The Annual Hugh Thompson, Ron Ridenhour Awards

This week many in America watched the Oscars, a rich display of glitter and glitz, cleavage and emotion, talent and yearning.

This week Barak Obama's presidential campaign earned 1.3 million in one day at a fundraiser in Hollywood, and a very rich entertainment mogul, David Geffen, derided the Clintons. According to Geffen, Hillary is "incredibly polarizing figure," and Bill’s transgressions could be huge liability for the Hillary and the Democrats.

The Clintons responding quickly. They did not want to be perceived as soft on rhetoric—a la Kerry in 2004. And they did not want Obama to have all that Hollywood money to himself.

But it was from another story having to do with Washington that we take our cue this week and offer what is hoped will be viewed as an appropriate response to the overindulgences on display this week.

After four months of investigating, Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull published a series of stories. They focused on the pitiable treatment veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan sometimes received, the bureaucratic horrors they often had to endure, and the sometimes awful conditions these veterans had to tolerate. As good reporting often does, the articles sent shock waves through Washington. Investigations were ordered. Promises to reform have been made. The articles represent the splendid work reporters sometimes due and serve as a reminder of how easy it is for a government agency to falter and how difficult it almost always is to do the hard work that often needs to be done to right a spider's nest of wrongs.

Hugh Thompson, Ron Ridenhour

On a March morning in 1968 Hugh Thompson was flying US Army helicopter near a village that came to be called My Lai. He landed his helicopter between some very ugly Americans and some very scared Vietnamese. By doing this, he stopped the madness that was going on in the village. News of the Americans actions in the region was duly reported to the soldiers’ superiors. And, over time, the atrocities that had been committed were buried by the very bureaucracy that was to make sure that Americans conducted themselves professionally. Months later, Rod Ridenhour had accumulated the evidence he needed to bring some light to the darknesses that surrounded the events that occurred that horrible day in March 1968. He wrote letters. The letters prompted investigations.

For Thompson, Riddenhour, and all the other anonymous heroes in the world, I offer this short—and incomplete—list of noble efforts that were recently produced to cast a splash of light upon a few of the darknesses that overpopulate our world.

Mostly DVD’s

The Inconvenient Truth: Director Davis Guggenheim weaves the science of global warming with Al Gore's personal campaign to help the environment. Who would have thought that both Gore the Bore and a PowerPoint presentation would be combined to create a story that is interesting and popular? The movie drew a great deal of attention to the problems Global Warming creates, and it won Guggenheim a well-deserved Oscar. The movie also made many question the campaign Gore ran in 2000 (he should have shown some of the passion and all of the spine so clearly on exhibit in the movie), made more think twice about the votes they cast for President in 2000 (Katrina and Iraq may also have something to do with this). The book is even better.

Darwin’s Nightmare: The Nile perch is a delicacy savored in Europe. The fish flourishes in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria. The perch is destroying the lake—it is a shark among minnows. Industries connected with exporting fish to Europe are destroying the lives of the people who need the resources from the lake to survive. There’s more bad news: pilots who fly the perch to Europe often use one leg of their flight into Tanzania to run guns into the continent. Hubert Sauper's film is enlightening, engaging, and powerful.

The Constant Gardener: This feature film was directed by Fernando Meirelles and stars Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. It is based on one of John Le Carre’s best novels. Tessa Quale (Weisz) is brutally murdered. Her husband shakes off his shy diplomatic ways and embarks on a quest to get to the heart of the matter. He cuts through diplomatic run-arounds, the noise surrounding drug company profiteering, and cover-ups. And he discovers a plan to use Africans as guinea pigs to test a new drug. There are enough likeable characters and engaging plot twists to engage even the most hard-line Disneyfile, and the film showcases inconvenient truths, moral outrage, and a hard-boiled realism rarely found in movies made for the mainstream.

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers: Robert Greenwald's documentary illuminates a ghastly record of sleaze, greed, and other forms of incompetence associated with the American experience in Iraq. Greenwald shows that the American government is neither particularly compassionate in the way it treats its soldiers or the people it is supposed to be winning over, nor is it conservative in the way it dispenses taxpayers’ dollars.

Why We Fight: In his last public pronouncement as president, Eisenhower warned the country about the emerging military-industrial complex. Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight chronicles much of the history and captures many of the complex characteristics of the beast. Real patriots give copies of the documentary to their friends.

Who Killed the Electric Car? In 1996 electric cars were sheik. Tom Hanks drove one. They were fast. They ran without gasoline and so produced almost no pollution. Chris Paine’s Who Killed the Electric Car? explores why the cars which were gaining popularity were rounded up and tossed in what amounted to a dumpster.

Mostly Books

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas: The usual suspects: economic short-term interests, ignorance, racism, and convenience perpetuate the cruel and unusual institution we have come to call slavery. Metaxas intelligently chronicles Wilberforce’s early life as a slave trader and his conversion to Christianity and then to abolitionism. Then with William Pitt, Wilberforce energized a crusade to end the abominable slave trade in England. It was an interesting time—many of the good guys were religious zealots. Wilberforce’s drive to dramatize the horrors of slavery and to motivate others to do the right thing is illuminating—not only for what it tells us about all progressive movements—but also for the nuances that were unique to Wilberforce’s life and times.

Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy by George Olah, Alain Goeppert, Surya Prakash: If we tell ourselves the truth, it’s not ethanol, it’s methanol that should be used to transition us from oil. No, you will not hear a presidential candidate who wants to do well in the Iowa caucus says these words. Nor will you hear it from the windbags who are pushing corn-based ethanol. Even the short list of reasons to consider methanol is impressive. It is cheap—a dollar gallon with current technology. With modest changes, methanol may be added to gasoline. That means a whole new distribution system will not have to be built—which we would need to implement a hydrogen based economy. (Unlike methanol, hydrogen creates a host of storage problems.) The many things now made from petrochemicals—for example plastics—may be produced from methanol and its by-products. Methanol may be made from coal, natural gas, or biomass—and other sources. Carbon dioxide, one of the insidious agents of global warming may be used to concoct the stuff. Yes, that means making methanol could take carbon dioxide out of the air. And if hydrogen does prove to be a powerfully good source of energy, it probably will be delivered in the form of methanol. There is more hydrogen in a liter of methanol than in a liter of liquid hydrogen. And there is a downside to the liquid hydrogen—it is stored at – 253 degrees Centigrade.

The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Naiton by Stephen Flynn: Our ports are invitations for terrorist attacks. In California dikes that a minor earthquake could crumble keep salt water separate from the fresh water reservoirs that nourish most of California. Little is being done to protect us from these and a host of other possible terrorist and natural disasters. Flynn offers a gripping inventory of the problems and a sane response.

Winning the Oil Endgame by Amory Lovins, E. Kyle Datta, Jonathan Koomey, Nathan Glasgow: How to improve energy efficiency as well as business and public policy models to transition the US to sane energy policies.


One of the silver linings within the horror of the American experience in Iraq is that all along there have been many excellent and provocative books, movies, and articles about the experience. Four titles follow.

Fiasco: the American Military Adventure in Iraq Thomas E. Ricks’ effort is the best book in print about the military side of the debacle.

The inside story about how the decision to go to war was made, sold, and implemented is articulated in these often noble efforts:

Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq by James Fallows

Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich

Hubris: the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff

State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward

But if you are weary of the Iraq story and want to see how miserably similar it is to America’s experience in Vietnam, pick up About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior by David Hackworth. One of the most highly decorated soldiers in the US Army goes to Vietnam. Over time he learns how to fight a guerilla war. But he runs into a far more complex challenge when he tries to share what he has learned with his superiors in the US Army.