No wonder the winning strategy has been subcontracted to the Hollywood/Pentagon combo. Washington lost the Vietnam War, but won it in on screen. Oscar-winning director Kathryn Hurt Locker Bigelow had already started the process of “winning” the Iraq War on screen – at least morally. Now it’s time for her new project – an as yet untitled movie – on the “Get Osama” May 2011 Abbottabad raid and the events leading up to it. With POTUS (that’s President Of The United States) as the hero of his own action movie. 

So essentially this will be a Hollywood 90-minute multimillion-dollar campaign commercial available all across America’s screens selling Obama as the macho commander-in-chief George W Bush always dreamt of being. It’s the same modus operandi of the recent blockbuster Battleship – which was nothing but an extremely loud US Navy recruiting commercial.

The Washington, DC, public-interest organisation Judicial Watch disclosed a series of 153 pages from Pentagon records and 110 pages from CIA records, it’s described as “almost as hard to get from the Obama administration as buying a winning lottery ticket at the local grocery store”. It took Judicial Watch no less than nine months and a federal lawsuit to force the Obama administration to release the documents. 

The records detail how Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal became darlings of both the Pentagon and the CIA. They were granted privileged access to a “planner, operator and commander of Seal Team Six” – the top Special Forces that killed Bin Laden in a raid on his compound in Pakistan a year ago. 

The raid itself is described as “a ‘Gutsy Decision’ by the POTUS’,” and “WH [White House] involvement was critical.” Bigelow and Boal were even given access to “the vault”, the CIA bunker that was the site of some crucial tactical planning for the raid. 

As for the photos and video that should prove  it really was Bin Laden killed in the raid, Judicial Watch has been relentlessly stonewalled. For the Obama administration, this is a matter of national security. 

What matters is that everything’s cool with the Obama operation; with crucial timing, the commercial goes live across US cinemas on 12 October. DM

Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama listens during one in a series of meetings discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House May 1, 2011. REUTERS/White House