And it infuriates me that he’s getting the full benefit of the media megaphone. Particularly since it won’t lead to Rumsfeld’s departure. It will only lead to more acrimony, more partisanship, and nothing good after that.

I was rooting around and came across this news report about that mock impeachment of the Iraq war that McGovern participated in as a “witness.” Apparently, there was some anti-Semitic literature handed out at the event, and Howard Dean came out forcefully against it. (I like Howard Dean. I know, I know. But I like straight-shooters, and he is that.)

Conyers’ event occurred in a small Capitol meeting room, and an overflow crowd watched witnesses on television in a conference room at DNC headquarters. According to Dean, some material distributed within the DNC conference room implied that Israel was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

One witness, former intelligence analyst Ray McGovern, told Conyers and other House Democrats that the war was part of an effort to allow the United States and Israel to “dominate that part of the world,” a statement Dean also condemned.

“As for any inferences that the United States went to war so Israel could ‘dominate’ the Middle East or that Israel was in any way behind the horrific September 11th attacks on America, let me say unequivocally that such statements are nothing but vile, anti-Semitic rhetoric,” Dean said.

“The inferences are destructive and counterproductive, and have taken away from the true purpose of the Judiciary Committee members’ meeting,” he said. “The entire Democratic Party remains committed to fighting against such bigotry.”

I am sick of politics, sick of partisanship, sick of worrying myself sick about the state of the world. So I’m changing the subject.

Over at the Hot Button, David Poland is writing about the San Francisco International Film Festival. As usual, he gives good inside info about behind-the-scenes jockeying (the SFIFF and Tribeca Film Festival are big competitors, apparently—their schedules overlap). He’s also great at casting a critical eye over all aspects of a film, always remembering that the movies are an art form.

Here, he writes about an interesting-sounding German film:

Seeds of Doubt …is about a German couple. He’s Arab. She’s native and as blonde as a Nazi promotional photo. They have a young son and a still-vibrant marriage.

But in a post-9/11 word, he is suspect. He’s become used to being looked at funny and feeling the cold shoulder and has learned to let it roll off his shoulders. She doesn’t seem to think much about it. But when a series of coincidences occur at the same time and the police take interest, all the players in the life of this family are forced to reevaluate how they feel.

I don’t want to walk you through the ups and downs of the story, but you can imagine some of the twists. Is he really a terrorist? Is there something he’s not telling his wife? And can the relationship - should the relationship - survive?

This is a film that walks the line between intelligent political conversation and soap opera very effectively. Everytime you think it’s about to tip over, it seems to slow down and right itself.

It’s heartening to know that filmmakers somewhere—though, notably, not in America (for the time being)—are beginning to engage with the world as it is today, with the new personal moral conflicts and terrifying realities we face.

Here’s another positive review of the film:

We found that there were many elements of Seeds of Doubt that anyone who’s been in a relationship, presumably a challenged relationship, could relate to. It was painful to watch Maya and Tariq’s relationship unravel before our eyes. We wanted to lock the two of them in a room and force them to talk about what was happening. The film did an excellent job of demonstrating the consequential damage wrought by misunderstandings and a failure to communicate. But, there was so much more. . . .

Here’s the SFIFF’s promotional material:

Tarik (Mehdi Nebbou), an Algerian scientist living happily in Hamburg with his German wife Maya (Silke Bodenbender) and their young son, responds sarcastically to an anti-Muslim remark made by Maya’s boss at a dinner party. In a post-9/11 world, the retort is all that is needed to spark an official investigation into Tariq’s possible connection with a terrorist cell. The film then follows Maya, who, beginning with her questioning by federal police, travels through a Hitchockian psychological realm, where circumstances seem orchestrated to prove that we can never really know anyone—even the person closest to us. While it propels an edgy, compelling narrative, Maya’s resolution of the truth of whether the man she loves is actually a terrorist is not the central concern of Seeds of Doubt, whose German title, Folgeschäden, translates as “consequential damage.” Set firmly in the turbulent present of subway bombings and anthrax threats, the film is an intensive examination of how insistently the current political climate of fear and suspicion intrudes into Maya’s interpretation of events and corrodes a loving relationship. In keeping with Egyptian/German director Samir Nasr’s desire to “create an atmosphere of complicity between the spectator and the camera,” the film’s framing, sound and pacing contribute to a sense that we are tracking Maya—forming our own judgments of Tariq along with her—and perhaps subject to the very same cultural preconceptions and fears.

Now, what are the chances that this film will actually be shown in theaters? (It will probably come to New York, but I’m thinking of the rest of the country.)

Where is the Long Tail entrepreneur who will find a way to connect interesting indie films with the audiences who want to see them—even on DVD. Say, a specialty foreign films Netflix type of arrangement.

In the MSM that I’ve seen/read, McGovern is being presented respectfully, as a “27-year veteran of the CIA.”

Not so fast.

From Counterpunch, McGovern in his own words:

If you read page 147 of the [9/11] commission report carefully, you will find embedded there a key sentence throwing light on the motive of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the report calls the “mastermind of the 9/11 attacks:”

“KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”

A footnote points out that his statements regarding the “why” of attacking the United States echo those of his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, when he was sentenced in New York to a prison term of 240 years in January 1998. Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, accused the United States of supporting Israeli terrorism against Palestinians, adding that he was proud to fight any country that supports Israel.

Hats off to commission staff for shoehorning that information in and to the commissioners who let it stay. This is highly unusual prose for a Washington establishment usually allergic to any hint at the cruel reality that Israel is the tail wagging the dog–the dogs of war let slip on Iraq by those in the Bush administration who draw no distinction between U.S. strategic interests and those of Israel. [emphasis mine]

In a bizarre coincidence, on the same day that McGovern spoke “truth” to Donald Rumsfeld’s power, the New Haven Advocate published a piece, by Marc Oppenheimer, that was highly skeptical of McGovern.

The article is titled: “Spook Goes Spooky: What on earth is Ray McGovern talking about?” Read it.

McGovern, whose skewering of Rumsfeld at a speaking engagement yesterday has been in heavy rotation on CNN  and MSNBC for 24 hours, who is getting a lot of play in the blogosphere and being lauded for “speaking truth to power,” has an unsavory history as a conspiracist.

In 2002, the Washington Post reported that McGovern participated in

a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes — and that a British memo on “fixed” intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes.

Apparently the session was taped for C-SPAN. (I have yet to look into this.) McGovern was one of the “witnesses”:

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration “neocons” so “the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.” He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

“Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,” McGovern said. “The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic.”

Good on the former DCI.

What a hideous creep McGovern is.

infotainment alert:

The Headline News channel (CNN) premieres the Glenn Beck show on Monday, May 8:

I’ll have further thoughts on this development. Why I find this interesting: see this post, and this one. I wonder if Jon Klein oversees Headline News. I’ll be curious to find out.

Meanwhile, amusingly, the staff of Beck’s show how long it’ll be before they get the ax.