Plot

A group of journalists of the Knight-Ridder news service covering President George W. Bush's planned invasion of Iraq in 2003 are skeptical of the President's claim that Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction."

On 9/11 2001, the World Trade Center is destroyed by the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. In the resulting tumult, the reporters of the Knight-Ridder news service, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel under the editorship of John Walcott, hear odd reports that President Bush's senior administration is not so much concerned with finding the Al Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, as they are in blaming the secular dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. Despite their intelligence sources saying that Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, the K-R reporters discover that the White House is obsessed with finding any excuse to attack Iraq with cherry-picking intelligence reports and blatant lies by its officials. As the journalists dig deeper, their competitors uncritically repeat the Bush Administration's falsehoods that too much of the public is gullible enough to believe, making their quest to find and print the truth proves as a frustrating struggle as events barrel to a needless war.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol1970@gmail.com)

With the western world, in the immediate aftermath, trying to discover the perpetrators to take the appropriate actions for some sort of justice, the general belief by those who work in such issues is that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were carried out by Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden. In addition, the George W. Bush administration, the primary faces being Bush himself and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, floats the notion in their press briefings that it was also state sponsored terrorism, the most likely state being Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Journalists Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, working for Knight Ridder, a consortium of thirty-one newspapers across the US, under the Washington Bureau Chief John Walcott, know that inherently the Iraq story does not make any sense, and investigate, speaking to any on-the-record or off-the-record sources, especially within the Pentagon if they can. As the Bush administration further begins to state that Hussein, as an extension to 9/11, is trying to obtain nuclear weapons, which most know is true but that he is highly unlikely ever to achieve, but already has in his arsenal what are coined WMDs - weapons of mass destruction - most credible and respected mainstream media report the issue behind such statements as fact, while Landay, Strobel and Walcott go down the path of trying to discover if the reason for this belief by the administration is faulty intelligence or the more dangerous path of using 9/11 as an excuse for instigation of war against Hussein in a want for a regime change in Iraq, despite such most likely only destabilizing the region. With generally inexperienced Landay and Strobel not having the proverbial Rolodex of built-in contacts, Walcott is able to add to the team famed Vietnam War correspondent Joseph Lee Galloway, most recently having been hired at the State Department on September 10, 2001. Beyond their credibility or lack thereof both in going against all of mainstream media and with some of their own newspapers not printing their stories in the belief that the other media are accurate, they face an uphill battle in the court of public opinion, with Landay's Yugoslav wife, Vlatka Landay, further believing her husband putting them in potential danger in going against the government.—Huggo

Journalists investigate the assertions by the Bush Administration concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction as an excuse for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

in Sep 2001, the NY Twin Towers were demolished in a terrorist attack. John Walcott (Rob Reiner) is the bureau head for the Knight Rider news service in Washington. John sends reporters Warren Strobel (James Marsden) and Jonathan Landay (Woody Harrelson) to investigate. From the beginning the word from the State Dept is that Iraq is behind the attacks and while Osama is in Afghanistan.

Most of the administration's case for that war made absolutely no sense, specifically the notion that Saddam Hussein was allied with Osama bin Laden. That one from the get-go rang all the bells - a secular Arab dictator allied with a radical Islamist whose goal was to overthrow secular dictators and re-establish his Caliphate? The more we examined it, the more it stank. The defense department sent an ex-service man on a mission to Europe to find links between the WTC bombing in 1993 and Iraq. Walcott gets independent verification from his sources in Afghanistan that US military resources are being diverted to Iraq. Walcott meets Joe Galloway (Tommy Lee Jones) a war correspondent from the Vietnam war, who now works for the administration. Walcott makes Joe an offer to work for him.

Walcott runs a story on the possible outcomes of a US invasion of Afghanistan. He theorizes that the invasion, with an intention to instate Ahmed Chalabi as the leader of Afghanistan, will only lead to a break up of Iraq into mini states, trapping US troops in a civil war. An analyst from the Pentagon comes forward and says that Donald Rumsfled is leading a parallel intelligence effort, with Chalabi and the Israelis to gather whatever flimsy evidence against Iraq to justify and invasion.

The second thing was rather than relying entirely on people of high rank with household names as sources, we had sources who were not political appointees. One of the things that has gone very wrong in Washington journalism is 'source addiction,' 'access addiction,' and the idea that to maintain access to people in the White House or vice president's office or high up in a department, you have to dance to their tune. That's not what journalism is about. We had better sources than she (Judith Miller) did, and we knew who her sources were. They were political appointees who were making a political case.

I first met him (Ahmed Chalabi) in '95 or '96. I wouldn't get dressed in the morning based on what he told me the weather was, let alone go to war. - John Walcott

Walcott sees evidence of all major networks siding with the Bush administration on the Iraq story, but still marshals his troops to ensure that they are asking the right questions and are finding facts to support or disprove the administrations claims. They finally get a source to admit that VP Dick Cheney is lying when he says that there is evidence to support the existence of WMDs in Iraq. So, Walcott activates Joe to get him the contradictory evidence.

There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the administration is ignoring seasoned Middle East experts and Nuclear experts to make theories of their own to justify the invasion of Iraq. US moves the UNSC for a resolution against Iraq in 2003. On more than one occasion Strobel and Landay worry that their work is flawed and maybe everyone else is right. But they can't refute the evidence right in front of their eyes. They meet Chabali and come convinced that he has no plan beyond getting back to power in Iraq.

Eventually, Walcott, Strobel and Landay were proven right. Iraq has been at war for 17 years since the invasion. $2 Trn spent, 36,000 Americans killed, 1 million Iraqis killed, 0 WMDs found. Knight Ridder Washington reporters Warren Strobel (James Marsden) and Jonathan Landay (Woody Harrelson) received the Raymond Clapper Memorial award from the Senate Press Gallery on February 5, 2004, for their coverage of the questionable intelligence used to justify war with Iraq