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After some initial good press, there were boos as well as applause for the only American movie In Competition at its first screening at Cannes. Critics here feel it’s too conventional to be a Palme d’Or winner. One reviewer expressed surprise it was even included. That said, there is no clear frontrunner so far for the top award. The two favourites are Mike Leigh’s Another Year and Xavier Beauvois’ Of Men and Gods.
The London Daily Telegraph says that Sean Penn and Naomi Watts turn in characteristically agonized performances as Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, the CIA spy who was outed by the Bush administration. The Evening Standard says that director Doug Liman never seems to have a firm grip on the drama – or on Penn, who gives what the paper calls a “desk-bangingly” enthusiastic performance. The Irish Times says that the story fizzles out somewhat in the last reel: “Still, we can hardly chastise the writers of a film about the WMD deceit for refusing to sex-up their own dossier.”
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“…the CIA spy who was outed by the Bush administration…”
Are we still peddling this lie? This is how myths become taken as fact — repetition. Richard Armitage, a democrat, outed Plame. This is uncontroversial. We know this.
Summit made a huge mistake. This movie is going to tank.
Check your facts. You’re wrong. I don’t have the energy to refute someone as stupid as you. Do you also believe that Syria is hiding Iraq’s WMDs?
Plame wasn’t a spy, and she wasn’t active at the time of the outing. This is why no one was ever charged for it. Covering up the outing, however, was a crime, of which he was eventually convicted. Had he just come clean about the whole thing in the first place, he would have lost face and his job, but it never would have gone to trial.
*Those* are the facts, and they are a matter of record. Deal with it. The fact that you went straight to the boring and tired “WMD” well is just as telling as pathetic as a Republican whipping out “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
The “boring and tired” WMD issue? People are STILL DYING because of that lie. I don’t think it’s “boring and tired” to the soldiers who lost their lives because of the Bush administration’s lies, sparky.
What ‘WMD lie’? British and French Inteligence agencies, Australian UN weapons inspector Richard Butler, even Al Gore all agreed that Iraq had WMD. If the US Dems weren’t so US-centric and obsessed with sliming their US political opponents the world would be a better place, and yes I believe people are dying because of US Democrat lies!
What the hell is this guy talking about ‘Democrat lies’? Is he for real? Dude, don’t come on this site and try and use it for right wing deception and cloaking. EVERYONE knows exactly whose fault it was that we went to Iraq looking for WMD’s. EVERYONE!!!!
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged that he was the source who first revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak. Go ahead. Humor us. Provide some facts that say otherwise.
The prosecutor declared bitterly that a cloud hung over the vice president’s office. Fact.
The prosecutor stated that Scooter Libby, in his view, was clearly covering up for Cheney. Fact.
All the grown-ups in Washington and elsewhere know the campaign started in Cheney’s office, just as the fake Niger story started ibn Cheney’s office. Novack knows it. They all know it.
So you’re either deluded or just wasting your time spinning.
Opinions of the Prosecuter are now “facts”? Interesting…
That same prosecuter (Patrick Fitzgerald) has opinions about Obama and how tied in he was to the shady dealings of Tony Rezko. Are we to take his opinions on those matters as incontrovertable facts as well?
Richard Armitage outed her. That’s not denied by anyone- except, of course, the director/producers of this film who fail to even mention his mane (too distracting). It’s like filming “All the President’s Men” without deep-throat. This movie will bomb royally.
Your indignance at the truth AND calling someone else ignorant who bothered to learn the truth shows one thing clearly; ideology is the only truth you know.
Let me help you get a clue: Google “Armitage outs Plame” and learn what MSNBC, HuffPo, and other leftist gasbags reluctantly had to accept as truth when Armitage finally owned up to the deed (many months after the controversy was first reported and the media had lost interest – yes, he’s a coward).
Furthermore, Plame wasn’t even “outed,” in the traditional sense, because she wasn’t part of the CIA’s covert activities. She was a Washington desk jockey.
