But get a load of this dialogue. Told within the shadows of the then almost new World Trade Center buildings, which in the movie conveniently house CIA offices. Turner is Redford, the classic outsider CIA office bookworm. Higgins is Cliff Robertson, a CIA insider boss.
TURNER
Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?
HIGGINS
We have games, that's all. We play games. "What if...?" "How many
men...?" "What would it take...?" "Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a
regime?" That's what we're paid to do.
TURNER
So Atwood just took the games too seriously. He was really going to do
it, wasn't he? Supposing I hadn't stumbled on the plan? Say nobody
had?
HIGGINS
Different ball game. The fact is, there was nothing wrong with the plan.
Oh, the plan was alright. The plan woulda worked.
TURNER
Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is
the same thing as telling the truth?
HIGGINS
No. It's simple economics. Today, it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years...
food. Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the
people are gonna want us to do then?
TURNER
Ask them.
HIGGINS
Not now. Then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them.*
How 'bout ask them after a hurricane? How 'bout when gas gets over three dollars a gallon? I remember the first time I saw this movie years ago, thinking, God, Higgins is so right. And watching again today, when Turner asked "Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?"
Plans? Plans? Plans?
Was there a cheaper way to destabilize that regime, Mr. President? Was one, only one, nasty dictator worth the lives of those soldiers? You son of a bitch? Oh wait, Blue Gal's fergitin her ladylikeness and the reminder from one reader that God is reading her blog.
That's right. Blue Gal must remember that GOD is reading her blog.
Blue Gal does not want Fafnir and Giblets to read her blog, let alone any higher deities. Deities have much more important thangs to do!
...well. This gubment's gonna topple folks. And 2008 is just around the corner.
Will it be any better WHEN the democrats win? Oh ma hunnies, can it get any worse?
*[Thanks to Ronald Bruce Mayer for the quotes and analysis from 2002]
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