Ruth Rosen, writing at Tomdispatch, considers Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center,” finding it vivid, subtle, graphic, emotionally compelling–but ultimately disfigured by one massive failing: that of reinforcing the Big Lie–that 9/11 was somehow linked to Iraq or supported by Saddam Hussein.
You might say, “But everyone knows it was al-Qaeda.” And you’d be right, but do most Americans really know just who those terrorists were or that they had no connection to Iraq — that not a single one of them even came from that country? It doesn’t sound very important until you realize that various polls over the last five years have reported from 20% to 50% of Americans still believe Iraqis were on those planes. (They were not.) As of early 2005, according to a Harris poll, 47% of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein actually helped plan the attack and supported the hijackers. And in February, 2006, according to a unique Zogby poll of American troops serving in Iraq, “85% said the U.S. mission is mainly ‘to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks’; 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was ‘to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.'” …
How could Oliver Stone leave it up to viewers to discover for themselves who committed this crime? And how could he leave the audience with the impression that there was a connection, as Dick Cheney has never stopped saying, between 9/11 and Iraq?
Read it here.
