We checked out 'Zero Dark Thirty' yesterday hoping to learn more about the 11-year hunt for Osama bin Laden (OBL). (Read our review here.)
The filmmakers had considerable access to people with knowledge of the manhunt, and their goal was to "be as accurate as we possibly could" without having been there.
Unfortunately, it's hard to say what in the movie is fact and what is made up. Most of it seems accurate, and nothing is clearly false — but some parts presumably involve poetic license.
The most controversial aspect of the film is the idea that waterboarding helped find OBL, which is widely considered to be false.
The following slides portray less obvious details that — true or not — caught our eye.
"Maya" tells the SEALs, "You're going to kill the f***er for me," suggesting there never was a plan to capture OBL.
One of the first lines of the movie is, "He has to learn how helpless he is." That's a reference to the Bush-era torture goal of "learned helplessness," or making captives feel that they are physically and psychologically dependent on their captors.
In the movie, CIA higher-ups harp on "protecting the homeland" from new terrorist attacks — as opposed to bringing bin Laden to justice for old ones. This frames the OBL mission as a part of the larger 'War on Terror.'
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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