New Sean Penn Film 'Fair Game' Pushes Blatant Falsehoods About Valerie Plame, Iraq
By Lachlan Markay | November 10, 2010 | 15:44
The director of the new film "Fair Game" - released Friday - is either blatantly dishonest, or astoundingly lazy. The movie, starring Sean Penn as former U.S. diplomat Joe Wilson and Naomi Watts as his embattled wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, makes a number of claims on controversial issues that are demonstrably false.
The Daily Caller's Jamie Weinstein did the legwork in demonstrating just how far from the truth some of the film's central claims are. Chief among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and other White House officials exerted political pressure on intelligence officials to cherrypick intelligence favorable to claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, not only did Libby do no such thing, but according to the Robb-Silbermann Commission, which investigated the intelligence behind the Iraq war, "The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."
Weinstein asked "Fair Game" director Doug Liman if he had read the Robb-Silbermann report. He had not.
But other blatant falsehoods pervade the film that could be disproven with a simple Google search. For instance, it is near-common knowledge by now - except among politically interested Bush-bashers - that neither Libby nor then-White House advisor Karl Rove leaked Wilson's wife's name to the press. In fact, State Department official Richard Armitage dropped the name to the late columnist Robert Novak, setting off a political firestorm.
But according to Weinstein,
You wouldn’t know this by watching Liman’s “Fair Game,” since Armitage is nowhere to be found — except in script at the very end. The narrative that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby were nefarious behind-the-scenes players intent on destroying innocent reputations while pushing the nation into war on false pretenses fits too nicely into Liman and Hollywood’s leftwing vision. You can’t, after all, let facts spoil a cinematic anti-Bush diatribe.
And true to form, the film goes on to push more falsehoods about Iraq war intelligence. It implies that Joe Wilson's work in Niger disproved President George Bush's infamous claim that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
According to Weinstein, the fictional Wilson "suggests his report to the CIA definitively debunked the Iraq-Niger claim." In fact, Bush's statement was accurate: British intelligence had discovered just that. A bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee found in 2004 that Wilson's report "did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium” and "did not change any analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal."
In short, the film is a left-wing, Bush-hating fantasy. The only question is why the director allowed such untruths to remain throughout the film. Allow me to suggest three potential reasons:
1. Liman is being dishonest in order to push a left-wing agenda.
2. Liman is being dishonest because the factual story is far less interesting than the fictional account released Friday.
3. Liman is completely ignorant of the facts, and too lazy to do even a little research.
Or maybe it's a bit of each. What do you think? Let us know in the comments..
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Comments
OOOOooooh,
Submitted by HockeyKid on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 3:54pm.
I bet this one's gonna be a BLOCKBUSTER!! It might even make as much money as "Milk"!
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
I think you're right
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 4:48pm.
Most left-wing fanta-histories do poorly at the box office.
Americans care as much about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame as the filmmakers did about the facts.
MSM is not different. Earlier this week on The Ed Show, I heard Katrina vanden Heuvel (of The Nation) repeat the lie that Libby was convicted of exposing Plame's CIA cover. Of course she conveniently ignores all the evidence . . .
Plame's 15 minutes
Submitted by rwnewsnut on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:22pm.
Aren't her 15 minutes of fame up yet? Your four bullet points are the whole story. No one was EVER convicted of outing a spy.
Iif I had been in the Bush Administration, I too would have asked the question, "Who the hell sent Joe WIlson to Niger?" His wife!
The Wilsons are primarily responsible for the exposure they received.
Wilson was a grandstander from way back
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:29pm.
I worked with a guy who had served as a naval attache alongside Ambassador Wilson, and he and his wife had socialized with the Wilsons overseas and back here in the States.
When the story broke, this guy said he was not at all surprised. He said that he always expected Wilson to make himself center of a story.
What about Sean Penn?
Submitted by almostacowboy on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:36pm.
Isn't his 15 minutes up yet?
But, But, But
Submitted by Tomorama on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 4:27pm.
Chris Matthews said yesterday that this was a great and important film and the "neocons" suck and Libby sucks and Rove sucks and Bush sucks....
He mentioned nothing about ANY errors in the film, or the glorification of a blabbermouth who EVERYONE knew did something in the CIA as she talked about it at every soiree her an hubby had.
Richard Armitrage, who's he??????????????????????????????????????????????
Was he Bushies best bud?
Matthews said it is not quite Casablanca, but a great and important film.
The audience is send to be all a tingle.....
All 7 of them, the same 7 that saw Redacted.
