The Media on Tom Hanks' "history" in "Charlie Wilson's War" vs. Oliver Stone's history in "JFK"
Gary A
"mainstream media" to Oliver Stone's film "JFK," a film which endorsed
the vast majority's distrust of the Warren Commission against the the
mandarins of the mainstream who've always stood foursquare with the
govt., and the "mainstream's" reaction to Tom Hanks' new film,
"Charlie Wilson's War."
Hanks' film, which I saw with my son, is very entertaining, very
patriotic, very propagandistic and its history is very, very
incomplete, which is to say it's wrong. But to read reviews in the
major dailies, you'd never guess that. Apparently, flawed history in
films is only considered a problem when the the history shows the
government in a negative light, as it (rightly) did in the Stone's
"JFK." But when filmic fantasy is "patriotic," in films such as "The
Green Berets," or the first rendition of "The Quiet American," the
version that had turned the real message of Graham Greene's book
upside down, why none of our moral monitors find it necessary to
correct the record.
Luckily, re "Charlie Wilson's War," a superb academic, someone with
real credentials, the University of California's Chalmers Johnson,
someone who knows something of the true history of the story covered
by Hanks' film, has weighed in. His review follows and it's
devastating.
There is considerable irony in Tom Hanks' picking Vincent Bugliosi as
his vehicle to ride to the rescue of the mortally wounded Warren
Commission. Hanks, who picked the screenplay that so distorts the true
history of our repeated misadventures in Afghanistan, sure knows how
to pick em. Oh, sure, a box office success is guaranteed; but success
as reasonable history is another matter, one he apparently doesn't
care a fig for.
Gary
Imperialist Propaganda: Second Thoughts on Charlie Wilson's War
By Chalmers Johnson
TomDispatch.com
Sunday 06 January 2008
I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson
(D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years,
my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was
Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half
year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense
contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy
committee assignments in the House of Representatives - the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee
- from which they could dole out large sums of public money with
little or no input from their colleagues or constituents.
Both men flagrantly abused their positions - but with radically
different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too
stupid to know how to game the system - retire and become a lobbyist -
whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine
Service's first "honored colleague" award ever given to an outsider
and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan.
In a secret ceremony at CIA headquarters on June 9, 1993, James
Woolsey, Bill Clinton's first Director of Central Intelligence and one
of the agency's least competent chiefs in its checkered history, said:
"The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great
events of world history. There were many heroes in this battle, but to
Charlie Wilson must go a special recognition." One important part of
that recognition, studiously avoided by the CIA and most subsequent
American writers on the subject, is that Wilson's activities in
Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the
attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States' current
status as the most hated nation on Earth.
On May 25, 2003, (the same month George W. Bush stood on the
flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln under a White-House-prepared
"Mission Accomplished" banner and proclaimed "major combat operations"
at an end in Iraq), I published a review in the Los Angeles Times of
the book that provides the data for the film Charlie Wilson's War. The
original edition of the book carried the subtitle, "The Extraordinary
Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History - the Arming of the
Mujahideen." The 2007 paperbound edition was subtitled, "The
Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA
Agent Changed the History of Our Times." Neither the claim that the
Afghan operations were covert nor that they changed history is
precisely true.
In my review of the book, I wrote,
"The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of
screwing up every 'secret' armed intervention it ever undertook. From
the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 through the rape of
Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempts to assassinate
Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the Phoenix
Program in Vietnam, the 'secret war' in Laos, aid to the Greek
Colonels who seized power in 1967, the 1973 killing of President
Allende in Chile, and Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra war against
Nicaragua, there is not a single instance in which the Agency's
activities did not prove acutely embarrassing to the United States and
devastating to the people being 'liberated.' The CIA continues to get
away with this bungling primarily because its budget and operations
have always been secret and Congress is normally too indifferent to
its Constitutional functions to rein in a rogue bureaucracy. Therefore
the tale of a purported CIA success story should be of some interest.
