The Matt Damon Iraq-War political thriller "Green Zone" turned out to be an inadvertent corollary to "The Most Dangerous Man in America," so far as the American progressive belief goes that if an awful government secret can just be gotten to the New York Times, all will be well. Or at least better."Green Zone" is a highly fictionalized (and percussively directed by "Bourne Supremacy" / "Bourne Ultimatum" genius director Paul Greenglass) version of a very powerful non-fiction book, "Imperial Life Inside the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" by Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The Matt Damon character is based on the real-life soldier who led the US search for WMD, Monty Gonzalez, who, of course, finds no WMD.
In the "Green Zone" movie, the gung-ho searcher for WMD becomes first suspicious of cooked intel and then an overt exposer of lying liars in the Pentagon and the Bush administration, and then the heroic whistle-blower who exposes everything to the New York Times. Which, of course, is what led to the American public putting a stop to the Bush War, once they knew the truth of how we were manipulated.
As if!
We're still there, and probably half the American public willfully believe that Saddam masterminded 9/11.
While "Green Zone" is totally watchable and wholly timely (featuring as it does a woman reporter based very obviously on Judith Miller, the NYTimes -- ahem -- writer who willingly pedaled the Bush administration's cooked-up propaganda on WMD), its heroic message about perilous whistle-blowing rings hollow, given the reality of the last seven years.
Whereas the example of Daniel Ellsberg, O my brethren, still inspires.
