5 Years

Not much of the information in this excellect documentary was new to me, but the interviews with figures like General Garner, Larry Wilkerson, Walt Slocombe, Dick Armitage, and Paul Hughes illuminate the machinations of Rumsfeld and his coterie of ideologues to an almost uncomfortable degree, and one realizes how much detailed planning and work by competent folk in intelligence and the military and in the State Dept was simply ignored or outright ridiculed by blinkered neocons wit their own agendas. Many of the people interviewed discuss their attempts to do the right thing, and how they were repeatedly rebuffed by political hacks with no military experience and a bizarrre version of reality, and their pain, shock, and disbelief are evident. Slocombe is unapologetic, but you can see on his face and in his body language how uncomfortable his actions have made him, and what he really thinks but can't say.

Seeing those Rumsfeld sequences again--those snide, cynical clips that made him a media darling--really reminded me of what a fucked-up time that was. I couldn't believe at the time that people bought that shit, and watching it again I still can't imagine how gullible people were. The movie actually made me feel sick.