"According to the author of Charlie Wilson's War, the exception to CIA
incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of
Afghan mujahideen ("freedom fighters"). The Agency flooded Afghanistan
with an incredible array of extremely dangerous weapons and
'unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy
warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern
superpower [in this case, the USSR].'
"The author of this glowing account, [the late] George Crile, was a
veteran producer for the CBS television news show '60 Minutes' and an
exuberant Tom Clancy-type enthusiast for the Afghan caper. He argues
that the U.S.'s clandestine involvement in Afghanistan was 'the
largest and most successful CIA operation in history,' 'the one
morally unambiguous crusade of our time,' and that 'there was nothing
so romantic and exciting as this war against the Evil Empire.' Crile's
sole measure of success is killed Soviet soldiers (about 15,000),
which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration
of the Soviet Union in the period 1989 to 1991. That's the successful
part.
"However, he never once mentions that the 'tens of thousands of
fanatical Muslim fundamentalists' the CIA armed are the same people
who in 1996 killed nineteen American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia,
bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blew a hole in the
side of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden Harbor in 2000, and on September 11,
2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and
the Pentagon."
Where Did the "Freedom Fighters" Go?
When I wrote those words I did not know (and could not have
imagined) that the actor Tom Hanks had already purchased the rights to
the book to make into a film in which he would star as Charlie Wilson,
with Julia Roberts as his right-wing Texas girlfriend Joanne Herring,
and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gust Avrakotos, the thuggish CIA
operative who helped pull off this caper.
What to make of the film (which I found rather boring and old-
fashioned)? It makes the U.S. government look like it is populated by
a bunch of whoring, drunken sleazebags, so in that sense it's accurate
enough. But there are a number of things both the book and the film
are suppressing. As I noted in 2003,
"For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must
sign off on - that is, authorize - a document called a 'finding.'
Crile repeatedly says that President Carter signed such a finding
ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the mujahideen after the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The truth of
the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six
months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his
national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to
provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of
events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA
Director [today Secretary of Defense] Robert Gates says so explicitly
in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his
heroic mujahideen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon
fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The mujahideen did
the job but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be all
that grateful to the United States."
In the bound galleys of Crile's book, which his publisher sent to
reviewers before publication, there was no mention of any
qualifications to his portrait of Wilson as a hero and a patriot. Only
in an "epilogue" added to the printed book did Crile quote Wilson as
saying, "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed
the world. And the people who deserved the credit are the ones who
made the sacrifice. And then we fucked up the endgame." That's it.
Full stop. Director Mike Nichols, too, ends his movie with Wilson's
final sentence emblazoned across the screen. And then the credits
roll.
Neither a reader of Crile, nor a viewer of the film based on his
book would know that, in talking about the Afghan freedom fighters of
the 1980s, we are also talking about the militants of al Qaeda and the
Taliban of the 1990s and 2000s. Amid all the hoopla about Wilson's
going out of channels to engineer secret appropriations of millions of
dollars to the guerrillas, the reader or viewer would never suspect
that, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989,
President George H.W. Bush promptly lost interest in the place and
simply walked away, leaving it to descend into one of the most
horrific civil wars of modern times.
Among those supporting the Afghans (in addition to the U.S.) was
the rich, pious Saudi Arabian economist and civil engineer, Osama bin
Laden, whom we helped by building up his al Qaeda base at Khost. When
bin Laden and his colleagues decided to get even with us for having
been used, he had the support of much of the Islamic world. This
disaster was brought about by Wilson's and the CIA's incompetence as
well as their subversion of all the normal channels of political
oversight and democratic accountability within the U.S. government.
Charlie Wilson's war thus turned out to have been just another bloody
skirmish in the expansion and consolidation of the American empire -
and an imperial presidency. The victors were the military-industrial
complex and our massive standing armies. The billion dollars worth of
weapons Wilson secretly supplied to the guerrillas ended up being
turned on ourselves.