It’s really bizarre, this constant repetition of Richard Armitage. Novak’s original column read senior administration OFFICIALS. He had to get two sources. The other one being Karl Rove.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Novak
“Novak was never charged with this crime because there was no evidence that Novak knew that Ms. Plame was a covert agent. Novak reported the information was provided to him by two “senior administration officials.” These were eventually revealed to be Richard Armitage, who e-mailed him using the pseudonym “Wildford”, with Novak assuming Karl Rove’s comments as confirmation.”
And yes, thanks to those who pointed out that Republican Richard Armitage is a Republican. As for why Armitage doesn’t get criticized more, it’s because “Armitage has also reportedly been a cooperative and key witness in the investigation,” something that cannot be said of either Rove or Libby. Another key distinction: Armitage did not know Plame was covert. One final one: motive. As everyone knows, there’s a difference between manslaughter and murder. Armitage did not have the intent to harm. Rove did, as did Libby when he saught to help cover up the possible involvement of his boss, former VP Cheney.
As for the bizarre insistence that Ms. Plame’s status as someone who worked in the CIA building is no big deal, it’s worth remembering this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_shootings_at_CIA_Headquarters
It’s bizarre, the way right-wingers tie themselves into knots to defend endangering Americans’ lives.
Richard Armitage was the Deputy Secretary of State under George Bush and thus a part of the Bush Administration. Do you understand what that term means?
Richard Armitage was a career employee at the State Department and had served under both Democrat and Republican presidents. Do you understand what that means?
Just the fact you think Richard Armitage is a Democrat says enough about you. But I’ll say more. Regardless of the fact that Armitage was only one of Novak’s sources, Cheney’s office and Rove both leaked this information to other reporters including ones at the NYT and Newsweek.
Would you kindly explain why Scooter Libby purgered himself and was sentenced to prison?
Do you mind if I answer your question with one of my own? How did Bill Clinton Perjure himself and NOT get sentenced to prison?
I don’t know how anyone would know whether Armitage is a Democrat or Republican. However, he was a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq and he was at the center of the State Department’s efforts to undermine the Bush Administration’s foreign policy efforts in Iraq and everywhere else. Howard Fineman at Newsweek wrote extensively about the war between the Bush White House on the one hand and the CIA and the State Department on the other.
Armitage was the surce for the Novak column. He not only told Novak, but Bob Woodward has also admitted that Armitage told him about Plame before Armitage told Novak. The Novak column was the supposed “leak”. The fact that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and recommended him for the job had not been disclosed anyhwere in the media prior to Novak’s column. Novak was also publicly opposed to the war in Iraq.
The meme that Plame was “outed” was a lie for several reasons. First, she was noot a covert agent and Patrick Fitzgerald never even charged anyone with that crime let alone convicted anyone. Andrea Mitchell admitted to Alan Reynolds on MSNBC that when the NY Time op-ed came out and was sritten by a “former diplomatic official” that she and the rest of the Washington press figured out that it might be Wilson because they knew his wife worked for the CIA. She later dnied this but Reynolds’s question and Mitchell’s answer speak for themselves. The national media was complicit in the Plame charade because they knew Plame wasn’t covert.
Secondly, Plame was not targeted for retribution by the Bush Administration. The bi-partisan Senate investigation obtained clear evidence that proved the motivation was to find out how a partisan Democrat like Wilson (an advisor to the Kerrey campaign) had been sent on a potentially sensitive “mission” like that. Go back and read Novak’s column. That was the the whole point of Novak’s column.
Thirdly, Karl Rove wasn’t a source for Novak. Go back and look at the Senate report. The statement he made that was implicated in the investigation was to Matthew Cooper of Newsweek, another former journalist who is now, shockingly enough, a liberal political operative. Cooper asked Rove if he had heard that Wilson’s wife had worked for the CIA and Rove said “Yeah, I heard that too.” Liberals just need to make things up and saying that Rove was one of Novak’s sources is a lie. He wasn’t.
