Taxi to the Dark Side

I try to keep this blog light and full of music and entertainment. But sometimes things I feel, hear, or see are too serious to ignore.

Sometimes you watch a film for entertainment. Sometimes you watch a film to inform. Tonight I watched a film that may very well have changed the way I will view my country forever. That film is Alex Gibney's 2007 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Film, "Taxi to the Dark Side". The film chronicles how post-September 11, 2001 the Bush administration blurred/rewrote the rules of the Geneva Convention that define our use of torture on "wartime" detainees.

The film starts by telling the story of a innocent detainee (named Dilawar) who was killed in US custody by "blunt force" which was subsequently covered up by the military. The movie then begins to go into the entire story of how a small group of right-wing neocons (Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez, George W.Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, and John Woo) using the victims as 9/11 as bait, redefined what torture is and forever tarnished our moral standing in the world. Not only did their actions tarnish the principals of what the United States was founded on, but I fear has forever diminished our moral standing in the world. I still cannot believe what I have seen and cannot believe we have allowed it to happen. Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney are the war criminals that should be in Guantanamo Bay right now, not the huge percentage of innocent civilians that are there now (indefinitely) as some sort of political theater.

If this all sounds too heavy; it is. But it should be required viewing for all Americans so we can know how far we have fallen before it is forever too late to ever stand tall again.

The film is airing this month on HBO but can be watched in it's entirety below.

Taxi to the Dark Side