An Imperialist Comedy
Which brings us back to the movie and its reception here. (It has
been banned in Afghanistan.) One of the severe side effects of
imperialism in its advanced stages seems to be that it rots the brains
of the imperialists. They start believing that they are the bearers of
civilization, the bringers of light to "primitives" and
"savages" (largely so identified because of their resistance to being
"liberated" by us), the carriers of science and modernity to backward
peoples, beacons and guides for citizens of the "underdeveloped
world."
Such attitudes are normally accompanied by a racist ideology that
proclaims the intrinsic superiority and right to rule of "white"
Caucasians. Innumerable European colonialists saw the hand of God in
Darwin's discovery of evolution, so long as it was understood that He
had programmed the outcome of evolution in favor of late Victorian
Englishmen. (For an excellent short book on this subject, check out
Sven Lindquist's "Exterminate All the Brutes.")
When imperialist activities produce unmentionable outcomes, such
as those well known to anyone paying attention to Afghanistan since
about 1990, then ideological thinking kicks in. The horror story is
suppressed, or reinterpreted as something benign or ridiculous (a
"comedy"), or simply curtailed before the denouement becomes obvious.
Thus, for example, Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with inside
information from the Charlie Wilson production team, notes that the
film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as
well as the leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing."
Similarly, we are told by another insider reviewer, James Rocchi,
that the scenario, as originally written by Aaron Sorkin of "West
Wing" fame, included the following line for Avrakotos: "Remember I
said this: There's going to be a day when we're gonna look back and
say 'I'd give anything if [Afghanistan] were overrun with Godless
communists'." This line is nowhere to be found in the final film.
Today there is ample evidence that, when it comes to the freedom
of women, education levels, governmental services, relations among
different ethnic groups, and quality of life - all were infinitely
better under the Afghan communists than under the Taliban or the
present government of President Hamid Karzai, which evidently controls
little beyond the country's capital, Kabul. But Americans don't want
to know that - and certainly they get no indication of it from Charlie
Wilson's War, either the book or the film.
The tendency of imperialism to rot the brains of imperialists is
particularly on display in the recent spate of articles and reviews in
mainstream American newspapers about the film. For reasons not
entirely clear, an overwhelming majority of reviewers concluded that
Charlie Wilson's War is a "feel-good comedy" (Lou Lumenick in the New
York Post), a "high-living, hard-partying jihad" (A.O. Scott in the
New York Times), "a sharp-edged, wickedly funny comedy" (Roger Ebert
in the Chicago Sun-Times). Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post wrote
of "Mike Nichols's laff-a-minute chronicle of the congressman's
crusade to ram funding through the House Appropriations Committee to
supply arms to the Afghan mujahideen"; while, in a piece entitled
"Sex! Drugs! (and Maybe a Little War)," Richard L. Berke in the New
York Times offered this stamp of approval: "You can make a movie that
is relevant and intelligent - and palatable to a mass audience - if
its political pills are sugar-coated."
When I saw the film, there was only a guffaw or two from the
audience over the raunchy sex and sexism of "good-time Charlie," but
certainly no laff-a-minute. The root of this approach to the film
probably lies with Tom Hanks himself, who, according to Berke, called
it "a serious comedy." A few reviews qualified their endorsement of
Charlie Wilson's War, but still came down on the side of good old
American fun. Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail, for instance,
thought that it was "best to enjoy Charlie Wilson's War as a
thoroughly engaging comedy. Just don't think about it too much or you
may choke on your popcorn." Peter Rainer noted in the Christian
Science Monitor that the "Comedic Charlie Wilson's War has a tragic
punch line." These reviewers were thundering along with the herd while
still trying to maintain a bit of self-respect.
The handful of truly critical reviews have come mostly from blogs
and little-known Hollywood fanzines - with one major exception,
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times. In an essay subtitled
"'Charlie Wilson's War' celebrates events that came back to haunt
Americans," Turan called the film "an unintentionally sobering
narrative of American shouldn't-have" and added that it was "glib
rather than witty, one of those films that comes off as being more
pleased with itself than it has a right to be."
