PBS Frontline to Revisit Past Five Years in 'Bush's War'

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By Felix Gillette

March 24, 2008 | 10:08 a.m.

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Today, in the New York Times, Richard Perez-Pena notes that five years into the war in Iraq, "it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet" that the country remains at war.

Tonight and tomorrow night on PBS, the producers at Frontline will do their part to thrust the subject back into the national spotlight.

To wit: In a two part series, called "Bush's War," producer Michael Kirk takes a long, hard look back at the myriad political and tactical snafus surrounding America's planning and execution of the war.

From the press release:

From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge -- for six years, Frontline has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the full saga unfolds in the two-part Frontline special Bush's War, airing Monday, March 24, 2008, from 9 to 11:30 P.M. and Tuesday, March 25, from 9 to 11 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings). Veteran Frontline producer Michael Kirk (The Lost Year in Iraq, The Dark Side) draws on one of the richest archives in broadcast journalism -more than 40 Frontline reports on the war on terror. Combined with fresh reporting and new interviews, Bush's War will be the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in the nation's history.

"Parts of this history have been told before," Kirk says. "But no one has laid out the entire narrative to reveal in one epic story the scope and detail of how this war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the government."