War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2007) Reviews

• Wake-up People!

  thehun-42008-07-07

  This move in my opinion is one of the most important movies of the year and for that matter the last 5 decades. The underling problem with the ideology of the leaders in this country is what this film hits right on the head. This film is not talking about victory or loss it's a move about brain washing an entire country for political and financial gain. Unfortunately as long as people take this sort of; Oh well that's just the way it is; kind of attitude and ;Oh were just oblivious and we let our government make decisions for us; the people who made this country are the ones truly being dismissed. "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. Thomas Jefferson"

• Blows the "liberal media" theory out of the water.

  Clothes-Off2007-08-07

  This is based on Normon Solomon's book of the same title, and he comments at length throughout, with archive footage of politicians, news readers, and reporters. The clips support his thesis that wars are shrewdly packaged and sold to the public with little accountability, with dissenting voices quickly stigmatized as "anti-American" and silenced. This is the way it is presented in the film, and watching it you can't blame the filmmakers for it being "one-sided." That's precisely the point. After getting nothing BUT the other side on basically EVERY news network (not just the usual suspects), these filmmakers take Solomon's argument and run with it. It is tough to argue with his position that we the people are often lied to when it comes to selling a war, MOST if not all the time. (Solomon notes, "If you say something enough times, it starts to sound true.") If you don't agree, at least watch this documentary before you make up your mind. It's that compelling.

• I Found Out That I Didn't Know What I Thought I Knew.

  joeaneal2007-11-22

  I am a very critical thinker and have prided myself on not being taken in the propaganda of our business (greed) interested media. After seeing this movie at an University of Oregon symposium I am shaking my head at how easy it is to manipulate the mass population, whether it is by the right or the left, and whether they are on guard. I never connected the dots before on how easy it is to sell war and just how gullible we all are. This movie should be shown in every critical thinking class at both the high school and college level. It is a wake up call for all of us to protect ourselves from the subtle, effective media propaganda that influences us in just about all our decisions. Although this movies is critical of our current president and his politics, it doesn't treat kindly those who preceded him in the office of the presidency. The way things stand today the choice between Democrat or Republican is simply what ever we have been told it is and doesn't equate to the reality of politics where money rules. I probably have talked to most of my friends about this movie more than any other movie this year. I can guarantee you more than one epipthany.

• It brought tears to my eyes

  Pedram1962008-07-06

  This documentary verbalized everything I have been thinking for years now and some things I didn't even realize I was thinking. It reminded me why I have refused to turn on my television for 6 months in order to avoid being fed disgustingly obvious lies and propaganda day after day. The pattern of propaganda has become so obvious that it amazes me greatly how it has not become blatantly clear to more people. There can almost exist a scientific equation with CNN and other such networks used as its variables as to when the United States government will declare its next war and on what country the war will be declared on. Watching this documentary brought tears to my eyes. They were not tears of sadness. They were tears of disgust. Listening to the way most of the people were talking about the wars and the manner in which they were being fought made me ask myself why we as human beings deserve to continue our existence. Absolute praise to all involved in making this documentary and hope to see more of their fine work. "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke ... this evil is not just the "terrorists"

• there is no way to justify an unjustifiable war

  Dr_Coulardeau2007-09-22

  Norman Solomon is demonstrating that since World War II the US have systematically used war to defend their own interest and nothing else. So democracy and freedom is a lure for the public to fall into the trap of supporting the wars the President and a small group of people decide. He then demonstrates that all these wars are based on a fundamental and founding lie. Vietnam was based on the lie about the attack of some US battleship by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin just as much as the war on Iraq is based on the lie about the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then he demonstrates how the press is literally forced into supporting the war though apparently very few are willing not to support it and the vast majority of media people are willing to support these adventures or ventures. But he also demonstrates that only two senators voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 and only one congresswoman from California voted against the war on Iraq. He demonstrated how civilian casualties are increasingly the only casualties that count as for numbers. From 10% during the first world war they have risen to at least 90% in the war on Iraq. The present count of civilian casualties in Iraq are beyond one million. Then I will quote Senator Morse who voted in 1964 against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: "Since when do we have to back our President or should we when the President is proposing an unconstitutional action?" That is clear enough. Democracy does not mean to support the President but to take part in the devising of the US foreign policy itself on the basis of all facts provided to people for them to make up their minds. I will then conclude with Norman Solomon: "When it comes to life and death the truth comes back too late." And in the case of Iraq the truth about the weapons of mass destruction is definitely too late since these WMDs justified a war that had thus no justification since they were a willful lie. And this war led to the most obnoxious and inhumane or even inhuman acts on the side of American GIs, like torturing and killing the victims of their own rapes. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines