The Green Zone - The Movie (Warning - Plot Spoilers)

What is the true story behind the Iraq War?  Nobody really knows, but there are many theories floating around, and this movie presents one of them in the context of a classy action-adventure flick. 

Matt Damon plays the head of a U.S. Army unit in Iraq shortly after the invasion whose task is to track down intelligence leads in search of the "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) that were the supposed reason the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2009 and deposed its president, Saddam Hussein.  He is becoming frustrated that so much "solid intel" about where the WMDs are hidden has turned out to be incorrect.  One dry hole after another.  Finally he stumbles onto what he thinks may be the truth - that the Bush Administration manufactured the story of WMD to justify invading a country and overthrowing its government. 

This film's spin on the theory is that a high Iraqi general met secretly with a mid-level Defense Department official (played by Greg Kinnear) in Jordan, then fabricated a report (contrary to what the general told him) that there were WMDs stored in various locations in Iraq for use by the Saddam Hussein regime, then leaked the report selectively to reporters from major US newspapers in order to generate stories about the "solid intelligence" about WMDs from a high-placed Iraqi source. 

What Damon stumbles upon, through a chance encounter with an anti-Saddam Iraqi patriot who desperately wants the U.S. mission to succeed, is a secret meeting of Sunni party officials with this general.  He diverts part of his unit, which is busy digging useless holes in a public square seeking WMDs where they ain't, into trying to raid this meeting.  The general gets away, but a few of those attending are apprehended and Damon gets his hands on a small notebook that lists the addresses of "safe houses" where Sunni party leaders are hiding in Baghdad.  He brings this to a CIA agent (played by Brendan Gleeson) who is suspicious about the entire WMD theory and is trying to make contact with the Sunni general to find out the truth.  Of course, Kinnear's Defense Department official gets wind of this, and there is a race to find the general.  Kinnear's people have orders to "take him out," while Damon's mission is to "take him in" to produce the authoritative evidence that there are no WMDs.

At the end, the piece devolves into an action thriller of the type familiar from the Bourne movies (surprise, surprise, seeing as how Damon is the star and Paul Greengrass is the director), and ends -- biggest fictional part -- with Damon's expose emailed to important reporters at all the major media outlets.  Of course, this ending is wishful thinking, since no such expose was published by major news sources in the spring of 2003, when this is supposed to be taking place.

So - it is semi-fictional (but in many ways consistent with what facts are known), but it is a ripping good story, well filmed, well paced, and well acted.  Greengrass's direction has the speed and punch familiar from the Bourne movies, but this time in the service of a military-political plot that has some real meaning.

Many of us "True Disbelievers" that everything the Bush Administration was ever selling was a lie will be very sympathetic to the theory Greengrass portrays here, and it is pretty much consistent with what facts we know, right to the detail that the original U.S. occupation tried to install Iraqi expatriates from the U.S. to lead the newly liberated country, with scant success, that no WMDs were ever found, and that the abrupt disbandonment of the Iraqi Army by the occupation authority was -- in retrospect -- a colossal blunder, planting the seeds of the insurgency that has now continued for 7 years, with the loss of thousands of US troops, tens of thousands of Iraqi police and civilians, and billions upon billions in US expenditures that could better have been spent on rebuilding our national infrastructure and developing a green economy.  (Of course, the chances that the money would have been spent for those worthwhile purposes by a Republican administration and Congress are nil, so what's the use of complaining?)

This movie is yet another strong argument against the Obama Administration's position that as to the Iraq war we should only look forward and not launch a national investigation and conversation about what went wrong, who lied, and who blundered.  The President seems to think that all of our resources in time and attention should be focused on the future.  But how can we avoid the mistakes of the past if we don't take the time and trouble to uncover and understand them?

Comments

[Green Zone Soundtrack]

In my opinion this film is not only an accurate non-partisan account of what went wrong at the highest levels of the American government, but it added all the drama and suspense necessary to keep.