My own view is that if Charlie Wilson's War is a comedy, it's the
kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college
fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the
tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and
destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being
offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is James
Rocchi's summing-up for Cinematical: "Charlie Wilson's War isn't just
bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to
induce amnesia."
--------
Chalmers Johnson is the author of the Blowback Trilogy - Blowback
(2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of
the American Republic (paperbound edition, January 2008).
Fat...@aol.com
> It is fascinating, and instructive, to compare the reaction by the
> "mainstream media" to Oliver Stone's film "JFK," a film which endorsed
> the vast majority's distrust of the Warren Commission against the the
> mandarins of the mainstream who've always stood foursquare with the
> govt., and the "mainstream's" reaction to Tom Hanks' new film,
> "Charlie Wilson's War."
>
I bet you also thought Platoon was real history at it's finest too? A
pity you didn't go to Vietnam so that you would know fact from
horseshit.
How typical of you to diss Hanks (a honorable man) while braying the
greatness of Dopehead Stone (a sleazy dope head). Hanks having taken
great pains to ensure historical accuracy about World War II while
Stone never let historical accuracy get in his way of selling movie
tickets.
Your whining is also very typical.
Bill Clarke
justm...@gmail.com
Time to start bashing Tom Hanks again, Reclaiming History is probably
in the making. The CT's have to muster up 1000 reasons why Hanks
produced the mini series all wrong and discredit him before the mini
series airs. Can't wait to see the whining and crying when that hits
the tv screens. Gary A is the first one in line to try and find fault.
Great post Bill, then again it appears we're dealing with a bunch of
junkie pot heads on this newsgroup. It's no wonder they like Oliver
Stone.
Gary A
Ha! Ha!
Stone, a Yale graduate who refused an offer to go to Officer
Candidates School so he could go fight in Vietnam as a grunt, was a
Goldwater supporter and a conservative Republican. And in Vietnam he
was awarded the Bronze Star. Then the scales fell from his eyes.
Now, tell me, was Hanks a Bronze Star winner? Ha!
Were you? Ha! Ha!
And let me guess: You don't happen to have a copy of the Kansas U.
Press-published book, "Oliver Stone's USA," do you?, the book in which
established historians bash Stone for distorting history, and Stone
fires back all refereed by an historian.
Suffice it to say, some of the grandest poo-bahs of the history
establishment don't know their history, Steve Ambrose among the worst
of the group. (He said Nixon wasn't foul-mouthed, the Nixon of "Jew-
Cocksucker" fame.) Not, of course, that Stone came out unscathed; he
didn't at all. But he proved one of JFK's old axioms about generals
(To wit: Don't think that just because they're generals that their
opinions are worth anything, including things military."): just
because they're respected historians doesn't mean they know their
history.
But you don't actually read books, do you? ; ~ } The damn "Liberals"
are the only ones who write them or read them, right?
Gary
justm...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
Tell me Gary, do you have a picture of Oliver Stone hanging over your
bed, and an Oliver Stone doll that you sleep with? What's the real
reason for bashing Tom Hanks Gary? Is this the onset of your brigade
to discredit Hanks before the RH Mini Series comes out? People like
you who have been conspiracy kooks for years are going to be blasted
when that series is released on HBO. The biggest cry babies are the
ones who start the threads trying to discredit Hanks. Consider
yourself #1 on the charts Gary. Sounds like you have a tad of jealousy
in your posts too. Tom Hanks is rich, famous, extremely talented and
an outstanding citizen. Something you'll never be.
tomnln
<justm...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7c6be8d0-ceac-43e4...@v29g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tell me Gary, do you have a picture of Oliver Stone hanging over your
bed, and an Oliver Stone doll that you sleep with? What's the real
reason for bashing Tom Hanks Gary? Is this the onset of your brigade
to discredit Hanks before the RH Mini Series comes out? People like
you who have been conspiracy kooks for years are going to be blasted
when that series is released on HBO. The biggest cry babies are the
ones who start the threads trying to discredit Hanks. Consider
yourself #1 on the charts Gary. Sounds like you have a tad of jealousy
in your posts too. Tom Hanks is rich, famous, extremely talented and
an outstanding citizen. Something you'll never be.
justme has a picture of SATAN over one of her beds.
