http://video.msnbc.msn.com/martin-bashir/50367159

the film he is working on promises to be interesting. Thanks for the link!

Chris Hayes might be the smartest guy on the planet, too.

I'm a big Stone fan. Anybody who wins the Bronze Star as an enlisted man is a huge badass. Still think Salvador is his best movie.

... and deeply disturbing. The side of Saint Reagan the ptb didn't want us to see.

My deceased ex father in law won two bronze stars in ww2. Didn't know until my ex and I were going through his belongings after he passed and found his discharge papers. The guy was in nearly every major battle from North Africa to Berlin... I loved listening to his stories.

being aired in 10 parts and there's a book as well. Very well done and full of history we don't learn. I'm pretty sure that's what they were talking about.

I don't get HBO but I'm sure I will get to see it at some point...

It is airing on Showtime (same difference to me as HBO) on Monday nights. Showtime has the first episode up on Youtube

. I have watched several episodes and have come to realize that there are major holes from my 1970's-80's high school history classes. Why didn't I ever learn about (much less study) Vice-President Henry Wallace? Why wasn't I taught about the corporate forces that removed him as VP during Roosevelt's last election? I was always told that Truman was such a great man but learned that he always used pergoratives when referring to people of color and was a very small-minded man. We are so badly informed about our country's history that it reflects why our ignorance leads to so many bad election decisions.

There is also an e-book that I plan on getting that Stone wrote in conjunction with the series. I am going to read that along with Howard Zinn's books. Maybe I can help educate my friends to the things that we weren't taught.

I will be reading the book. The archived film in the movie must be awesome if I know Oliver Stone. Thanks for the vid!

one of the premium channels...LOL

Good reading and we all need to be educated in this regard...good choices!

The Russians aren't that thick...

... that it was extremely barbaric. Stalin wasn't stupid...

...however much Japan was on the ropes it was a country with the cultural mandate to keep fighting to the bitter end. As with the kamikaze, there was honor dying for one's country, even if the cause was lost. It is difficult to minimize casualties in any fight if the other side isn't going to readily surrender.

Which is to say, I think Stone is rewriting history as he wants to see it when he says it was ONLY to send a message to Russia that we dropped the bombs. Invasion of Japan would have been costly, time-consuming and taken a lot of American lives. Dropping the bomb, most agree, did a few things. (1) It ended the war much faster (almost instantly) and on our time-table. (2) It saved the U.S. from the cost, men and time of invading Japan, AND (3) yes, it sent a message to the world that we had the biggest, baddest weapon on the planet so don't mess with us (Russia, this means you!). It also got a lot of countries lining up to be our allies, and it kept those who were our allies from straying.

This, by the way, does not mean that I think we should have bombed Japan once, let alone twice. It just means that I take issue with Stone's tendency to reduce history to one-line sound-bites; doing so, be it from the right or left, removes the historical richness and complexity of such world-shattering, world-altering events. Just because Japan was on the verge of collapse and no doubt going to lose doesn't mean that the cost and effort of an invasion of Japan had no influence on the decision to drop the bomb. All it means is that it became one of many factors in that decision rather than the only factor.

... although I tend to agree that the film is intended to look at parts of history largely ignored, and that ignoring the hidden parts is actually dangerous.

...what gets ignored rather than pulling open a curtain and revealing that the room is much larger than we thought. Given what he said in this instance, he comes across as exposing the hidden part of the room while curtaining off the half that was exposed. I.e. bringing Russia out while hiding Japan.

Not having seen the film, I could be very wrong about this; perhaps he really is opening up the whole room and merely exposing the hidden half, not trying to minimize or erase the exposed half. But what he said, as related, doesn't readily imply that.

And historians have known this and written about this for decades.

decided to tackle this project!

Nixon, & Reagan episodes. Very enlightening and very eye opening. Lots of things that I never knew and was never covered in my school.