Review of The War You Don't See (2010) by Edward G — 12 Dec 2010

Gives into handwringing and boo-hooing. The interviews are a bust, because the "disgraced" journalists are good enough to concede most of Pilger's points; one diplomat grovellingly professes "I feel shame sitting in front of you", a toe-curling episode that should never have been allowed into a final cut.

Pilger's media criticism is surprisingly sloppy: I was intrigued to hear many of my own doubts about Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" given voice to by one of the assembled warfare experts, but Pilger himself can't, in all good faith, lump together "The Green Berets" and "Platoon" - films two decades apart, made in very different contexts by very different directors - as examples of pro-War propaganda designed to quell dissenting voices.

.. You come away wondering whether Pilger's new-found prominence and independence is damaging his casework: what would have made a punchy, hour-long "World in Action" special becomes substantially less convincing padded out to feature length.

In the second half, Pilger pursues rather rambling, retirement-home memories of past assignments, gets in a terrible bind trying to pin a pro-Israeli bias on the BBC that simply isn't evident from the selected clips, and in attempting to tar Obama with the warmonger brush, merely reveals there are almost as many cranks on the Left as there are on the Right - his chief ally in this latter, incidentally, is creepy Wikileaks libertarian Julian Assonge.

It's a shame, because buried in the harrumphing is a valid point - that, with regard to Iraq, we wuz well and truly duped. You just wish Pilger had found a better way to develop it, or indeed that he hadn't had cause to make it in the first place.