She sleeps with Contaminated Abandoned 2x4's.
She STILL RUNS from her own evidence/testimony>>>
http://whokilledjfk.net/PROVEN%20LIES.htm
http://whokilledjfk.net/CASE%20DISMISSED.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
aeffects
wrote:
[...]
Is this the onset of your brigade
> to discredit Hanks before the RH Mini Series comes out?
what-the fuck are you rambling about, dolt?
People like
> you who have been conspiracy kooks for years are going to be blasted
> when that series is released on HBO. The biggest cry babies are the
> ones who start the threads trying to discredit Hanks.
LMFAO, we see you insist on living in fantasyland.... perhaps you have
a hetero thingy for Tom Hanks, yes! what is your adoring *munching*
peer group gonna think about that......
[...]
aeffects
hell, it's not about Hanks, its the WCR plain and simple -- the WCR is
a convenient lie!
You're reference to a verifiable Vietnam BSM winner (Oliver Stone,
101st Airborne Division [right?]) is also noted ...
as far as film recreation of WWII w/pinpoint historical accuracy --
eh, pretty much a no-brainer these day's. Besides, there's not much
debate concerning the why's and wherefore's of WWII. Hanks gets a 'A'
for the enormity of the Band of Brothers project, as far as being
difficult? No chance -- all logistics and pre-production planning, and
great actors (most actors I assume never served in the military so the
series had great consultants)
Hank's up and coming series for HBO is going to have to bury the WCR
segment, if in fact it even gets produced, not unheard of to leave a
segment sitting on the shelf, unproduced for months and possibly
years.... He's got a huge challenge with this one, Hanks'll be met and
questioned at every turn, it'll be no walk in the park for either
Hanks his partner OR HBO and other distribution outlets that'll have
their hands in the pie.
> Your whining is also very typical.
funny, I don't see Gary A. whining
> Bill Clarke
tomnln
"aeffects" <aeffe...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:c8c41a61-bec5-4aa2...@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
aeffects
> Is Tom Hanks going to use "Literary License" in making this film???
they ALL do, they tell you different their lying -- some have a better
way of covering the obvious though... if they didn't it wouldn't be a
"film" it would be a documentary... then ALL in Hank's series would be
documentaries -- and NO one would stay awake for a 58:50 [or more]
minute WCR documentary....
> "aeffects" <aeffect...@gmail.com> wrote in message
justm...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
Healy? STFU I wasn't talking to you, if I want to hear your incoherent
bullshit I'll address you personally (like that's going to
happen)....go give yourself a fix, junkie.
Fat...@aol.com
> On Jan 9, 5:40 pm, "Fatm...@aol.com" <Fatm...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jan 9, 1:45 pm, Gary A <garagui...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > It is fascinating, and instructive, to compare the reaction by the
> > > "mainstream media" to Oliver Stone's film "JFK," a film which endorsed
> > > the vast majority's distrust of the Warren Commission against the the
> > > mandarins of the mainstream who've always stood foursquare with the
> > > govt., and the "mainstream's" reaction to Tom Hanks' new film,
> > > "Charlie Wilson's War."
>
> > I bet you also thought Platoon was real history at it's finest too? A
> > pity you didn't go to Vietnam so that you would know fact from
> > horseshit.
>
> > How typical of you to diss Hanks (a honorable man) while braying the
> > greatness of Dopehead Stone (a sleazy dope head). Hanks having taken
> > great pains to ensure historical accuracy about World War II while
> > Stone never let historical accuracy get in his way of selling movie
> > tickets.
>
> > Your whining is also very typical.
>
> > Bill Clarke
>
> Ha! Ha!
