Three top US senators have turned film critic — and perhaps film censor, too.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have written Sony Pictures denouncing the new film “Zero Dark Thirty,” which depicts the killing of Osama bin Laden.
And the three members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, are demanding that the filmmakers publicly label their own movie fiction.
“You have a social and moral obligation to get the facts right,” the senators wrote, citing the film’s “potential to shape American political opinion in a disturbing and misleading manner.”
At issue is the film’s depiction of waterboarding and other such techniques, which “Zero Dark Thirty” suggests provided information that led to bin Laden.
That’s a position that was spelled out last year by former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who wrote that the trail to bin Laden began with disclosures obtained by waterboarding.
But Feinstein & Co. dispute that, citing a 6,000-page report by Democrats on the Intelligence Committee that CIA records show waterboarding and other such techniques played no role in tracking bin Laden.
Who’s right? Hard to say, since the report remains classified.
But the senators want director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal to “state that the role of torture . . . is not based on the facts, but rather [is] part of the film’s fictional narrative.”
Yet nobody ever said the film was a documentary — and even if it was, so what?
Feinstein, Levin and McCain have stated their case. Now they need to get back to the fiscal cliff or something.
Busybodies.