I saw the trailer and knew it
Submitted by ForeverOnTheRight on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 4:45pm.
I saw the trailer and knew it was a propaganda film especially with Sean Penn in it. Your right HockeyKid this will not make any money. It will make even less because it is full of falsehoods.Sadam's stooge
Submitted by DaChew on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:09pm.
I wonder when Sean Penn will do a movie about his time as Sadam Hussein's useful idiot.
Nobody cares about the
Submitted by Smartypants on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:09pm.
Nobody cares about the Valerie Plame story. Most people do not have the patience or intelIectual energy to follow the events. I can't imagine this film doing much of anything at the box office. Sean Penn's box office appeal is virtually gone now and the plot and subject matter are not going to pull people in to theatres.
In terms of why the lies were left in the film, that is obvious. It's essentially why this website exists, isn't it?
Duplicate
Submitted by Smartypants on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:12pm.
Duplicate
I'm gonna watch it!
Submitted by circusstorm on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:14pm.
Of course, i will be buying a ticket for a fox movie first! Only then do we go into the communist flick's... Thats how we roll out here in redneck america Sean!
If this was a documentary you
Submitted by Guttermouth's Return on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:22pm.
If this was a documentary you might have a great argument, but as a narrative it is expected for the filmmaker to use a bit of creative license to help drive the story.
The filmmaker can make any story he chooses
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:33pm.
It's clueless tinglers like Matthews who suggest that there's intellectual honesty in these films. They shill for guys like Pean, who think they're making something historically important.
Whatever nwahs.
Submitted by The Vet on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 10:48pm.
Only a dishonest troll with 16 accounts in his past would consider lies an example of creative license.
Ding. What was that? Oh, you were just crowned King of Creative License.
Creative license
Submitted by HockeyKid on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 7:40am.
would portray Teddy as abandoning Mary Jo because he panicked.
Your form of "creative license" (and Penn's) would have him single-handedly lifting the car from the water, carrying it to shore, and blowing out the water from the interior with his super-breath, only to find poor Mary Jo dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
The spin starts here..................... (see above)
Submitted by Tomorama on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:30pm.
Ahhhh, libtard creative license to drive THE AGENDA, that's what you must mean right ADK?
But the if you are rational and think about it the AGENDA is the STORY here.
This is like doing a movie about the Bible and leaving God out of the script.
They STILL both get nominated for Oscars and the film makes shit at the box office.
F Hollywood.
Tomorama
Submitted by mandrake on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 5:49pm.
Are you the pitcher on Costello's baseball team?
The main character in the
Submitted by billb on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 6:00pm.
The main character in the movie is portrayed by no one! As a matter of fact, the real perpetrater is absent. Who gets the Oscar?
Now maybe if she took off some clothes, we'd have something here.
the review from my local paper
Submitted by mom_rox on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 6:04pm.
from director Doug Liman (whose father was chief counsel to the Senate during Iran-Contra):
"The last time the White House so abused power was Iran-Contra, so there's a huge emotional and political connection to my father in doing this film."
Just like the anti-American
Submitted by RealVet on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 6:09pm.
Just like the anti-American books written by left wing whackos, this garbage history revision was concocted to repudiate the truth because they think it will validate their sick agenda.
Plame was nothing more than a desk-jockey analyst and her husband had no investigative powers or experience whatsoever. Her family, friends and neighbors knew she was a CIA employee. No one in the Bush administration ever "outed" a CIA agent.
And no doubt they conveniently omitted the fact that 500 metric tons of yellowcake uranium were removed from Iraq just a little over 2 years ago.
Sean Penn - who else would agree to play the role of a pussy-whipped political puppet?
I hope this movie cost a
Submitted by jdhawk on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 7:08pm.
I hope this movie cost a bundle to make because knowing the American public like I do, it will be a bust at the box office and the producers will be stuck holding the proverbial "bag!"
The shame of leftist movies that purposefully distort the facts is that years from now our children will view this movie as fact.
Much like the sea change that this recent election portends, we need to take back hollyweird and produce great movies that portray facts accurately. Yeah - I am dreaming . . .
sean penn?
Submitted by caveman1313 on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 7:13pm.
that is all i need to know to decide whether or not to see this movie.
his last great work was fast times at ridgemont high
A star is born..........
Submitted by Tomorama on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 7:39pm.
Same with Phoebe Cates..............
That one pool scene was a classic, she should have recieved an Oscar......
The only way this falsehood
Submitted by Dan Diego on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 8:02pm.
The only way this falsehood makes money is if Hugo, Ahmadinejad and Fidel force their subjects to buy a ticket.