You once had a policy of not replying to me back long ago when you
first carried your crap to the awv group. Why not pick this policy
back up so I don't have to read your ridiculous crap. But since you
asked....
> Stone, a Yale graduate who refused an offer to go to Officer
> Candidates School so he could go fight in Vietnam as a grunt,
Horseshit, Ha Ha. Your ignorance of the military is rather funny.
Now Stone could have attended OCS but this doesn't mean he would have
made it through and if he did he would owe Uncle Sam more time. This
is what kept many qualified people from going to OCS. Probably
Stone's reason also. Now, he would have gone to an artillery or
infantry OCS and on getting his commission he would still have had the
"opportunity" (I chuckle) to go to the Nam Man and serve as a grunt
officer. In fact, that is where he would have gone, ASAP. I assume
you think making it through OCS meant you didn't have to go to Vietnam
and fight as a grunt. Ha Ha. They did not have Finance Corps OCS but
you already knew that, I'm sure.
> was a Goldwater supporter and a conservative Republican. And in Vietnam he
> was awarded the Bronze Star. Then the scales fell from his eyes.
>
> Now, tell me, was Hanks a Bronze Star winner? Ha!
I believe Hanks was awarded the same medals that you received. None.
However, you, on the other hand, were of the age to go get some of
these medals but you pussied out. I believe Hanks a bit young back
then.
> Were you? Ha! Ha!
Yes. Ha Ha.
> And let me guess: You don't happen to have a copy of the Kansas U.
No I don't and wouldn't bother wasting my time reading about Stone if
I did.
> Press-published book, "Oliver Stone's USA," do you?, the book in which
> established historians bash Stone for distorting history, and Stone
> fires back all refereed by an historian.
Shit snipped
> But you don't actually read books, do you? ; ~ } The damn "Liberals"
> are the only ones who write them or read them, right?
I am a liberal but I don't think one is required to bash America and
lie about history to join the club. Your arrogance here is again
typical of you far left wing assholes that don't know shit except for
the propaganda your handlers feed you.
Bill Clarke
Fat...@aol.com
> On Jan 9, 5:40 pm, "Fatm...@aol.com" <Fatm...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jan 9, 1:45 pm, Gary A <garagui...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > It is fascinating, and instructive, to compare the reaction by the
> > > "mainstream media" to Oliver Stone's film "JFK," a film which endorsed
> > > the vast majority's distrust of the Warren Commission against the the
> > > mandarins of the mainstream who've always stood foursquare with the
> > > govt., and the "mainstream's" reaction to Tom Hanks' new film,
> > > "Charlie Wilson's War."
>
> > I bet you also thought Platoon was real history at it's finest too? A
> > pity you didn't go to Vietnam so that you would know fact from
> > horseshit.
>
> > How typical of you to diss Hanks (a honorable man) while braying the
> > greatness of Dopehead Stone (a sleazy dope head). Hanks having taken
> > great pains to ensure historical accuracy about World War II while
> > Stone never let historical accuracy get in his way of selling movie
> > tickets.
>
> hell, it's not about Hanks, its the WCR plain and simple -- the WCR is
> a convenient lie!
You have never seen me defend the WCR. I think it served the purpose
of soothing a nervous nation (as it was intended to do) and the
discrepancies in it gives you boys fodder for all this conspiracy
crap. What a great deal!
> You're reference to a verifiable Vietnam BSM winner (Oliver Stone,
> 101st Airborne Division [right?]) is also noted ...
25th ID. I don't question Stone's medals; his CO said he was a good
soldier but must have done too much dope after leaving the Army.
