A waterboarding scene from the film “Zero Dark Thirty.”
Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the New York University Center on Law and Security and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First One Hundred Days, explains seven simple steps to making US torture and detention policies once again acceptable to the American public, as illustrated in “Zero Dark Thirty.”
Snip:
As its core, Bigelow’s film makes the bald-faced assertion that torture did help the United States track down the perpetrator of 9/11. Zero Dark Thirty — for anyone who doesn’t know by now — is the story of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a young CIA agent who believes that information from a detainee named Ammar will lead to bin Laden. After weeks, maybe months of torture, he does indeed provide a key bit of information that leads to another piece of information that leads… well, you get the idea. Eventually, the name of bin Laden’s courier is revealed. From the first mention of his name, Maya dedicates herself to finding him, and he finally leads the CIA to the compound where bin Laden is hiding. Of course, you know how it all ends.
However compelling the heroine’s determination to find bin Laden may be, the fact is that Bigelow has bought in, hook, line, and sinker, to the ethos of the Bush administration and its apologists. It’s as if she had followed an old government memo and decided to offer in fictional form step-by-step instructions for the creation, implementation, and selling of Bush-era torture and detention policies.
Read the entire piece at Tomdispatch.
Today, January 11 2013, marks 11 years to the day after the administration of George W. Bush opened the terror detainee center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And today, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. My review of the film is here.
(Thanks, Laura Poitras!)