Disclaimer: Sometimes editors disagree with the content of a review. This is one of those instances. And even though we concur with Mr. Kirkpatrick's [pictured] assessment of George Clooney's latest film, Syriana, we stand in direct opposition to many of the points he brings up. Still, our belief in the right to free speech and a free press outweighs these misgivings, so Mr. Kirkpatrick's review will run - complete and uncensored.

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Soon to appear in video stores, we have received from that great social thinker and political pundit George Clooney, Syriana, an overflowing diaper pail of a film that’s not really a film at all. It’s what Andy Warhol would have called “footage garbage.” It’s that kind of ‘thing’ which at first makes you think you’re dumb because you can’t follow it. But it’s so ill-conceived and botched that it’s the picture itself that’s dumb. And there’s small reward for trying to put any brain effort into it. But obviously it lights a bulb over our heads because of the world war with the swinish Islamo-fascists, which is no joke.

Hey, what’s new from the Persian Gulf? Take it from this reporter: stay home and watch Geraldo.

To be kind, you might say Syriana has a “grande sweep.” But what you’re really watching is a mish-mash of locations, characters and incomprehensible situations that defies even synopsis. But let’s give it a shot, say in the simplistic style of The Arabian Nights.

Once upon a time there was an old emir whose days were numbered and who preferred to live out his remaining time in Europe instead of returning to his thirsty desert kingdom. He had two sons - young men - the elder of course having first dibs on becoming the new mullah. He gave lip service to a progressive program of redistributing wealth, toning down the Islamic fanatics, and make the females burn their burkas.

The younger prince is a prideful and greedy piece of poop that also lusts after the throne, and would make as much mischief as he could for the good old USA, but nonetheless would also call on them for help and their good old-fashioned Yankee know-how.

Soon it’s time for teams to be chosen in a race to drill holes in the ground for the prize: that little three-letter word that makes the world go round: OIL.

Pudgy, bearded Georgie Boy Cloonzy – a maverick CIA operative who has been sniffing around the Middle East for years – speaks perfect Arabic and would seem to be just the right kind of sneak for the upcoming mayhem in this oil-slick flick. He ‘takes meeting’ with a silly CIA-front watchdog group called the CLI: the Committee to Liberate Iran. But this Clooney character and his independent and mouthy manners make him distrusted by the top bananas, and his first presentation at the long conference table is a disaster. Or maybe it’s just his bad breath.

Matt Damon is miscast as an ‘energy analyst’ living with his little family in the wussy capital of the world, Geneva. Almost by chance he falls in with our ‘good prince.’ Damon is loaded with pep and ideas, and numerous scenes are spent with him showing the future emir the way to health and wealth.

But wouldn’t you know it, the younger, nasty prince, after a bit of unpleasantness, garners the services of no-goodnik mogul and fixer, Christopher Plummer, who I think we can all agree has become one of filmdoms foremost villains. He’s starting to show his age, but he can still open clams with that tongue. Thus Connex Oil is born with plenty of American muscle behind it, such as Chris Cooper playing a tough-talking Texan with a viper’s nest of other Houston Oilers. This is a business film, and it doesn’t have a lot to do with that word we have all come to know as 'terrorism.' Oh yes, we see the vile Koran being taught in the madrassah, the suicide geeks prepping for their filthy deaths, and we even get to see a facsimile of the Yemen ship bombing of the 90’s. But nothing is ever tied together.

So the game is afoot, and upon reconsideration even Georgie Porgie Cloonzy is thrown a bone. Assignment: go to Beirut and, as they might say in Lawrence of Arabia, “appreciate the situation.” But before he can even tip the bellboy he’s roughly kidnapped from his Beirut Arms hotel room, rolled in a rug, and taken to be tortured in the good old-fashioned Islamo-fascist style. And this is by far the best sequence in the picture – that’s if you can get yourself to imagine that this is the real George Clooney up there on the screen – for he is one of the Hollywood crowd who despise their country, and knowingly or not would bring it down whenever the chance arose.

Clooney is subsequently beaten to a pulp, and one-by-one his fingernails are yanked out with pliers up close and personal. Enjoy. Still he remains taciturn, and just as he’s about to be beheaded, a venerable mullah stops the fun. “Enough,” he says. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

In a flash, Clownzy is back in a Washington, DC hospital, and he’s a mess. And it goes without saying that he wants to know who is out to get him.

Up pops William Hurt in yet another of his odd little parts. He’s high on the CIA food-chain, as well as a friend. Then in two short scenes, with a recovered Clowny, he whispers the antagonist’s name in his ear. But nothing ever seems resolved in this perversion of the medium. Oh yes, someone wins and someone loses in a sci-fi piece of CIA business at the end.

But who cares? In comparison to the rats that bombed my city, a city I lived and worked in for almost thirty years and spent my share of time in the World Trade Center. And the way I see it, Akmed owes me for two towers and 3000 innocent civilians. As ‘The Animal’ says in Full Metal Jacket: “It’s time to get us some payback” – and plenty of it. Bombing Afghanistan was like bombing someone’s cat-box. President Bush tried to follow-up with Iraq, but was quickly horn-swoggled by his plan of ‘nation building,” while the Iraqis could care less. There’s insurgent scum hiding in every rat-hole from Damascus to Tehran.

Iran, now there’s a refreshing country. With all the war technology at our command, and with our good friends, Israel, at our side, we could flatten every capitol in the Middle East with one or two sorties and cut the terrorist bullshit in hardly a week. Further, as the brilliant conservative intellectual, Ann Coulter, has suggested, while we’re at it, stamp out the false ‘religion’ of Islam and convert all Muslims to Christianity, or else.

Paste that in your Broadway shows.