Last Updated on February 2, 2022 by ellen
Marty and I had a few minutes to unwind last night and watch a movie together. It seems like that doesn’t happen anywhere near often enough lately. I was sent this Secrets Politics and Torture Frontline PBS DVD for review, so we decided to watch it together last night.
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Secrets Politics and Torture Frontline PBS
Marty loves current events and news related programs. He has an excellent memory and can discuss government and politics with the best of them. While I’m interested, I don’t have the passion he does, and I don’t keep up on the topic as much as he does.
Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with prominent political leaders and CIA insiders, Secrets Politics, and Torture Frontline PBS DVD is a deep investigation of the agency’s top-secret interrogation program: how it began, what it accomplished, and the bitter fight in Washington over the public outing of its existence.
The program unspools the dueling versions of history laid out by the CIA, which maintains that its now officially shuttered program was effective in combating terrorism, and the massive Senate torture report released in December of 2014, which found that the program was brutal, mismanaged and — most importantly — didn’t work.
For example, The Senate concluded that the CIA’s first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, was not a senior member of Al Qaeda. And Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was a high-level Al Qaeda operative, admitted that he lied to interrogators who were waterboarding him.
From the CIA’s use of black site prisons in Thailand, Lithuania, Afghanistan and Poland, to its destruction of nearly 100 hours of videotaped interrogations (and Congress’s fury upon finding out), to the Senate’s standoff with the CIA over the report, Secrets Politics and Torture Frontline PBS DVD tells the dramatic inside story of one of the CIA’s most controversial programs.
I can honestly say that I was shocked by a lot of what I watched on this program. I’m sure I must have seen this topic discussed on the news when it was first released, but I wasn’t aware of a lot of what this program discussed. Marty was familiar with the events, and the movie kept his attention throughout the whole thing.
I learned a lot from this movie. I’m not sure I can say that I enjoyed it because the topic matter is not a pleasant one. There are also some rather disturbing images shown of what the CIA did. They disturbed me not only because of the subject matter but because I didn’t realize that we were doing these things to prisoners.
If you’re interested in current events or government issues, you’ll enjoy this DVD. Even Marty, who is very much into the topic, learned new things from watching.
Secrets Politics and Torture Frontline PBS will be available on DVD August 11, 2015. The run time of the DVD is approximately 60 minutes and its SRP is $24.99 and is available for digital download.
Buy Secrets Politics and Torture Frontline PBS DVD today.
Ellen is a mom of a 25-year-old son and 30-year-old daughter. She is Grandma to one adorable toddler. In what little spare time she has, she loves to read, watch movies, and check out the latest toys and games.
I have to be in the right frame of mind to watch this. With all that’s going on in the world, it can get depressing, but it’s necessary to know what happened. Great that it’s on DVD so we can watch it when we’re able.
I feel the same way, Deb. We really need to understand.