Hussein, as was suggested by another reviewer. There are some graphic scenes of children in hospitals, but their injuries resulted from American bombing.If you think that Bush's invasion of Iraq was part of the war on terrorism, or believe that Iraq collaborated with bin Laden in planning 9/11, then you will think this film is hopelessly biased to the left.