Oliver Stone : Bush has ‘set America back 10 years’

[Contrary1]

Stone is being too kind. I think it's more like 50 years and counting.

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain - Filmmaker Oliver Stone blasted President George W. Bush Thursday, saying he has “set America back 10 years.” Stone added that he is “ashamed for my country” over the war in Iraq and the U.S. policies in response to the attacks of Sept. 11.

“We have destroyed the world in the name of security,” Stone told journalists at the San Sebastian International Film Festival prior to a screening of his latest movie, “World Trade Center.” The film tells the true story of the survival and rescue of two policemen who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after they went to help people escape.

“From Sept. 12 on, the incident (the attacks) was politicized and it has polarized the entire world,” said Stone. “It is a shame because it is a waste of energy to see that the entire world five years later is still convulsed in the grip of 9/11.

“It’s a waste of energy away from things that do matter which is poverty, death, disease, the planet itself and fixing things in our own homes rather than fighting wars with others. Mr. Bush has set America back 10 years, maybe more.”

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15053204/

[JeffR]

1. He left off at least one zero there

eom

[SharonAnn]

14. He "broke" the world.

[John Gauger]

2. This morning a janitor at my college said

Bush has set us back fifty years.

[kohodog]

3. Um, wasn't theMagna Carta in, like, 1080?

Bush's wayback machine is in hyperdrive.

[Swamp Rat]

10. 1215 n/t

[kohodog]

12. Thanks Swamp Rat

I may get my dates confused but this is amazing shit that's going down.

[Swamp Rat]

18. Maybe you were thinking of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when

William of Normandy defeated Harold and captured the crown from Edgar the Atheling?

[mmonk]

Oh to be that lucky.

[blonndee]

6. Took the words right out of my mouth. n/t

[yourout]

4. Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades would be a comparable time.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. I'd say closer to 800 years.

-- since before June of 1215, when King John was forced to sign Magna Carta, which established the right to a jury trial and what later was called habeas corpus. 800 years of legal rights right down the sewer.

[razors edge]

9. But it was for

an honorable cause, the one he explained to cindy sheehan right?:banghead:

[Dem2theMax]

7. Oliver needs a new calculator.

10? Only 10?
I'd put the rolling on the floor laughing smilie here, but I have no reason to laugh today.

[sweetheart]

8. There is no back

The population of the earth is exploding and there is no
return to a previous way of living. The resources we have can't
be used like they were in the 1950's or the planet will be destroyed,
there will be no fish left and no vegetation either.

The sad thing is that it is much much worse than 10 years, he's
set us back 1,000 years, and if it costs us an ice age, perhaps he's
set us back 100,000 years. There is no relative measurement when
you're falling off a precipice... 10 years my tukus, perhaps it
looks that way from the ranch in telluride, but the empire has lost
its integrity entirely, requirig a replacement empire at the very
least, 100 years.

[Rex]

11. 10? Try almost 800!!!

We have not begun to see what evils men will do. McCarthy was a joke compared to what Bush will do to us.

[moondust]

13. Dark Ages. n/t

[alphafemale]

15. Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr was around the mid 1600's.

It's feeling more like that then ten years ago.

Ten years ago we were more free.

People and media freely razzed a sitting president without having their love of country or mental stability questioned.

??????

[Vinnie From Indy]

16. Kinda funny coming from a guy that just made a few bucks by pimping

the BushCo version of events on 9/11. Stone lost a great deal of credibility with me and he didn't have much to begin with anyway. How did his 9/11 movie end up doing?

[DemoTex]

17. Stone is no Chicken-hawk, either.

FYI: Oliver Stone served in the shadow of Nui Ba Dinh, the "Black Virgin Mountain" of Tay Ninh Province. That was some bad shit, my friend. Platoon is based on a particularly bad battle with an infamously bad-ass NVA regiment in Tay Ninh Province. Oliver has gone off deep a few times, but his moral currency is still accepted in my little world. Platoon is one of the best war movies ever made (as is Hamburger Hill).


Nui Ba Dinh

[Redneck Socialist]

19. Not to thread jack here, but explain to me Hamburger Hill

It's been many years since I've seen that movie, but I don't recall it being particularly good. What sticks with me is the the seeming pointlessness of the battle, (which I suppose may have been the point) I mean they go up this hill, a hill indistinguishable from any of thousands of others, at a horrendous cost of life and why? That's the part that I never really got.

[DemoTex]

23. You "got it" RS. The "pointlessness" of Ap Bai epitomized the VN war.

The "pointlessness" of the Battle of Ap Bai (Hamburger Hill) moved Teddy Kennedy to make one of the greatest anti-war speeches ever heard during the Viet Nam debacle. Ap Bai, along with My Lai (and some other places to .. including Nui Ba Dinh), helped turn the tide of public opinion against the war in Viet Nam.

The film, "Hamburger Hill," captured the almost universal vacuity of the whole Viet Nam experience. The first half (or so) of the film is most instructive. Grunts being grunts. The "FNG tooth brush" scene with "Doc" is classic.

The second half (like the second half of Full Metal Jacket), is the combat scenes. As a student of the history of that battle, and as a friend of a couple of guys who survived to tell, I find the daily charge up-the-hill scenes extremely true to the battle. Even the early morning preps from arty, Naval guns, and F-4s was accurate. The total denuding of the flora and fauna was accurate. The bleak inhumanity was extremely accurate.

But it wasn't an Oliver Stone flick.


"You will brush your teeth with a wide circular .."

[Vinnie From Indy]

20. I won't deny his incredible talent as a filmmaker, but

his powerful ability to tell a story is very dangerous when he fabricates history beyond what artistic license would sensibly allow. Granted, he has the right to make a movie about Groucho Marx killing JFK or that Bush really was brave on 9/11 but I don't have to like it one bit.

[DemoTex]

25. I agree ..

But knowing his background, which is my point, makes me love Platoon even more. The man has a rich history (and, evidently, a fertile imagination).


Check six. Now, more than ever.

[Vidar]

21. 75-80 years--the Depression is coming.

[lectrobyte]

24. Yeah, that's about the right time frame -- wasn't the Geneva Convention

just after WW I?

[Vidar]

26. Appears to have started quite a bit earlier.

First Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field" (first adopted in 1864, last revision in 1949)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention

[lectrobyte]

28. Thanks, I did not know that, I was thinking for some reason it came

about to abolish the use of things such as mustard gas after the horrors of WWI.

[Vidar]

30. You're welcome.

[Gloria]

22. I thought we were back to "late medieval"....way beyond 10 years, Oliver..

[Red Right and BLUE]

27. Only ten?

[ddeclue]

29. I was thinking more like 1000 years...

to the dark ages...

Where are those thumbscrews now?...

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[mb7588a]

31. heh

Oliver Stone needs to learn to count with more than his fingers.

:banghead: