REVIEW BY OWEN RICHARDS
Cutting Edge: The World According to Bush
Screening on SBS, 8.30pm, July 20 & 27
If you're not yet having nightmares about the world being in the hands of a circle of crazed zealots, this should do it. The World According to Bush, a two-part documentary about the sinister inner workings of the Bush administration, will frighten even the most hardened Washington-watchers.
Part one opens with a look at the Christian fundamentalist fervour of the Bush gang. In one scene we see Bush's cabinet heads-down in prayer at the White House. Another shows truly bizarre footage of US general William Boykin preaching to an evangelical congregation in his military uniform. Boykin then shows slides of a dark blur in the sky above Mogadishu, and proclaims it a "demonic spirit". (In reality, it was a US Predator aircraft.)
The fundamentalism runs deep. Michael Ledeen, adviser to Ronald Reagan, suggests that the Christian right — not the Israel lobby — is, in actual fact, the prime influence on Washington's Middle-East policy. The Christian right is more fanatical about the existence of Israel than the Zionist lobby because they see a victorious Israel as fulfilling biblical end-time prophecy. Indeed, Ledeen claims that a higher percentage of American Christian evangelicals support Israel than do American Jews.
Part one of The World According to Bush then reveals the Bush regime's calculating ambition after the 9/11 terrorist attack. Analyst Robert Steele claims that, while young couples were still jumping to their deaths to escape the flames of the twin towers on 9/11, White House officials were calling a serving general to "pin it on Iraq".
Steele then compares Bush's hypnotic weapons-of-mass-destruction-mantra to the propaganda techniques of Nazi chief Paul Goebbels, summed up in the famous expression: "Repeat a lie often enough and people swallow it".
Part two explores the close ties of the Bush family and administration to the Saudi royal family as well as the conflicts of interest and business connections of the Bush "dynasty". It is revealed that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, invested money for the Nazis during World War II. One of grandpa Bush's companies also operated mines in Poland using inmates of nearby concentration camps as forced labour.
Much of The World According to Bush takes the form of one-on-one interviews. This gives the documentary its punch. The interviewees are not radical activists or conspiracy nuts, but ex-CIA operatives, journalists and influential establishment figures. They include Bush's speech writer David Frum; former weapons inspectors Hans Blix and David Kay; presidential adviser Richard Perle; Secretary of State Colin Powell; former CIA director James Woolsey; and former UN secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar.
Despite the darkness of The World According to Bush, there are some glimpses of light. Scenes of protest and resistance are counter-posed to the Bush clique's madness, and part two closes with the fiery words of political singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco.
From Green Left Weekly, July 21, 2004.
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