I think this was an excellent movie, and not what I expected.

Most striking to me was how successfully it portrayed the complexity of the situation. Second-most striking was that they actually made the audience feel compassion for the terrorists and see them as people, which I didn't think would be possible in this political environment. This is a huge part of the complexity: people with nothing to lose, well, have nothing to lose.

I think it is probably an all-too-accurate depiction. I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't seen the movie, but the difference between the emir's two sons and the decisions made as a result are chilling.

This is actually Osama Bin Laden's biggest beef, as I understand it, that the US is propping up an extremely corrupt regieme in Saudi Arabia and is actively involved with keeping a (from his view) illegitimate government that abuses its citizens in power. To borrow from your other thread, if we were really concerned about civillians, we could have started with Saudi Arabia -- but they're our guys. Which American policy maker was it who said of Sadam Hussein (when we were propping up his government to fight Iranians), "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard"?

I have said for years that the US government does not want peace in the mideast. They want strife and war, so that part of the world needs US products. US products, by the way, are weapons. The US is a larger weapons exporter than all other countries combined. The thing that keeps the US economy a dominant force in the global economy is weapons systems.

I wish I understood monetary principles better. My limited understanding is that money must be tied to something scarce. This used to be gold, but now the US doller is essentially tied to oil. Oil is traded in US dollars pretty much around the world. George Soros has pointed out what a tremendous advantage this gives to the United States, because it can single-handedly set monetary policy for the currency tied to the most strategically important resource in the world. The US will never willingly give up this advantage. That means it must keep the middle east nations dependent on the US, which means dependent on US weapons, which means at war. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about it for too long.

There was a brief comment in the movie about the US "asking" the Emir to purchase war planes from America to help smooth economic downswings in the US. Chilling. And that ain't going to happen if peace breaks out.

Jim