Syriana

This is not a movie review of Syriana, though I'll continue saying that Clooney's beard, bushy as it was, could have been bushier. Instead, I want to address Steven Gaghan's "responsibility," or lack thereof, in presenting such a topical piece of cinema. If you didn't realize yet that the big oil companies collude with our government and Middle Eastern governments of dubious merit to set global policies, this movie will present a fairly accurate picture for you. I already knew all of the ideas that Gaghan depicts, and if you want to argue that he has a responsibility to his viewers, as a self-styled political commentator, to be accurate and truthful, he does as best a job as can be expected in not exaggerating what really happens between Houston, Washington, and the Persian Gulf. For instance:

• Originally, the ExxonMobil stand-in ConnexKilleen is upset about losing lucrative oil field claims to the Chinese. Yep. Recently released documents from 2001 show that oil execs met, looking aggravatedly at a map of Iraq thick with Chinese claims, to figure out how to get a piece of the sweet Iraqi crude action.
• In the movie, ConnexKilleen plots with the government to have a more American-friendly emir take the throne in an unnamed Persian Gulf country. Meanwhile, as we should all already know, executives from BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and ConocoPhillips met with Dick Cheney in 2001. Allegedly, they talked about "energy policies," but those policies could certainly include just how to access all that oil locked up in Iraq, since we know they can't just "wave a magic wand" and make pump prices go down. What else would they talk about?
  
• Now that Saddam and his pesky national oil production is out of the way, Big Oil is free to rewrite Iraq's constitution to allow oil development by American and British companies. Oh, shit, I meant IRAQIS are free to rewrite their own constititution...yeah, that's it. Because we certainly wouldn't pay off their politicians. And, in the movie, the new pro-US emir allows US oil development, courtesy of (as Clooney points out to the Condi Rice look alike) straight cash payouts.

Anything I'm missing? Probably a lot of stuff, but I need to go eat dinner.