Wilson repeatedly told lies as well. He said in his book that Plame had “absolutely nothing to do with” sending his to Niger. The problem is that, in addition to the statements of several CIA employees who said that Plame recommended him and introduiced him at the original meeting/interview when he was applying for the position, Plame wrote a memo to her superiors. There was smoking gun evidence of his lie on that point. Furthermore, after whining about being in danger, the Wilsons posed for a glossy Vanity Fair pictorial showing them to be the publicity whores that they really are. Wilson is so stupid that he didn’t even seem to understand the meaning of the information that he got from Niger officials. The CIA people ot whom he reported his findings told the Senate that his report had bolstered the British Government’s intelligence abut Iraq trying to buy Yellowcake. Which brings us to the final point. Bush said “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” That is and was excatly true. The British, went back and re-investigated their intelligence after the Plame charade and they re-confirmed that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. The Annenberg Fact Check site de-bunked the liberal fantasy that Bush lied [http://www.factcheck.org/bushs_16_words_on_iraq_uranium.html].
I hope this movie tanks. It isn’t even serious enough to call a lie, it is a joke. It is pretty impressive casting however. They found one of the biggest jackasses in Hollywood to play one of the biggest jackasses in Washington.
Armitage a democrat? Really? Did Reagan know that when he hired Armitage as a foreign policy advisor? Did W. know when he hired him years later? Seriously, get a clue.
Get your facts straight.
Richard Armitage is a Republican.
He was Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush administration, the right hand man to Colin Powell.
He worked in the elder Bush and Reagan administrations.
Therefore, the statement “the CIA spy who was outed by the Bush administration” is completely true.
I see the Wrong Wingers here are still living in Opposite Land.
RICHARD ARMITAGE IS AND WAS A REPUBLICAN AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. LOOK IT UP (which you obviously have NOT).
He was RONALD REAGAN’S FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR, AND GEORGE BUSH’S FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR, and LEAKED THE NAME UNDER ROVE AND CHENEY’S GUIDANCE, WHO WERE AWARE OF IT, WHILE IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.
Are you people allergic to facts or something? Armitage is a “Democrat”? He’s ALWAYS been a Republican, and ALWAYS served in Republican administrations.
Seriously, do you think that just because you repeat a lie that it somehow makes the lie true? Are you Wrong Wingers still regurgitating Goebells and his propaganda tactics? Do you honestly think it still works?
If he was a Republican why was existence completely omitted from the movie?
I didn’t hear any boos. Response was very respectful. Its a well made, compelling movie that’s got something to say.
Riiiiiight. You didn’t hear any boos. Cuz…you were there, right? Hey, Pinocchio, you need another layer of lacquer on your proboscis.
I WAS there. And there were no boos. Go back to grade school, please.
Outed should have read “outed,” meaning her identity was known before Armitage said anything. Damn, no edit function.
Her identity was known but not her cover. This is the stupidest argument I have ever heard. Because people knew the name of the company that she worked for – her identity was public knowledge. That is the definition of a cover. How dumb are you? If your ideology gets in the way of the truth, do us all a favor and keep your stupid crap to yourself.
The actors are “agonized”– the director is agonized– the script is agonized, everyone is agonized except for the simple truth: Neither Bush nor Rove nor Cheney “outed” Plame– who was not, in fact, a “spy”– but the info about her desk work at the CIA was given to journalist Novak by RICHARD ARMITAGE, Colin Powell’s pal.
The federal prosecutor knew this FACT within the first week of his over two year “investigation”.
not quiet enough
I realize that stupid people often cannot be helped— but suggest you do a bit of simple homework such as reading a newspaper or the final report by Fitzgerald— but the simple FACT is that Armitage,
Powell’s C of S at State “outed” Plame. Sorry if this bursts your moronically childish outlook on life.
Armitage was the messenger you dunderhead. You know that.
Karl Rove, on behalf of the historically corrupt Bush administration, outed Valerie Plame.
This is fact. Sorry, wingnuts. The government was run by felons for eight years.
Rove, Bush and Cheney belong in jail. Scapegoat Scooter served their virtual sentence.
Are you really that STUPID— ILL-INFORMED— or does’nt the TRUTH matter to you???
BULLETIN: IT was in ALL the papers and even on MSNBC— RICHARD ARMITAGE, the then c of s for Colin Powell originally “outed” Plame. I realize someone as blind to reality as you will not care, but you can even ascertain this fundamental FACT in the final report by the prosecutor.
Bush/Cheney/Rove are responsible for many things— “outing” Plame is not one of them. TRY HARD TO FATHOM THIS FACT!!!
