UNCOVERED: THE WAR ON IRAQ
Directed & Produced by: Robert Greenwald.
Director of Photography: Richard Perez, et al.
Edited by: Chris Gordan, Kimberly Ray & Deborah Zeitman.
Music by: Brad Chiet, Jim Ervin & Mars Lasar.
Released by: Cinema Libre.
Country of Origin: USA. 83 min. Not Rated.

Undercutting the Bush administration's rationale for going to war with Iraq, Uncovered overcomes its pedestrian presentation (and a cheesy musical score) to make a well-founded, but familiar argument. Director Robert Greenwald succeeds in depicting the administration as using selective information to present a one-sided view of the alleged imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Over two dozen talking head interviews with members of the Foreign Service, intelligence community, and military provide Greenwald with his ammunition.

Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, points out that if Iraq did possess any nerve gas in 2003 it wouldn't have been effective - nerve gas has a short shelf life. UN weapons inspector Hans Blix emphatically contradicts Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the UN, stating there is no proof that mobile weapon labs ever existed. (The UN inspection program of the 1990s is credited for disarming Saddam Hussein by former CIA analyst Patrick Eddington.) Perhaps the star of the film is weapons inspector Dr. David Kay who candidly admits that the U.S. was wrong in assuming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Just as in Fahrenheit 9/11, the Bush administration comes across as reactionaries and scaremongers (National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: "We can't wait for a smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud.") And because the clips are more than just sounds bites, Uncovered is more successful than Fahrenheit 9/11 in capturing President Bush as a deer-in-the-headlights.

There is some overlap of information with the upcoming documentary on Bush advisor Karl Rove, Bush’s Brain. Both films delve into the outing of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson's wife as a CIA agent in retaliation for Wilson's rebuttal that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Niger (which Bush had stated as fact in his 2003 State of the Union address). But Uncovered goes into more detail. With its dry, just-the-facts approach, Uncovered is aimed at a reasoned and intellectual level, as opposed to the emotional Fahrenheit 9/11.
Kent Turner
August 20, 2004