I just remember lib Chris Hitchen's ripping Wilson/Plame lies
Submitted by merly1 on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 8:07pm.
He exposed the lies and folly of these two charlatans.....from Slate, July 2006:
"This means that both pillars of the biggest scandal-mongering effort yet mounted by the "anti-war" movement—the twin allegations of a false story exposed by Wilson and then of a state-run vendetta undertaken against him and the lady wife who dispatched him on the mission—are in irretrievable ruins. The truth is the exact polar opposite. The original Niger connection was both authentic and important, and Wilson's utter failure to grasp it or even examine it was not enough to make Karl Rove even turn over in bed. All the work of the supposed "outing" was inadvertently performed by Wilson's admirer Robert Novak. Of course, one defends the Bush administration at one's own peril. Thanks largely to Stephen Hadley, assistant to the president for national security affairs, our incompetent and divided government grew so nervous as to disown the words that appeared in the 2003 State of the Union address. But the facts are still the facts, and it is high time that they received one-millionth of the attention that the "Plamegate" farce has garnered."
George W. Bush is a mass murdurer
Submitted by SiberianExpress2007 on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 8:09pm.
The cretin George W. Bush is perpetrator of the economic recession. George Bush sent over 4,000 American troops to their deaths, and tens of thousands more came home from Iraq disfigured for life, and over 100,000 Iraqi civillians died in the war. What was all of this for?! To fight a war over weapons of mass destruction that he lied existed. To pay for this evil, he borrowed over a Trillion of dollars from communist China, whom we must eventually pay back.
If you think Obama advocates communism (which he doesn't) consider all of the hundreds of billions Bush sent to the communist country china!
Nice Try Spelling "Murdurer"
Submitted by rammingspeed on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 8:31pm.
I check moveon.org and Huffington Post, too, and I've already read all of your talking points - which, by the way, you've got down perfectly. At least you follow directions (as long as they're from some one who makes you feel good.)
All of the evidence necessary to act against Saddam Hussein was in place in 2003. Bush haters have lied about it - led by the horribly corrupt mainstream news media - and created a revisionist history cesspool in which people like you flounder around. Your claims about Bush are refutable point by point.
And Obama is too a communist! Just the other day I heard him say..."and a hammer and sickle in every pot!" (Pot is code for a**)
I kid. But not by much.
It was all to keep you safe, Junior.
Submitted by SickofLibs on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 8:42pm.
And are Trillions more than trillions?
Now go finish your homework. You're already behind the 8-ball this semester.
Two whole
Submitted by UpNorth on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 1:20am.
days, you got an account for two whole days, just to expose the fact that yet another public school and university can't teach their students to spell and punctuate a sentence? Or to think?
Begone, Troll, you're boring.
...
Submitted by TCinAZ on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 7:22am.
"To pay for this evil, he borrowed over a Trillion of dollars from communist China, whom we must eventually pay back. "
"If you think Obama advocates communism (which he doesn't) consider all of the hundreds of billions Bush sent to the communist country china! "
So that's Billions that Dubya sent To and Trillions that he borrowed From the ChiComs, Ambassador Sagan? Is That correct?
President Bush Didn't borrow Three Trillion MORE Dollars to cover the Ten Trillion that we Already OWE But that We don't Have, and then Begin to Monetize That though, Did He Genius!?
And Btw, what happened to those other 555,000 Iraqi Civilian War Dead in this Era of Smarter than Gulf War Smart Bombs? Ya' know, that never Ending number of " 655,000 Iraqis killed since invasion " that we kept hearing about? Where'd They Go? Were They Resurrected Or Something?
I'm with Tomorama Btw. Redacted - and The Green Zone Imo!
Production Budget: $100 Million (and Some said as much as $150 Million) LMAO!
Domestic Total Gross: $35,053,660 Worldwide: $94,875,650
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=greenzone.htm
"Some have called it "anti-American" or "anti-war". Movie reviewer and US military veteran Kyle Smith went so far as to label the film "slander" and "appallingly anti-American."
Nooo. Not MATT DAYMON... Or His Gerbils! And Spiccoli's doing "The Richard Armitage Story" is gonna be a Whopper Too. So that's Sure to be Another Big-Dollar, Box Office BHOnanza for Hollywood. That one's gonna make a whole Lotta money. Lol!
Don't feed the trolls. I
Submitted by Smartypants on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 11:13am.
Don't feed the trolls. I guarantee that person did not comprehend one thing (s)he typed into the computer (or copied and pasted). This person will not read or understand your response; I can tell that just from the structure and points included in the post. It's better to move on...
