"W." My Review

"W." The extended trailer:

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give this movie a seven. This movie covered Bush's controversial early life, his tumultuous relationship with his father, and the early stages of the war on terror. I think that Oliver Stone did good by spending a lot of time on Bush's early life because it really humanized him. And when Stone went into depth in the relationship of W. with his father, you actually felt sorry for him.

Although it was nice to see Cheney, Rice, Rove, Powell, and others also depicted in this movie it brought about questions of how things really went down. A lot of it was hard to swallow. Cheney and Rove were depicted as these oil hungry, manipulating monsters. Rice was an ass kissing, really good for nothing sidekick, while Powell was the disliked voice of reason that was strong armed into selling the war with is name and reputation. In Stone's view, Cheney wanted this war solely because he wanted to control the oil in the middle east. They sold the war using the threat of WMDs, and clever language. Well, maybe that's not such a stretch. But what is a stretch is that Bush was naive enough to be manipulated. Another stretch is that from the get-go, Powell was against the war. I have a hard time believing that Powell would allow his good name to be tarnished by strong-armed tactics. To see all these people together deciding whether or not to go to war, based on oil made me sick to my stomach. I always knew it was about oil, but to see it on screen and be reminded that people I cared about and over 4,000 other troops lost their lives because of this nonsense infuriates me. All those thoughts going around and then the realization that McCain supported this. He said we would be greeted as liberators, and that we could just "muddle" through Afghanistan. If that is not the same kind of dismissive and complacent attitude that the Bush administration had. To this day McCain when asked if he knew then what he knows now, McCain will not still supports the war. Even knowing that there were no WMDs. Maybe that's even worse than Bush. Because at least the Bush administration had WMDs as an excuse.

McCain defending the war, even with the realization that there are no WMDs:



In relation to politics today I think this movie humanizes Bush, but hurts McCain. Because it shows the lead up to the war being full of lies and manipulation. Then when you think about the fact that McCain supported, and still supports the war with no exit strategy, it brings into question McCain's true motivations. After all, he did have a Freudian slip at a townhall meeting and say that we were at war for oil.

McCain saying that if we have energy independence we will never have to go to war with the middle east again:

All in all the movie would have been much better if the ending wasn't such a terrible drop off. For me watching that movie made me even more determined to help get Obama elected. We need someone in the White House who will think through decisions carefully, rather than make rash and unfounded decisions.