I didn’t see the film when it first came out in 1997, the Dustin Hoffman/Robert de Niro dark satire “Wag the Dog.” But, I thought of it recently and the Wells Public Library helped me borrow the DVD from down in Northeast Harbor. The film is about a U.S. president, up for reelection, who is accused of pedophilia. So, his spin doctor and a movie producer create the illusion of a war with Albania to deflect public attention elsewhere. The ensuing storyline gets more far-fetched as it proceeds.

Soon after the film comes out, a real U.S. president is accused of lying about having sexual relations with a young woman working in his office. U.S. planes attack targets in the mountains of Afghanistan in retaliation for the al-Qaida bombing of the World Trade Center garage. The House impeaches the president for lying. The Senate votes the disgraced president “not guilty” in February 1999. The next month, the U.S. and NATO begin bombing Serbian forces in Kosovo in response to the political repression of ethnic Albanians there.

So, that was then. Nothing like that could happen now, could it?

David Agan 
Wells