The Costly Lie in Money, Trust, and Lives

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“The Green Zone,” a film directed by Paul Greengrass, starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, and Amy Ryan, written by Brian Helgeland and Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

“Bourne” director Paul Greengrass has made the first Iraq War suspense thriller with his “Bourne” star, Matt Damon. The film, “The Green Zone,” based on Wash­ ington Post National Editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” is as intense as his fictional spy films.

Greengrass opens his film with the early-morning “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad, the historic and once breathtakingly beautiful city, in March 2003. In horrifyingly realistic scenes, he shows jets scream­ ing overhead, bombs exploding, Iraqi citizens stream­ ing out of their homes, running in the streets, holler­ ing and screaming; buildings crumbling, collapsing, rubble raining down; traffic jammed up in all direc­ tions; sirens wailing; fires raging every where against a background of leaping flames and billowing black smoke.

Four weeks later, a stern-faced, armed and armored Matt Damon, playing Chief Intelligence Officer Roy Miller, arrives in Iraq with hard-core intel and maps detailing the “exact locations” of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. He and his men storm buildings while “looters” rush past. When an official complains, another employs the Rumsfeld rationale, “Democracy is messy.”

The WMD sites turn out to be abandoned warehous­ es coated with decades of pigeon poop. When Miller has questions, he is told not to “stir the pot,” do his job and follow orders. A top CIA official, Martin Brown, played by hulking Brendan Gleeson with years of frustration and bad intel furrowing his massive brow beneath shaggy bangs, has conflicting information for Miller—but Miller, good soldier that he is, wants to be­ lieve that U.S. intelligence is correct.

In a chaotic scene in an open square with helicopters churning overhead, Miller stops a soldier from shoot­ ing a civilian (Khalid Abdalla) who is lying face down in the dirt. The man speaks English and gives Miller a litany of needs: water, electricity, gasoline, and food. He assures them there are no WMDs there. Miller promises water and christens the man “Freddy.” He will be his translator.

Following Brown’s lead, Miller discovers on line that a meeting was held in Jordan in 2002 attended by British and U.S. officials and al-Rawi (Yigal Naor), a top general in Saddam’s army and the Jack of Clubs in Bush’s pack of identity cards. Al-Rawi had told U.S. officials then that there were no WMDs in Iraq.

In the film, an informant alleged to be a source codenamed “Magellan” had given the U.S. intel on WMDs, but he ended up being non-existent. In real life, the informant was a real snitch, Rafid Ahmed Alwan, code named “Curveball,” who, in 1999, made up the WMD the complex and lengthy plot. The overall arc of the story is a movement from in­ nocence, to questions, to suspicion, and, finally, fatal certainty. story in Germany, hoping to get asylum there. The Bush administration employed his fake story about Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to help build the case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Alwan was identified by CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

Amy Ryan, sweaty in her Banana Republic outfits, plays Lawrie Dayne, a Washington Post reporter, who has free reign of the Green Zone and access to anyone, though she can’t divulge her informants. One of the improbable scenes of the film takes place at the swim­ ming pool at Hussein’s former palace, looking like a Miami Beach resort. Dayne collars Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear as a Paul Bremer figure) with her own suspicions; he dismisses her with ”just give me some­ thing that will look good on CNN.”

Many more improbabilities occur in the film: Miller and his men drive into the Green Zone. Freddy, in an unmarked sedan, rolls through the checkpoint without being stopped and questioned. And later, when Miller uncovers information backing up Brown’s no WMDs story, he realizes he must handle this alone, since no one believes him. He tells Freddy to “go home.” The insurgents had seen Freddy with Miller and his men while they did bad things to their people. Are we to believe, without protection, he won’t be killed?

The film ends in typical Greengrass fashion with a heart-stopping chase through narrow alleyways and darkened buildings as helicopters circle and Miller, soldiers, and men in black masks brandishing assault weapons chase, shoot at, and kill Iraqis in business suits who’d been meeting clandestinely with al-Rawi. Miller tries to save al-Rawi now that he knows the truth.

Back at the Baghdad Hotel, Miller sends a report to Lawrie Dayne and to dozens of other major media out­ lets, debunking the existence of WMDs in Iraq. But did the story ever reach the general public? Now, seven years, tens of thousands killed, and six-plus-billion taxpayer dollars later, we know there were no WMDs and that the world was fed a pack of lies by the Bush and Blair administrations. Yet U.S. troops are still there. Why? n picion, and the theme of helplessness in the face of powerful, malevolent forces. At the end, the criminal conspirators are still in control.

It’s nonsense, of course, as anyone who has read “The Communist Manifesto” could point out. No conspiracy theory is needed to explain the real crime in the story—the alliance of capitalist nations busily pursuing their class interests. That’s a film yet to be made. n memory does that in terms so subtle yet