Last night it was about 9.30 and I was ready to go to bed, but we noticed that “The Trials of Henry Kissinger” was on IFC and so I didn’t go to bed.

It’s a mesmerizing, feel-bad-in-a-good-way kind of movie. The stuff in it is so outrageous that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t just made up. But all the documents are presnted right there in the film, all a matter of public record. It’s a basic indightment of Kissinger’s foreign policy wrangling during the late 60’s and 70’s, showing how he was mixed up in everything from delaying the Vietnam peace accords for 7 years (costing hundreds of thousands of lives which could have been saved) to encouraging the Indonesian genocide in East Timor, the Cambodian genocide of the Khymer Rouge, and the murderous coup of democratically-elected President Allende of Chile on September 11, 1973. Even if upon seeing the film, one doubts how many facts are being left out (it’s about 85 minutes long), it makes a case for a full-blown investigation at the very least. Many of the documents presented in the film were declassified during the Clinton administration. You can bet your ass that Bush & Co. will do no such thing as long as the White House is theirs.

Seeing the film reminded me of something Tom Lehrer said” “Satire died the day that Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.” If so, then the dead corpse of satire was raped the day that George W. appointed Kissinger to head the September 11th World Trade Center Terrorist investigation. For those of you who don’t know, Kissinger later resigned from this appointment, citing “possible conflicts of interest.” Doesn’t that sound just the teensiest bit fishy?

Between that and “Bowling for Columbine,” 2002 was a kick-ass year for political documentaries. I think in our day and age, some good old-fashioned muckracking films like these are sorely needed. We need them to keep on coming. I’ve heard that Robert Greenwald’s recent doc on the Iraq War, “Uncovered,” is pretty damning.