The Japan release of "Fair Game" comes nearly 12 months after the U.S. opening and a week after the death of Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi. For a story all about U.S. involvement in Iraq and that other infamous depot, Saddam Hussein, the timing could be right on the money. Still, a sense of discomfort lingers in the air. Didn't the whole involvement thing lead to the opening of a bloated can of worms (not to mention cries of lies, conspiracy and self-righteous hypocrisy)? And didn't the whole world choke on the stench rising out of that can for, like, years?
"Fair Game" is based on the memoirs of former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband Joe Wilson, whose lives toppled into a cauldron of death threats and disgrace when a White House aide blew Plame's cover in 2003 and endangered every covert-operations agent on her team. Sizzling, yes. Engrossing, certainly. At the same time, it recalls a whole era that, it may be said, was excruciatingly bad for the United States. President George W. Bush was adamant about taking his superpower might into Iraq, allegedly because Hussein had arsenals packed floor to ceiling with nuclear weapons.
When Plame submitted a report that there was no such evidence, and her husband went public with that report in an op-ed article in the New York Times, the White House retaliated by leaking Plame's identity, and bulldozed its way into Bagdhad regardless. The economy was ailing, massive antiwar demonstrations were held worldwide — these things just slid off Bush's back and he continued to sit in that plush chair in the Oval Office for another six years.