At first I didn’t believe you, but all the capital letter convinced me.
What a fact-challenged moron. I suppose Willy Wonka gave the Gettysburg address too.
Trust me, I’m no fan of Bush but why disregard a fact that’s not even refuted by anyone
involved.
It’s comments like those that are starting to resonate with the all important “independent” voters. Couple that leftist hysteria with a socialist president who keeps demonizing Americans who simply want their border protected and limited government and you have a recipe for a Democratic bloodbath in November. Can’t effin wait!
It’s amazing the lies that conservatives will tell. Um, Dick Armitage is not a democrat. He’s a rightwing neocon stooge who worked for the Bush administration. Check the facts. He was the Deputy Secretary of State under Bush. So anyone claiming that he was not a member of the Bush administration (or a democrat) is a bold face liar.
There is a difference between a member of the Bush Administration accidentally revealing Plame’s identity and the Bush Administration, as a mater of policy or as a political ploy, revealing Plame’s identity. But why be precise why you can smear with a broad brush, right?
Here we go… it’s amazing that you say something bad about the Bush administration and the right wing wackos are attracted to the comment section like bees to honey, just sayin’
Here we go again. It’s okay to make an entire movie discrediting republicans. But if they
defend themselves they are wackos. Most Hollywood democrats also love Chavez, maybe
that’s because he does not allow freedom of the press. That seems to be what democrats
in Hollywood wish for. How many movies get made in Hollywood with a different point of
view? Duh… do you think that’s why every-time you make a movie that involves politics
people don’t want to go and see it. COME UP WITH SOMETHING ORIGINAL!!! we know your
stupid ugly american point of view…..SNORE….
Armitage a Democrat?
-First political job: “In 1978, he returned to the U.S. and started working as an aide to Senator Bob Dole.”
-Second: “In late 1980, Armitage became a foreign policy advisor to President-elect Ronald Reagan.”
-Third: “n June 1983, he was promoted to Assistant Secretary of Defense.”
-”In 1998, Armitage signed The Project for the New American Century letter.”
-”During the 2000 Presidential election campaign, he served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush.”
-”The United States Senate confirmed him as Deputy Secretary of State on March 23, 2001.”
-”On May 10, 2006, he was elected to the board of directors of the ConocoPhillips oil company.”
Oh yeah, real big Democrat. Neocons can’t stop lying.
SORRY TO UPSET YOUR SIMPLE MIND, but Armitage is a registered DEMOCRAT as everyone here in Washington knows. Realize you are not very smart, but many PUBLIC SERVENTS have a proud history of serving both Republican and Democrat Presidents. Former DEM Senator Moyhnihan served both Kennedy and Nixon, as but one example. READ AND LEARN.
SORRY TO UPSET YOUR SIMPLE POST, but caps should be used SPARINGLY as everyone on this comment board knows. Realize you are not very smart, but COMMENTS should be less obnoxious. READ AND LEARN.
You keep calling people idiots when you can’t spell yourself. SERVANTS. Not SERVENTS.
All your other comments sound silly just the same.
Perhaps you should do a bit of reading yourself. Or at least, go the lazy route and try spell check.
Sorry “Democrat For Truth,” Armitage is NOT a registered Democrat. You are correct that many officials have served both Rep and Dem administrations, but Armitage has not. He’s only served under Republicans.
Furthermore, a review of his campaign contributions shows he’s donated to every Republican presidential candidate (McCain, Bush, Dole, HW Bush), but, alas, no Democratic presidential candidates. Plus, he’s given to the RNC, but not the DNC.
You are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to shamelessly lie.
What’s a servent?
Is it French for Servant?
You fail.
All you can do is correct someones spelling. Fail.
When has Hollywood ever gotten it right! I did not hear any reaction positive or negative. People just kinda walked out. The film is based on a lie! That is the problem. Let’s just let the machine recreate history again. LOL
I don’t know where people here have an idea that Richard Armitage is a democrat. He’s been a Republican policy adviser since the Reagan administration and was a part of the Bush Administration, thus the statement that “…the CIA spy who was outed by the Bush administration…” remains a factual quote in this article. According to the CIA leak grand jury investigation and United States v. Libby, Armitage, Rove, and Libby discussed the employment of a then-classified, covert CIA officer, Valerie E. Wilson (also known as Valerie Plame) with members of the press.http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/sentencing_memo_exhibits.pdf
I don’t know where loony Bush sympathizers are still coming from.
