BBC2 documentary on the "terror myth"

The campaign of 2004 seems to be a battle among producers of documentary films as much as more traditional short television commercials. Fahrenheit 9/11 from Oscar winner Michael Moore is the best known, but Moore does not have the field to himself this year. Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, Going Upriver, FahrenHype 911, Celsius 41.11, WMD: The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein, and others have been released this year. Some are theatrical releases, some made for television, and others direct to video/DVD release. Even the venerable Beeb has contributed to this glut with, most recently, a three-part program on the terror "myth." Here is a generally laudatory description of it from the leftist Guardian newspaper's website: Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The making of the terror myth.

This documentary, The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, takes a very different view of the GWOT. Among its assertions are that "dirty" radiological bomb probably wouldn't kill anyone (perhaps why we have not yet seen one), that the fear engendered by the GWOT is being used as a tool of social control by politicians in the Western democracies, that Al-Qaida is not an organization at all but an ideological inspiration to others who actually do things. All very interesting points; although from the referenced article, I suspect that it has a rather leftist tilt which may color the conclusions. On the other hand, there have been others who have questioned the centrality of Al-Qaida - look at the NewsMax archives for a column on this subject by Lev Nazrozov. I hope we get a chance to see this on our side of the pond, so we can draw our own conclusions.