Burning Eyeballs.....

What do you do when you're "trapped" in a small space for about nine hours. A small, narrow spot where it's hard to move around, stretch your legs or sleep. You disturb your fellow traveler every time you need to get up to walk the aisles. What do you do in coach on an airplane moving from the USA to Europe. Well one thing I don't do is complain....after all I'm fortunate enough to be heading off for another travel adventure.

And KLM feeds you well and gives you a wide variety of TV and movie selections to watch on your own private screen. That's how I found a movie I somehow missed when it was in theaters...."Shock And Awe". The movie covers two reporters for the Knight Ridder News Agency as the Bush administration led the Nation to the war in Iraq. While other newspapers were pushing the administration's line that Sadam had weapons of mass destruction,  two young reporters were uncovering alternate facts.

The movie is fascinating....beginning with a young soldier at a hearing in Washington DC. He rolls to the front of the room using his wheelchair. When asked to stand to be sworn in he just looks at the panel....and the chairman apologizes. He can be sworn in while seated. Then he begins to share his thoughts. He says he's always been fascinated by numbers.....that's the way he looks at the world. And he begins to list a few numbers. The number 19...the age at which he enlisted in the army. The number three....the number of hours he was on the ground in Iraq before his vehicle hit an IED. The number six....the six inch piece of shrapnel that sliced through his spine. And then he says "I'd like to ask one question. How the hell did this happen?"

And the movie flashes back to September 11th... airplanes flying into the twin towers and the Pentagon. It moves forward as the Bush administration begins to find "facts" that Sadam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and is preparing to use them. And the US can't allow that and has to keep the world safe. The drum beat continues for over a year as the President, his cabinet members and our congress move closer and closer to war. And our troops invade in 2003.

The few reporters at the Knight Ridder Agency who refused to give up, who didn't believe the research and the officially sanctioned government "facts" presented, were the only ones that got it right. But no one was listening. It was years later that Colin Powell admitted that his speech to the United Nations prior to the invasion was based on flawed intelligence. It was years later that the New York Times apologized to it's readers for presenting the wrong information.

The movie was fascinating.... I was never aware of this back story until watching "Shock And Awe". It reminded me of "All the Presidents Men" and also reminded me of the importance of a free press. The movie ended with a list of additional numbers:

• we've been on the ground in Iraq for 17 years
• the war has cost more than two trillion dollars
• 36 thousand American troops were killed
• one million Iraquis were killed or injured
• zero WMD were ever discovered

I watched two other movies on my trip across the pond until my eyeballs were burning. Two other movies......but "Shock And Awe" is the one that still rattles around in my brain. The numbers.....