jgrudin I expected this to be a scathing analysis of the decision to invade Iraq, and it was. It made an even stronger case than I expected against the decision. And it represents a service to the future by its assembly of archival footage of administration officials saying things that they undoubtedly will hope that the world will forget they said, given that they were proved wrong.But the documentary was a surprise by building the case against the administration from interviews with a large number of mostly recently retired professionals from intelligence agencies, military, State Department, and so on, people who often had decades of experience with the issues at hand. Many of them were conservative and would differ with me on many issues, but their integrity put them on the same side of this issue, and their intelligence and concern for the country was heartwarming. This is a movie I wish people overseas would see as much as my fellow Americans, as it shows two sides of this country in a way I haven't really seen before.

Roland E. Zwick In the wake of "Fahrenheit 9/11"s phenomenal box office success, a flurry of similarly-themed documentaries hit movie theatres in late 2004, all making the case that the Bush administration's war against Iraq was ill-advised, opportunistic and based on intelligence and evidence that turned out to be, at best, faulty, and, at worst, deceptive and manipulated. "Uncovered: The War on Iraq," produced by the liberal organization MoveOn.org., is one such documentary. The preposition used in the title - "on" as opposed to "in" - reveals right up front the political leanings of those who made the movie.The basic thesis of the film is that the neo-cons in the Bush administration had decided, even before 9/11, that the U.S. would eventually have go to war against Iraq to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. 9/11 merely provided them with the pretext they needed to sell the idea to the American public. By painting Iraq as a viable terrorist threat, the Bush administration was able to win over Congress and the nation's people to their cause, resulting in a war that is entering its third year now, having already cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.The film does an impressive job of what opponents would call "Monday morning quarterbacking," juxtaposing comments made by members of the Bush administration before the war with current statements by mainly key CIA and former CIA officials about what we know now. Through a series of largely familiar news clips, we see Bush, Condaleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others all lining up to present the case for war against Iraq by arguing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, harbored terrorists within his nation's borders, and had known links with the Al Qaeda operatives who perpetrated the attacks on 9/11 - all "facts" we now know to have been either woefully unsubstantiated or completely fabricated. The movie includes interviews with Joe Wilson, the ambassador whose wife was "outed" as a CIA operative by a member of the Bush administration when Wilson publicly questioned the validity of some of the "evidence" being touted around town that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. Another key figure in the movie is weapons inspector David Kay, who is given ample screen time to declare his mea culpas for initially supporting the Bush administration's assertions that WMD's would ultimately be found once U.S. forces had invaded and subdued the country.The film also takes aim at the American news media for allowing itself to be essentially co-opted by the neo-cons in the run-up to the war. Rather than challenging the White House's spin as it should have, the media, according to the filmmakers, simply went along with what it was being told by the Bush administration, thereby failing to fulfill its function as the independent Fourth Estate. It became, essentially, complicit in misleading the American public - a scandalous dereliction of duty which should concern patriotic citizens on both sides of the political spectrum."Uncovered" doesn't pretend to offer a "fair and balanced" view of the events leading up to the Iraq War; it doesn't offer opposing viewpoints or interview people from the other side of the political equation. As a result, it opens itself up to charges from the Right that it is every bit as propagandistic as the administration it is attacking. Yet, the fact remains that those on the Left, who opposed the war and questioned the administration's motives even before the conflict started, turned out to be largely correct in their assessment of the facts. And the film makes a compelling case that the people who were labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American" before the war for daring to raise these objections may actually have been the most patriotic and pro-American people of all."Uncovered" is, essentially, a talking heads documentary, but one that will have you shaking your own head (or pulling your hair out) in dismay and frustration - especially when one considers how astonishingly blasé and indifferent the American public seems to be about the whole thing.Barbara Tuchman, in her book "The March of Folly," writes that, "Wooden headedness, the source of self deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. It is epitomized in a historian's statement about Phillip II of Spain, the surpassing woodenheaded of all sovereigns: 'No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.'" In the case of the Bush administration and the Iraq War, truer words were never spoken.

bfinn A fairly devastating expose of the tissue of lies which spewed out from the Bush administration between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion.What gives this film credibility is that it consists almost entirely of interviews with numerous experts - CIA agents, weapons inspectors and US government officials - who contrast what they knew to be the case with the distortions and blatant lies the US government spun to the public, and which are now unravelling. Everything from the entirely non-existent connection drawn between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein - which thanks to Bush a majority of Americans still believe are related - to the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, for which there never was any solid evidence.These experts spoke out at the time, but were ignored by the theoretically free but largely patriotic and unobjective American media, which chose instead to toe the government line for far too long. This is why too many Americans continue to have little grasp of the facts (or indeed of foreign affairs generally), and voted Bush back in.Though I have some admiration for Michael Moore, this is a considerably more intelligent and well-argued film than his, and definitely is the best documentary I have seen so far this year. It's a shame it hasn't received wider exposure.

T.S. Hunter This film is absolutely no different than the film "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War (2003)". I find that funny because that film claims in the title to be "The Whole Truth", which implies that it is complete. If it wasn't complete, why call it that? If it was complete, why make another film that not only rehashes the same stomping ground, but literally is the same film with the same cuts and dialog (with the addition only of 27 minutes)? At the very most, this should be called a director's cut of the original film, not an entirely different one. The other things that are laughable about this film is it is missing so much about the war in/on Iraq. Anyone who watches the History Channel on a regular basis knows that. There are so many OTHER documentaries made by them which are very good (this is not), and they could actually make the claim that they are "The Whole Truth" or even call themselves a film about the war in/on Iraq, as these make the spurious claim to do so. But, this is just another in a long line of "crockumentaries" made and distributed by the special interest group moveon.org, which is a group who's only intent is to remove George W. Bush from power, a puppet of the Democratic Party. Now that shines serious doubt on the quest for accuracy by the filmmakers. It would be the same if George W. Bush or The Republican party commissioned and distributed a film to be made about Iraq with a group of "experts" they hand picked that they knew would spout off whatever they deemed appropriate for the advancement of their cause, and sold and promoted it under the guise that it is a documentary with the final word on Iraq. This would be especially fishy if it was produced and distributed right before election time so as to try to have a direct effect on the upcoming 2004 election, which these two films are trying to have. If that were to happen, people would call it propaganda, which it would be. This film also clearly is, and anyone trying to dodge that issue is blinding themselves. Like I said, if you want to see a real film about Iraq, watch the History Channel, not propaganda. As for me, I equally despise the Republican and Democrat Parties, so don't go pointing your finger at me--I am probably the least politically biased of all the reviewers of this film as a result. 5/10