I don’t care of Armitage was a Dem or GOPer. Giving out that name – be it intentional or a slip – was absolutely wrong. Libby was convicted of perjury/lying to investigators, and NOT revealing the name. These are all facts that are pretty simple and readily available. There was not one shred of documentation anywhere, despite 20 months of searching, that shows there was an intentional effort to uncover Plame. (Even the notes from the journalists themselves are contradictory and even had her name listed wrong, using a married name she doesn’t employ.)
But the fallacy of the logic of your post is that since Albrecht worked for HBO in 2007, when he slapped his wife around it was really HBO assaulting her.
Since the Drudge mud-dwellers are going to spread their odious lies here, let’s get something straight: It doesn’t matter that Ms. Wilson (her preference) was working at Langley at the time her employment was publicly revealed.
The FACT (look that word up, since you’re problably not familiar with it, since you only watch Faux) is that she was an 18-year servant of the American people who was previously under deep cover in foreign countries. And who, during that time sorry for the caps, normal-minded readers), RECRUITED FOREIGN ASSETS WHO AIDED THE CIA (AMERICA) AT GREAT PERSONAL DANGER TO THEMSELVES.
When a former covert U.S. agent is publically revealed, those assest, many of whom are still in place in their home countries, are put at peril, sometimes to the point of death.
Now tell us, Dridge-scumsuckers, how easy is it going to be for future U.S. intelligence agents to convince non-American citizens to agree to provide information that is vital to U.S. interests?
You disgusting people are so obsessed with your pathetic worship of Cheney and his lapdog Bushie that you care NOTHING about how intelligence gathering works.
It only matters as a point of LAW!!!! To be prosecuted for “outing” an intelligence operative, that person must be a covert/clandestine services operative, thus a “covered” agent LOOK UP THE FEDERAL STATUTE before you run your mouth.
Are you referring to the lawyers who secretly took photos of the CIA COVERT agents responsible for terrorist interrogation at their homes and passed the pics, addresses and names on to the terrorists at Gitmo??????? OR, is you “outrage” conveniently one-sided???!!!
One can acknowledge that it was inappropriate and potentially dangerous to intelligence assets to reveal Plame’s identity while also understanding that the person who leaked her identity didn’t realize that she was an undercover agent. Human beings make mistakes even though partisans (of both sides) often prefer to interpret mistakes as a deliberate part of a malicious conspiracy, instead.
Richard Armitage is not a Democrat. He’s a neo-con Republican who’s been hanging out on the Right since the Iran-Contra days.
Jerry Baldwin: You embarrass yourself by posting here that Karl Rove outed Plame, when it is proven fact that it was Armitage. I don’t care whether Armitage is a D or an R; it was he who did the outing. The movie should really be about why Special Prosecutor Fitzpatrick went on with his investigation, clearly gunning for Rove, when he knew almost from the outset that the culprit was Armitage. Further, the fact that this movie never brings up Armitage’s name once is more evidence that the left is clearly deranged about Karl Rove and they still can’t handle the plain truth of how this story went down. Frankly, I find it rather bizarre.
Maverick Mom,
Cheney asked on Air Force One who was Joe Wilson and why was he in Nigeria. Why did he ask this? Why did he want to know? Why did he want Scooter and Richard Armitage to smear him and his wife? If it had happened to you, would you still worship the man like a God?
That’s a great conspiracy theory. tell us—-did Bush bring down the Twin Towers as well, all to get us into Iraq?
Wait, I don’t even think you need to answer that one.
Lefties, where was all your vaunted “concern” about “outed” CIA agents when Senator Frank Church and his traitorous Democrat collegues NAMED NAMES in the 1970′s and got a whole bunch of agents and informants KILLED?
Such short memories, Mouse-averse. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Not a lefty myself, a registered independent….that being said…I was born in 79 and haven’t ever heard the story or anything which would lead me to try looking it up.
