Andres Rivera
Staff Writer
In a more intimate setting than the University of La Verne College Republicans would have liked, about 20 students and faculty members watched the screening of “Confronting Iraq,” a movie written and co-produced by Roger Aronoff.
“We wanted to show that we can have a conservative speaker come to the campus,” said Melissa Castillo, vice-chairwoman of the ULV College Republicans. “It is exposure really more than anything else. We wanted to show that we can be neutral.”
“Confronting Iraq” deals with the complex issues of the war. Aronoff briefly stated his intent in producing this film before it was played. The idea of the documentary came from Accuracy in Media, a non-profit organization whose stated goal is setting the record straight on issues particularly when the media began doubting the war effort.
The documentary began with background information relating to the comings of Sept. 11, 2001, and is separated into five parts, “Looking the Other Way,” “Confronting the Threat,” “Truth and Consequences,” “Confronting the Left” and “In the End.”
By using a wide range of interviewees, “Confronting Iraq” gave a variety of opinions by different people with authority in areas concerned with the topic given.
Some of the people interviewed included James Woolsey, former CIA director; Stephen Hayes, reporter for the Weekly Standard; Tim Trevan, former UN weapons inspector and Jano Rosebiani, a Kurdish-American filmmaker who made a documentary on Saddam’s mass graves.
One of the documentary’s points was to show how other presidents had not taken the threats and actions seriously. The film focuses on the previous attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 as an example.
Michael Moore and “Fahrenheit 9/11” is mentioned in this film and argued over in the Confronting the Left section of the documentary. The claim is that most of Moore’s information was either taken out of content or false. Aronoff said that his documentary, unlike Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” is honest.
“In this movie, I got the impression that they knew exactly what they were being interviewed for,” Julie Klemmer, a ULV parent attending the viewing said.
The screening was followed by a question and answer session with Aronoff.
The movie screening was the club’s first big event, Castillo said.
She had received an e-mail from a newsletter sent to Republican clubs giving the club the opportunity to have the movie screened at the University with the accompaniment of a representative that would talk about the film.
“This is a liberal campus, so I was expecting much more criticism, more of a negative response. I thought the response was pretty good,” Castillo said.
Aronoff has been with AIM since 1997 and he has written and produced many documentaries.
Among them are “The Clinton Legacy” and “TWA 800: The Search for the Truth.”
“Confronting Iraq” has been well-received in the festivals and Aronoff hopes it will win an award in an upcoming festival in Houston, he said.
Andres Rivera can be reached at arivera3@ulv.edu.
