It's impossible to watch a film about Iraq right now and not think about its relation to what is happening in the real world. "Live From Baghdad" is your basic foreign-correspondent adventure story; it certainly doesn't take any political positions. But there is reason to believe that the hawks in the Bush administration might not be so pleased with this film's appearance right now. Almost inadvertently, in certain ways it subtly undercuts the strident, why-didn't-we-think-of-going-to-war-before message Americans have been receiving.

The film certainly doesn't defend Saddam Hussein. (There's a memorable scene when Wiener is fastening the microphone to Saddam's tie and looks up into those black, menacing eyes -- whereupon he looks down and says, "Nice tie.") It opens with powerful images of Iraqi tanks smashing cars in the streets of Kuwait. And the Iraqi "minders" who "escort" the CNN crew around are presented as more ominous and duplicitous than they are in the book. Nevertheless, things come out in the film that don't sing harmony to the war hymn. For example, several characters make unchallenged statements that the Gulf War was fought for oil, not out of humanitarian concern for the Kuwaitis -- a deflating reminder of the realpolitik calculations behind most wars, including the one that now looms.

The film shows Iraqis, in particular Naji al-Hadithi, as complicated and sympathetic people, always a subversive move when war fever is afoot. (There's a short, powerful scene in which a sweet-faced hotel bellboy, with a permanent limp from a wound, tells Wiener he fought against the Iranians for five and a half years. He adds softly, "Now maybe I fight America.") It brings up inconvenient history: Hadithi describes how after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the British carved Kuwait out of land that had been part of Iraq. ("There's a history in this region about which you people know nothing," he says.) And it flirts with the idealistic idea that being open to the other side's point of view can often resolve conflicts short of war. (Wiener's book goes considerably further, arguing that the failure of the first Bush administration to understand the importance of "face" in the Arab world may have caused it to miss an opportunity to allow Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait.)

I don't want to overstate the case. "Live From Baghdad" is not a political movie. It obviously doesn't address the issue of terrorism, the threat posed by Saddam or his weapons of mass destruction. (Those weapons were not an issue for America in 1991: In fact, Iraq had used chemical weapons to slaughter thousands of Iranian civilians just three years earlier, with the tacit blessing of a U.S. administration more fearful of Iran than Iraq.) It isn't likely to change many viewers' minds about whether we should invade Iraq. It's unlikely that it intended to do this, but simply by presenting our forthcoming enemies as human and making war real by showing its devastation, it feels quietly off-message.

The book is another story. Wiener is a harsh critic of both the current administration's Iraq policy and the intellectual bona fides of the current resident of the White House. In the epilogue to the 2002 paperback reissue of "Live From Baghdad," he writes, "As this book goes to press, Baby Bush, like his father and Clinton before him, has called for the removal of Saddam Hussein -- even if it means the United States will act on its own and defy the wishes of the United Nations, the European Community, the Arab League and anyone who thinks it insane to send 250,000 Americans to fight a war with no logical endgame in sight. But since George W. Bush has as much foreign policy know-how as my pet cat, I suppose Gulf War Round Two is a distinct possibility. Let's face it: Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who poses a threat to his own people and ultimately the Middle East, but anyone who would publicly call Ariel Sharon a 'man of peace' (as Bush did) lacks a certain ... well, historical perspective." As CNN's former bureau chief in Jerusalem, Wiener knows whereof he speaks.

For obvious reasons, none of those opinions are found in the film. Nor are Wiener's caustic attacks on the "Fox-izing" of CNN, anchors who wear American flag lapel pins ("I have written to both Lou [Dobbs] and Walter Isaacson, CNN's president, several times about this. To date, I have yet to receive a response"), the heavy-handed censorship imposed by the U.S. during the Gulf War, journalists who got too close to the government during the war, and the general decline of journalism into infotainment. (One would be curious to know what Wiener would say about the fact that HBO and CNN are now both owned by AOL Time Warner.)

But "Live From Baghdad" doesn't have a political agenda. What it has in spades is the classic journalist's worldview -- that combination of cynicism and idealism, the highly developed bullshit meter, the wariness of official pronouncements instantly familiar to anyone who has worked in a newsroom. Those qualities just don't mix with flag-waving pieties.

As we prepare for another war against Iraq, this story of one of live journalism's finest hours should remind us that, as Wiener writes, CNN's moment of glory was an anomaly even back then -- and things are worse now, with the foglike miasma of the "war on terror" choking journalism. Fearless, independent reporting was extremely rare in Gulf War One, as a docile press corps filed off to take official dictation. And if the Pentagon has its way, in the sequel real journalism will be nonexistent. This should concern every journalist -- and every American.

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