After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United Nations (backed strongly by the US and UK) imposed harsh sanctions on Iraq that lasted for 10 years (1991-2001); the harsh restrictions on imports of everything, including access to key medicines, resulted in over a million deaths, more than half a million of which were women and children. That’s more deaths than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan and 9/11 combined.

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In this grimly compelling film, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris tackles one of his most perplexing and ambiguous subjects: former defense secretary Robert McNamara, widely identified (and in many quarters reviled) as the architect of the Vietnam War. The octogenarian McNamara, a former head of Ford Motor Co. whose government service began during World War II, is filmed via Morris’s invention, the “Interrotron,” a device that allows interviewer and subject to look into each other’s eyes while also staring directly into the camera lens. This enables the subject to maintain eye contact with the audience, and given the frequently disturbing nature of McNamara’s revelations, it makes for quite an eerie viewing experience. He discusses at length the Allied campaign against Japan in WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the costly, protracted conflict in Vietnam. From his musings Morris extrapolates 11 “lessons,” which are presented one at a time to impose film structure.

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John Pilger’s penetrating documentary which looks at world-wide propaganda surrounding the nuclear arms race. When the two American atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, they were code-named ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy’, and President Truman announced after the event: “The experiment has been an overwhelming success.” “These”, says Pilger, “were words used to describe the awful and horrific carnage of nuclear war. By using reassuring, even soothing language, this new kind of propaganda created acceptable images of war and the illusion that we could live securely with nuclear weapons”.

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In the middle of June when we first revealed the small parts of our story about the mass graves here at Dasht-i-Leili, the Pentagon effectively denied that the atrocity had taken place at all. They also denied that American soldiers were anywhere near the vicinity nor did any American personal have any knowledge whatsoever about such a thing taking place. We can now reveal that the Pentagon was lying. Produced and directed by Irish filmmaker and former BBC producer Jamie Doran, the film tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz.

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The school siege at Beslan was the bloodiest act of terrorism ever to take place on Russian soil. Yet beyond this horrible truth remain many unanswered questions. There is no agreement on who the terrorists were. How many they numbered? Where they came from? How they got to Beslan? What they wanted? Whether they were all killed or captured? And just how the siege which began on September 1 2004, ended so catastrophically? This Dispatches special uses testimony from eyewitnesses, survivors and security services. This is combined with video and audio archive footage presents the fullest account of what happened at Beslan.

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Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose the horrific underworld of the disposable army mentality and the government funded experimentation upon US citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent.

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