John Pilger dissects the truth and lies in the 'war on terror'. Award-winning journalist John Pilger investigates the discrepancies between American and British claims for the 'war on terror' and the facts on the ground as he finds them in Afghanistan and Washington, DC. Breaking the Silence, the latest documentary by veteran journalist John Pilger, is an important exposure of the lies and falsifications used to justify the Bush administrations global war against terror and its illegal attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. The one-hour documentary was screened on December 9 by Australias Special Broadcasting Services network and given a four-day release in a Sydney cinema.
View Breaking the silence. Video hosted on Google In 2001, as the bombs began to drop, George W. Bush promised Afghanistan "the generosity of America and its allies". Now, the familiar old warlords are regaining power, religious fundamentalism is renewing its grip and military skirmishes continue routinely. In "liberated" Afghanistan, America has its military base and pipeline access, while the people have the warlords who are, says one woman, "in many ways worse than the Taliban".
In Washington, Pilger conducts a series of remarkable interviews with William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and leading Administration officials such as Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. These people, and the other architects of the Project for the New American Century, were dismissed as 'the crazies' by the first Bush Administration in the early 90s when they first presented their ideas for pre-emptive strikes and world domination.
Pilger also interviews presidential candidate General Wesley Clark, and former intelligence officers, all the while raising searching questions about the real motives for the 'war on terror'.
While President Bush refers to the US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq as two 'great victories', Pilger asks the question - victories over whom, and for what purpose? Pilger describes Afghanistan as a country "more devastated than anything I have seen since Pol Pot's Cambodia". He finds that Al-Qaida has not been defeated and that the Taliban is re-emerging. And of the "victory" in Iraq, he asks: "Is this Bush's Vietnam?"
Using archival footage and interviews with former intelligence analysts, historians, human rights activists and some White House officials, the documentary explains how the Bush administration seized on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center to activate long-held plans to seize control of valuable oil resources in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The documentary opens with a series of black and white photographs showing the carnage inflicted on Iraqis by US and British military forces over the past year. A voiceover from US President George W. Bush declares that America will bring food, medicine, supplies and freedom to the people of Iraq. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair claims the war in Iraq is a fight for freedom.
Against these chilling images, Pilger explains that US actions have nothing to do with fighting terrorism but are part of an opened-ended war for American global dominance. The real danger facing humanity, he says, is the increasingly aggressive military action of US imperialism and the state terrorism orchestrated by the White House.
Breaking the Silence also includes firsthand reportage from Afghanistan. Pilger, who has written and directed more than 50 documentaries during his 30-year career, describes Afghanistan as a country more devastated than anything I have seen since Pol Pots Cambodia.
 John Pilger Pilger's career in journalism began in 1958, and he has developed his reputation through both his reporting and the various books and documentary films that he has written or produced. He is best known in Britain for his investigative documentaries, particularly those on Cambodia and East Timor. He has acted as a war correspondent during conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra. In all of his work, Pilger has been a prominent and fervent critic of Western foreign policy. He is particularly opposed to many aspects of American foreign policy, which he regards as being driven by a largely imperialist agenda.
He has been the subject of much praise, with Harold Pinter saying of his work: "John Pilger is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is . . . I salute him.". He has also been subjected to criticism, with Auberon Waugh in Britain coining the verb 'to pilger' to denote 'to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion'. [citation needed] Noam Chomsky has claimed that the reason why journalists have invented the terms 'to pilger' and 'pilgerise' is because, when faced with the uncomfortable facts about the consequences of U.S foreign policy that Pilger presents, 'ridicule' is the only response they are capable of.
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