Obama-Backed Torture Film Fails at Oscars

Zero Dark Thirty wins no major awards

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 25, 2013

The Obama administration-backed, torture advocating propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty flopped at the Oscars last night, failing to pick up any major awards in what critics said was a backlash against the movie’s politically-driven narrative.

“The film, which has sparked outrage among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington over its depiction of torture, and allegations that the Obama administration leaked classified intelligence to help the making of the film, won no major Oscars on Sunday and only one award overall,” reports Reuters.

The movie, which is a dramatization of the alleged assassination of Osama Bin Laden, was castigated by lawmakers, including torture victim John McCain, as “grossly inaccurate and misleading” for its suggestion that torture aided in the discovery of Bin Laden’s compound.

Promotional material for the movie began circulating before last year’s presidential election, leading some to accuse the Obama administration, which had worked closely with film makers, of trying to regurgitate the Bin Laden assassination for political points scoring.

The CIA directly authorized the movie’s writer Mark Boal to conduct interviews with CIA officers, military officers, and White House officials about the raid during which Boal was allegedly given classified information, “apparently in the belief that the public would appreciate the movie that resulted.” While constantly citing “national security threats” as a justification to become more and more secretive, the CIA was apparently carefree about handing out sensitive intelligence to a movie writer as part of a PR coup for the agency.

Despite advocating torture, many on the left praised the film, including MIchael Moore, who claimed that the movie did not in fact advocate torture, an assertion debunked by the fact that the characters who carried it out in the film are not punished and are in fact venerated in the storyline.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal claimed they based the movie “on first hand accounts of actual events,” which is dubious given that the narrative surrounding the Bin Laden raid has changed numerous times. Earlier this month, the Navy SEAL who claims he shot Bin Laden said the terror leader did use his “wife” as a human shield, despite the White House acknowledging that the woman was not Osama’s wife and was not used by him as a human shield.

Numerous other inconsistencies surrounding the event, including the inability of Obama and Hillary Clinton to have watched the raid “live,” as the infamous situation room photos depicted, also emerged in the days following the announcement of Bin Laden’s demise.

The torture-advocating narrative of the film contradicts the exhaustively documented fact that torture does not work and in fact harms terror investigations by producing false leads.

“The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world,” Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in 2009. “The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

In addition, former US Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander warns that torture creates more terrorists.

“When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve,” Alexander explained. “The information that you get is unreliable. … And even if you do get reliable information, you’re able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda’s then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members,”said Alexander.

Numerous other political and academic experts have publicly attacked torture methods as ineffective, counter-productive and dangerous.

The rejection of Zero Dark Thirty at the Oscars last night will hopefully go some way to solidifying the view that torture is a method reserved for barbaric dictatorships and is completely abhorrent to the very principles on which the United States of America was founded.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

This article was posted: Monday, February 25, 2013 at 6:30 am

Tags: entertainment, terrorism

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