> as far as film recreation of WWII w/pinpoint historical accuracy --
> eh, pretty much a no-brainer these day's. Besides, there's not much
> debate concerning the why's and wherefore's of WWII. Hanks gets a 'A'
> for the enormity of the Band of Brothers project, as far as being
> difficult? No chance -- all logistics and pre-production planning, and
> great actors (most actors I assume never served in the military so the
> series had great consultants)
>
> Hank's up and coming series for HBO is going to have to bury the WCR
> segment, if in fact it even gets produced, not unheard of to leave a
> segment sitting on the shelf, unproduced for months and possibly
> years.... He's got a huge challenge with this one, Hanks'll be met and
> questioned at every turn, it'll be no walk in the park for either
> Hanks his partner OR HBO and other distribution outlets that'll have
> their hands in the pie.
>
> > Your whining is also very typical.
>
> funny, I don't see Gary A. whining
>
I've never seen Gary when he wasn't whining about the bad old USA.
Bill Clarke
robcap...@netscape.com
Historical accuracy? Other than the landing on the beaches on 6/6/44
the rest of "Saving Private Ryan" was all fictional! There was NO
rescue of a single man because his brothers were killed. There were
NO SS units in the Amercian sector the first few days of the
invasion. There were NO tanks for the most part and especially, NO
Tigers in the American sector that early in the invasion. Spielberg
picked the SS as they represent the fanatical elements of Nazism. Yes
the beach landing scene was very accurate, but the rest of the movie
was pure fiction.
aeffects
> On Jan 10, 11:46 am, aeffects <aeffect...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jan 9, 5:40 pm, "Fatm...@aol.com" <Fatm...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jan 9, 1:45 pm, Gary A <garagui...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > It is fascinating, and instructive, to compare the reaction by the
> > > > "mainstream media" to Oliver Stone's film "JFK," a film which endorsed
> > > > the vast majority's distrust of the Warren Commission against the the
> > > > mandarins of the mainstream who've always stood foursquare with the
> > > > govt., and the "mainstream's" reaction to Tom Hanks' new film,
> > > > "Charlie Wilson's War."
>
> > > I bet you also thought Platoon was real history at it's finest too? A
> > > pity you didn't go to Vietnam so that you would know fact from
> > > horseshit.
>
> > > How typical of you to diss Hanks (a honorable man) while braying the
> > > greatness of Dopehead Stone (a sleazy dope head). Hanks having taken
> > > great pains to ensure historical accuracy about World War II while
> > > Stone never let historical accuracy get in his way of selling movie
> > > tickets.
>
> > hell, it's not about Hanks, its the WCR plain and simple -- the WCR is
> > a convenient lie!
>
> You have never seen me defend the WCR.
true, there's absolutely nothing to defend these day's
I think it served the purpose
> of soothing a nervous nation (as it was intended to do)
indeed it did.... I suspect there were other purposes, too. "Hi there,
I'm from the government, I'm here to help you get over the recent
assassination -- not to mention the ones to follow.....
and the
> discrepancies in it gives you boys fodder for all this conspiracy
> crap. What a great deal!
quite simply, its time to come clean -- we're lapping the toilet bowl
at a alarming rate
~~ down and down we go -- round and round we go..... in a spin, gotta
love the spin we're in.... it's that ole Black Magic called *bullshit*
Infinitus est numerus stultorum - eh?
> > You're reference to a verifiable Vietnam BSM winner (Oliver Stone,
> > 101st Airborne Division [right?]) is also noted ...
>
> 25th ID. I don't question Stone's medals; his CO said he was a good
> soldier but must have done too much dope after leaving the Army.
thank you for the division ID...... too much dope? Yep, didn't we all,
in his case -- all the way to the bank
justm...@gmail.com
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
quite simply, its time to come clean -- we're lapping the toilet bowl
at a alarming rate
You should have sent Elaine to cooking school Healy ROFLMAO
aeffects
wrote:
sitdown hon, you're amongst men now...... when someone needs something
they'll ring for you!
justm...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
Healy? You're not a man, you're a junkie. As for the rest of the "men"
on this NG excluding the LN's you have balls the size of raisins and
the brains to match. When I need my pool cleaned or my driveway
shoveled I'll call on the servent likes of you. One has to wonder if
you could even handle a simple task like that. Now go sniff
butts...your masters are waiting.