The Road To Guantanamo

I've always followed the career of film director Michael Winterbottom since he went to the same school as me. He directed the great '24 Hour Party People', chronicling the coolest record label of my teeenage years. He also did '9 Songs', the most sexually explicit film to get a certificate in this country, a record that I'm sure will be highlighted in the school's old boys' magazine... Anyway, I saw his latest, 'The Road To Guantanamo', last night and it was great, in a horrendously depressing kind of way. Yes, the 11th of September attacks were horrific but can that excuse the kind of treatment that was handed out to these people (and is still being handed out to the 500 people still there). We protect our democracy by ignoring all the rights that democracy confers on people? Of course it can be said that the film isn't entirely objective, based as it is on the accounts of the inmates. But since the US doesn't seem too keen on letting anybody else in there to see what's really going on, it's all we've got. Required viewing for anybody who still thinks Bush's war on trrrr is worthwhile.