You're Right Smartypants
Submitted by TCinAZ on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 1:14pm.
You're Right, Smartypants. The Democrat Trolls only post their Talking points, and then they Cut and Run. So I'll only Add that if Valerie Plame Was an Active, Super-Secret-Handshake CIA Spook, then I'm Yuri Andropov.
TROLL
Submitted by Beukeboom on Fri, 11/12/2010 - 9:09am.
Do not feed the troll.
Sure To Be Best Picture Of 2010
Submitted by rammingspeed on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 8:13pm.
I think point #1 is most appropriate. Zealots like Liman instinctively hone in on the story angle they need to make their point, and most importantly, to demonize people they hate. They believe that whatever pops into their minds is automatically the truth, because they are so enlightened, and there's no need to go further than the echo chamber inside their skulls. Oh, they might brag about their creations to an associate, in order to hear that person praise them like a puppy, but it goes no further than that. And they've always got prissy Chrissie Matthews to climb the flagpole and fly himself in order to promote these left wing fantasies.
People have long since caught on to these films, and they've been rejecting them. And it's, so what? to the Hollywood sh*tpies. Give 'em an Academy Award!
Wilson and Plame w/ODonnell -- about Bush's memoir
Submitted by Gary Hall on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 8:17pm.
Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC interview of Wilson and Plame.
Just another disgusting moment of spew.
(;~/ gary
I wonder if any of this shows up in the film?
Submitted by Injest on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 10:43pm.
Chief among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and other White House officials exerted political pressure on intelligence officials to cherrypick intelligence favorable to claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
So strange I don't know what to make of Joe Wilson's honestly and integrity. If Joe Wilson knew Saddam had no WMD's and Bush was lying why then did he write this editorial to the LA Times?
"There is now no incentive for Hussein to comply with the inspectors or to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction to defend himself if the United States comes after him. And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that."
Joseph Wilson, Advisor to John Kerry 2004 Presidential Campaign In a Los Angeles Times editorial: "A 'Big Cat' With Nothing to Lose" February 6, 2003; Page B17
Golly seems to me he is saying “ Hussein” (Saddam) has WMD's. Or when he went on Bill Moyers show and said...
BILL MOYERS: President Bush's recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute, he said, let me quote it to you. "The danger posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons cannot be ignored or wished away." You agree with that?
JOE WILSON: I agree with that. Sure.
BILL MOYERS: "The danger must be confronted." You agree with that? "We would hope that the Iraqi regime will meet the demands of the United Nations and disarm fully and peacefully. If it does not, we are prepared to disarm Iraq by force. Either way, this danger will be removed. The safety of the American people depends on ending this direct and growing threat." You agree with that?
JOE WILSON: I agree with that. Sure. The President goes on to say in that speech, as he did in the State of the Union Address, is we will liberate Iraq from a brutal dictator. All of which is true. Joseph Wilson, Advisor to John Kerry 2004 Presidential Campaign During an interview with Bill Moyers February 28, 2003 February 28, 2003 was just 20 days from the start of the war.
Strange I wonder if any of this shows up in the film?
Sean Penn
Submitted by Richard B. on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 2:56am.
Anything by Penn is a no watch. Anything from Hollywood about the so-called spy, Valerie Plame is a no watch. The only thing she spied on was the trees as she drove to her office at the Pentagon.
I disagree..."Fast Times At
Submitted by Beukeboom on Fri, 11/12/2010 - 9:07am.
I disagree..."Fast Times At Ridgemont High" is still a good movie to watch.
My favorite story from Iraq
Submitted by DaChew on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 6:55am.
The story I most vividly remember reading about in the time leading up to the war, is when Sean Penn went to Bagdad to take pictures and interview the peace loving Hussein government. So convinced of Sadam's railroading by the U.S. government was Penn, that he joyously helped some of Sadam's secret police force dissidents, feet first, into large wood chippers.
What? Sean Penn did too push people into wood chippers.
It's right here in my movie script.
No Worries
Submitted by sentry_99 on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 10:02am.
You are just using "creative license". As long as your script says "INSPIRED/BASED on true events" I think you will be okay.
Pennus Envy
Submitted by hbnolikeee on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 9:56am.
If I ran into Seeeeeeeeeeen, I'd beat his sorry butt and tell him to shove his head up Hugo's butt.
One word: bomb.
Submitted by Beukeboom on Fri, 11/12/2010 - 9:06am.
One word: bomb.