First off, many hearty congratulations to Sidney Blumenthal on being part of an Oscar-winning team. Mazel tov from your admirers and well-wishers.

With those sunny words out of the way, on to the meat of the matter.

What a powerful, sickening, maddening, and thoroughly disturbing experience this film is. As a journalist, I’m amazed at the access Alex Gibney and his people were given to interview subjects — how the hell did he convince those soldiers to talk?? — and to the footage from the groteque gulags otherwise known as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Most of all, however, this is a film that induces not only anger and disgust but profound shame – shame that we live in a country whose leaders could condone such activity, shame that so few were willing to stand up and say “no more”; shame that “American justice” is now synonymous with suspension of habeas corpus, torture, homicide by interrogation; shame that the press has been so slow to shine a light on who these prisoners, labeled “the worst of the worst” so often that the public swallows this propaganda like mother’s milk, actually are…the list goes on and on.

But perhaps one of the most bitterly ironic images in the film is that of a young John McCain, his body so broken and ravaged by torture that he was barely able to speak. Fast forward 30 years and look at where we are as a country, using techniques that were perfected during the Spanish Inquisition on men who were, for the most part, in the wrong place at the wrong time, sold into captivity by warlords and corrupt soldiers and other crooks to the Americans for money.

Which means America has become a party to one of the grimmest human trafficking rings on the planet.

Watch this film. Get angry. And then do something. Anything.

For those of us working here in D.C. on national security issues, Sunday night gave our nation a good dose of reputation rehabilitation: Spain, France, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Canada (please let me know who I’ve missed). It reminded the worldwide audience that America is connected in a good way to everyone on the planet. Deployed soldiers via satellite was a great touch, too. …

… I thought that, at the very least, it would serve our nation by documenting and witnessing on film the decay and decline of public accountability in the US government. I hoped that the film would inspire the public and our elected leaders to take a cold, hard look at the abysmal polices of the Bush era, but also at how we’ve harmed one of our most vital public institutions: the US military.

Sadly, Kelly reports, the Discovery Channel has chickened out on showing the film. But do read the rest of her article, which describes a Senate hearing she participated in.

Director Alex Gibney accepted the Oscar, dedicating the award to Dilawar and to his father, a Navy interrogator who urged him to make the movie and talk about the need for our country to return to the rule of law.

The executive producer of the documentary is Sidney Blumenthal, the longtime journalist and author who is an unpaid adviser to the Hillary Clinton campaign. I had no idea he was the executive producer until a friend called me with the news — the friend had looked it up, and spotted Blumenthal’s name, then called me, knowing I was reading his book about his years as a Senior Adviser to the Clinton presidency.

Last December, I wrote about this documentary here at NoQuarter because Washington Note blogger Steve Clemons had gone to a special screening with Lawrence Wilkerson and others, and wrote compelling posts about the experience:

From my December post quoting Steve Clemons’ Washington Note:

     (1) “The Horror. . .The Horror: Torture Up Close and Pondering the Blowback”
     (2) “Alex Gibney: This Film is About the Corruption of the American Character”

EVENING UPDATES:

     (1) “[T]he Senate-House Intelligence Conference voted today to make the Army Field Manual the standard for all detainee issues in interrogation and detention methods — or ‘the law of the land’ as my source told me. That means for the CIA and all branches of the national security, military, and intelligence establishment.” – Steve Clemons, The Washington Note
     (2) Tomorrow, Steve Clemons will write about “the powerful and disturbing film Taxi to the Dark Side and the discussion we had this evening with director Alex Gibney, former FBI interrogator Jack Cloonan, former Abu Ghraib and Bergram* military intelligence interrogator Damian Corsetti, and former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson.” (I remember the story of the horrific, incalculably cruel torture and murder of the hapless, innocent Afghan taxi driver, but didn’t know a documentary has been filmed, with interviews of several military personnel.) The documentary’s creator also did Enron.
     The author of Salon‘s review, “Beyond the Multiplex,” notes that the documentary’s creator hoped that showing how the “[Bush] administration has eviscerated the Constitution, and abandoned basic tenets of human rights and human dignity, [would provoke] some constructive rage. But right there on the sidewalk, my rage was not constructive. I wanted to get stinking drunk in some dead-end bar. …” U.S. premiere dates via IMDB: 11 January 2008 (New York City, New York) and 18 January 2008 (Los Angeles, California).
     [*Susan's Note: I think Steve meant to type Bagram, the base in Afghanistan where the taxi driver was beaten for days before he died.]