A couple of movies at the Venice Film Festival are presenting realistic views of the Iraq war. One movie pulls no punches and may be hard for film goers to take, the other includes the reality as part of the story and may be more palatable.
The movies are Brian De Palma's "Redacted" and "In the Valley of Elah" by Paul Haggis. You can read more about them here: 2 Venice films look at Iraq war horrors
I think movies like these are important. As De Palma says, with Vietnam, "we saw pictures of the destruction and the sorrow of the people who were traumatized. We saw the soldiers ... being brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war."
One could even come to the conclusion that the media was "in on it", attempting to gloss over the true horrors of what is going on in Iraq. And, indeed, when the connections between the people on the boards of directors of large media conglomerates and the people on the boards of the corporations benefiting from the war (arms manufacturers, oil companies, engineering companies, etc.) are examined, it could definitely make you suspicious.
But, of course, in this most perfect of all perfect worlds, corruption, rapacious greed and avarice just don't exist and the billions of dollars being made out of the war are just an unfortunate side-effect. I'm sure the people at Halliburton and Bechtel had no idea they'd make huge profits and I'm sure it never crossed the minds of their political friends in high places either.
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