Zero Dark Thirty, the film about the hunt for Bin Laden, was nominated for five Oscars yesterday, but it's unlikely to win any, given the controversy surrounding it. This has been raging for over a month now and shows no signs of abating. For those that haven't been following it, the Huffington Post's Mehdi Hasan wrote a useful primer yesterday, complete with a list of “further reading”. (Thanks, Professor.)
The nub of it concerns the film's treatment of “enhanced interrogation” – the techniques used by the CIA to extract information from Al Qaeda suspects and the role that information played in identifying the courier that led to Bin Laden. Opponents of “enhanced interrogation” like Mehdi praise the film for its “honesty” in showing these methods for what they really are – torture, plain and simple, according to them – but condemn it for suggesting that such practices yielded any useful intelligence. Among the liberal Left (and some conservatives) it is an absolute sine qua non that torture doesn't work because information extracted under duress is unreliable. The film’s director and screenwriter – Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, respectively – have become liberal apostates for deviating from this line. (To read more, click here.)
Re: Zero Dark Thirty
Posted by Ray Barcia on 14-01-2013 15:44:
You have not changed one bit Toby...not since Those Dartington days back in the eighties...still a jerk.
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