HOLLYWOOD AT WAR

'WHEN WE go to war for oil, we say we go to war for oil," the Russian military officer said to the British officer.

"When you go to war for oil, you say you go to war to liberate people."

Can you guess the name of the movie that contained this line?

Was it Brian DePalma's anti-war propaganda film "Redacted?"

Phil Donahue's "Body of War?"

Nick Broomfield's "Battle for Haditha"?

It could have been any of these movies. After all, the "war for oil" mantra is a staple of the anti-American/anti-Iraq war crowd.

DePalma's film relates the tale of a war crime committed by American soldiers in Iraq in 2006. He quite bluntly states he made the film for the sole purpose of influencing politicians to stop the war.

"In Vietnam," he said, "when we saw the images and the sorrow of the people we were traumatizing and killing, we saw the soldiers wounded and brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war . . . Pictures are what will stop the war."

This is the ultimate non-sequitur. Once again, the colossal ignorance, fatuity and fake expertise of the American elite liberal intelligentsia is revealed by these remarks.

Does DePalma know that Vietnam was the longest war in American history - despite the gory images he reveres? Does DePalma know that battle footage from World War II was not broadcast nightly into our living rooms as it was during Vietnam, yet, despite this, Vietnam lasted almost four times longer than World War II?

"President Bush does not want you to see this film," claims Phil Donahue about his own film, "Body of War," which tells the story of a soldier crippled by the fighting in Iraq. Of course, he never actually asked President Bush that question.

I would imagine it is a very compelling and moving story. So why would President Bush be afraid of a movie about a wounded soldier?

"Pride of the Marines" was a movie made about Marine Al Schmid, blinded at Guadalcanal. FDR didn't stop it.

In 1944, "The Purple Heart" talked about the torture and war-crimes trial of American airmen by the Japanese. FDR didn't stop it.

"The Memphis Belle," also from 1944, was a real documentary about a bombing mission over Europe. There is plenty of horror in this movie. The president didn't prevent its showing.

None of these movies, nor hundreds like them, elicited antiwar protests from Americans - does Donahue think the average American doesn't know about the horror of war?

Probably. Being a liberal, I'm sure he thinks Americans, especially the ones who disagree with him, are too stupid to think for themselves.

Nick Broomfield's "Battle for Haditha" is about the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines.

Broomfield said about making the movie, "I realized that these soldiers were very, very poor kids, who had all left school unbelievably early. It was the first time they had all been out of the United States . . .

"They had no idea what they were doing in Iraq, and they felt let down by the Marine Corps. It was hard to condemn them out of hand as cold-blooded killers."

Like the "blood for oil" mantra by leftists, the idea that the soldiers in Iraq come from poor backgrounds with no education is part and parcel of the anti-war mythology. (The genesis of this myth can be traced back to the American Communist Eugene Debs.)

One of the Marines accused of the massacre (where the charges are slowly but surely evaporating), Sgt. Frank Wuterich, was a high school honor student and jazz trumpet player from Meriden, Conn. - where the median family income is $52,788 a year. He reenlisted after 9/11 and volunteered to go to Iraq.

Doesn't sound like he's poor and uneducated and didn't know what he was doing in Iraq.

Another accused Marine, L/Cpl. Justin Sharratt, is also a high school graduate and a former Boy Scout and Sea Cadet from Granger, Ind. - where the median household income is $82,400 a year. Doesn't sound poor and uneducated either, does he?

THE ANTI-WAR left needs to construct these myths about the American military to reinforce their propaganda machine. They also need to construct them to stoke their own religious fervor for their misinformation campaigns.

When, inevitably, these films win film-industry awards, recall what Orwell said in 1945, "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."

That was four years before the movie "The Red Danube" was made, which was the source for the mystery quote. It was communist antiwar/anti- American/anti-Western propaganda.

Some things never change. That's the way it is. *

Michael P. Tremoglie is a former Philadelphia police officer and the author of "A Sense of Duty," available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.