I’m not surprised it has happened before, far from it in fact. At some point though, doesn’t the tit for tact need to stop? Outing CIA agents shouldn’t be an acceptable policy for either political party. In this case it should be pretty easy to say anyone who does it is wrong.
A 1970s period piece about outing CIA agents is way too expensive to make for any kind of decent box office return.
That’s why we aren’t talking about it here on an entertainment industry blog. Left, right, center. Who cares. It’s not profitable.
TSS1,
Its not enough to destroy Valarie Plame. Now you want to go after Frank Church. If we didn’t have the Church Committee, we would still be sending Virginia farmboys out to do wetwork. We aren’t the Soviet Union, no matter how much Neo-con scumbags want to turn the US into a police state, we will not return to Nixon dirty wetwork crap. Go to some central American dictatorship and get a job with their secret police if you don’t like the US constitution to Un-American piece of crap.
I’m always amazed at how quickly almost any subject here can go from zero to ninety into the hardcore political posturing, as if this were a political website which had as its sole function the hosting of these very kinds of discussions. Check out the post on the Wachowski brothers for massively hostile and personally insulting exchanges between people who love and hate the Matrix sequels, but the conversation isn’t about the sequels. It’s about gayness in the movies, and no one is spared.
Here, it’s the neo-cons versus the endlessly outraged left. Did anyone here ever think that your emotion and energy could be so much better spent on actual political campaigns, personal activism, whatever? Anything but this sniping over movies that haven’t even been released yet or, as in the case of the Wachowskis, may never see the light of day?
It’s all the same to me, but your loved ones want to know. How is your blood pressure holding up?
In the meantime, I’ll wait with everyone else to see this movie, which sounds like one more attempt to make a high-minded political film out of controversial subject matter. I’m game for the experience, especially with these actors and director, but most of the time–not always, but most–the attempt doesn’t work because the filmmakers are too close to the subject matter to let the story breathe dramatically.
For my money, best political films ever made are still from the late 1960′s, early 1970′s: Z, The Battle of Algiers and the documentary The Sorrow And The Pity. To this day, nothing else really comes close.
The Sorrow And The Pity is an incredible film. But I can’t watch it if I’ve missed the credits ($2 to anyone that get gets that movie reference).
Alvy Singer to Annie Hall.
I’d say if you want a great political film, watch Lumumba. It’s the only political film that shows the good guy making bad decisions. They actually admit his flaws and don’t make him out to be some great hero, just a guy who tried his best.
Unfortunately, there’s really no way to escape politics when it comes to this movie. First, the movie is blatantly political. One need look no further than the complete absence of the name “Armitage” to see that.
Second, there’s the question of whether a “correct” political message can substitute for quality. I haven’t seen the whole picture, but the clip I did see was simply awful. It played like an example of how NOT to do it used in an introductory screenwriting class. Naomi Watts was as good as the material allowed her to be, but Sean Penn simply can’t carry off the Joe Wilson character–at least, not Joe Wilson as Joe Wilson wants us to see him.
The fact that this thing drew any applause at a festival seems to show that if a movie has a comfortable political message (comfortable for the filmmaking community, critics and festival-goers), it can pretty much stink and still draw applause.
One also has to wonder how the movie might have turned out if it had been about two people caught up in a political scandal, instead of a movie about a political scandal. A wife who tries to push her husband’s career and hurts her own, a husband who tries to make himself out as a bigger deal than he really is and gets caught–if you could manage to make them sympathetic, it might have the makings of a fairly compelling movie.
But it’s one the makers of this particular movie seem to have missed. Maybe if they’d focused on entertaining their audience instead of advancing a particular political agenda…
I disagree with you, Purple state John. People need to be held accountable for the lies they tell. Part of the problem with the past 8 year administration is that they were not called effectively on their lies. Democrats have always been thought of as soft because they try to talk things out. That’s the problem when you have critical thinking skills. I say, keep it up even in this entertainment forum!
The problem with the last 8 years was that lefties like you would throw every lie and smear you had at Bush and then never be told to take it back.
