I finally saw "Control Room"

[FreedomAngel82]

I finally saw "Control Room" last night on the Sundance Channel. It was a very eye-opener film. One part that really got me was the whole Saddam topple event. According to one reporter guy all the "Iraqi's" weren't Iraqi's and he could tell because of their accent and they were carrying a really old Iraq flag from 1991 which, at this point in time, was ten years ago. They showed Rumsfeld blaming Al-Jazera on "propaganda" and the like. It's really an eye opener film and I encourage anybody who hasn't seen it to definitely see it.

[Castilleja]

1. Thanks for the tip, N/T

[ZinZen]

2. Yes, excellent film

I would highly recommend it also.

[Garbo 2004]

3. The toppling scene was staged. A wide shot of the scene that wasn't

televised shows the "throngs" of jubilant Iraqis was actually a small group of folks. Later said to have been gathered by a psy-op team to generate the media event. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm

Here's another report of the staging: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0704/161032.html

[FreedomAngel82]

6. Exactly

They talked about this too. And one woman pointed out that all the military weren't around like they were before and how strange it was. I wonder where they got these men. No women were there either. That was really eye opening.

[Norquist Nemesis]

4. Yes, it is.

Wish I could get my hubby to watch it.

[wicket]

5. The toppling of Saddam's statue was PSY OPS

More info here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001971815_statue04.html

The U.S. Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations (PSYOP) units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.

As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, U.S. Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army PSYOP team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.

After the colonel, who was not named in the report, selected the statue as a "target of opportunity," the PSYOP team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a PSYOP team member.

But Marines had draped an American flag over the statue's face. "God bless them, but we were thinking from PSYOP school that this was just bad news," the PSYOP member wrote in the report. "We didn't want to look like an occupation force, and some of the Iraqis were saying, 'No, we want an Iraqi flag!' "

Someone produced an Iraqi flag, and a PSYOP sergeant quickly replaced the American flag. Ultimately, a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the PSYOP team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.

[FreedomAngel82]

7. I also heard an interview with a guy

who was in the military and apart of the team to find Saddam. Apparently they really found him at a person's house he knew and was eating dinner or something. They staged the whole spider hole event too.