Demo-rats don’t have critical thinking skills; they have fantastic lying skills. See Willy, Slick; Nobama, Pres.; and, of course, Sharpton, Al.
Richard Armitage isn’t a Democrat, nor is he a neocon. He’s a moderate Republican in the Colin Powell mold. Like Powell he had reservations about George W. Bush’s foreign policy and the invasion of Iraq.
Valerie Plame wasn’t outed as part of a conspiracy to hurt her or her husband. Bob Novak wanted to find out how Joe Wilson – who didn’t seem at all suited to the task, and who it turns out falsely represented his findings – was selected for the mission to Nigeria. So Novak called his sources, one of whom was Armitage, and Armitage mentioned that Wilson’s connection to the CIA came through his wife, who works for the CIA. Plame’s CIA status was by no means undercover and any foreign intelligence agency could have easily discovered her status with minimal effort, but Armitage still shouldn’t have been so careless in his answers to Novak. Nor, for that matter, should Wilson have been sent on a mission that would raise questions about what his connection to the CIA was.
Novak’s mention of Plame’s name in his column might not have got so much attention had Wilson not started banging the drum so loudly and publicly, concocting a conspiracy theory that the White House was out to get him and his wife.
I went to my morning “what’s Up in Cannes Read” & a political dogfight broke out. I’m not too shocked about the hostility level from the neo-cons. It must be tough to deal with the fact that your boy Georgie Jr. brought the greatest country in the world to her knees.
You Dems are so upset because you were taken in by Mr Obama who promised change, then immediately upon being sworn in revealed himself to be just another puppet.
I guess when it comes to re-writing history both sides have a large interest. Because of the blatant failure of your two parties the sad truth is now in America…we are all just ‘FAIR GAME’.
It probably shouldn’t be surprising that an American movie isn’t well received in Cannes, seems to happen every year no matter how good the movie is. Especially when combined with a couple of legit movie stars and a topic which raises ire the world over, this really isn’t surprising.
Huh? An anti Bush film, not popular at Cannes? That’s NOT a surprise? It’s rather shocking and suggests it’s a terrible movie (minus the politics). If the Cannes crowd didn’t think much of it, even with the appropriate amount of Bush bashng, it must have been a stinker.
It’s a shame Hollywood makes so few of these types of films, just for the awesome bile of hate debate on this thread. Great stuff, gang, keep it up!
“So few”?
How about every movie about Iraq.
now that that’s all straightened out, how was the movie?
Hey! Got a great idea! Let’s talk about the entertainment industry!!
*Sigh* Richard Armitage was Novack’s first source. Rove was his second/confirming source. Armitage was basically a boob here, but there’s plenty to suggest that Rove and Co. were pushing this story as political payback. The idea that Armitage as the first source somehow clears the Bush administration from blame is ludicrous, as we KNOW that officials in the Bush White House lied to the press and to the press secretary while Bush was insisting that he would fire the leaker. (Presumably, he should have fired both Armitage and Rove, but we see how that turned out.)
These are the facts.
Um, Drew…the WH didn’t know it was Armitage. Powell, in one of the most glaring displays of disloyalty to a superior, never informed the President or his staff that Armitage had in fact given Novak Plame’s name and cover.
Only after the investigation was complete and Novak published his side of the tale and Fitzgerald made his findings public did the WH, along with the rest of us, learn who the source had been.
I want proof that Doug Liman and not Simon Crane directed this movie.
wow has no one here ever dealt with flame-baiters before? the reactions are hilarious.
The movie was written for the pleasure of those who will go to see it – liberals who hate George Bush. If the movie was intended to be a factual depiction of the outing of Valerie Plame it would mention the name of the man who actually did the outing – Richard Armitage. Whether or not he did it at the urging of Bush, Cheney and/or Rove, he is the person who did it and it’s obvious why that crucial fact was omitted from the film. The other crucial fact that was omitted was that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald instructed Armitage and Novak not to reveal that the “outing” had been resolved early on in the investigation and the investigation then continued on for almost two years – at taxpayers’ expense. Spin it anyway you like, but it’s ludicrous to make a film about the outing of Valerie Plame that doesn’t reveal the identity of the person who outed her.