Just as a side note, John McCain is also a key figure in the film and says a lot of things the neo-Cons would cringe at--not that it makes him good, just better than them. The contractors are only part of the problem, of course, and it seems like Jarecki (the director) picks up on a lot of the themes that Chalmers Johnson does in _Sorrows of Empire_--namely that we're all implicated in one way or another with this war making culture. The contractors may be a big part of the problem, but since the contracts they fill are also one of the few consistent sources of US jobs, it becomes something we all benefit from--and in some cases, push legislators to approve.
It still isn't perfect, of course, but it is still something I think most US citizens would benefit from being reminded about. I thought it was supposed to get wider release here in the states. Is that the case or did it just end up making another round on the torrent sites (which is where I picked it up last summer or fall)?
[WS:] It sounds like a more polite version of Ward Churchill's "little Eichmans" thesis. The problem with such arguments is their fundamental logical fallacy resulting from the fact that they are ex post facto rationalizations and attributions of responsibility, instead of empirical determinations of actual responsibility. They are really chasing chimeras and figments of imagination, untethered by any empirical evidence of lack thereof.
To claim a person's responsibility of the sort that you claim, you need to show two things: (i) that the person had the capacity of making or at least influencing actual decisions that led to the outcome in question (as opposed to being a mere spectator or even a cheerleader); and (ii) that the person had, or should have had, knowledge of the negative outcome of that decision.
In my view, a Joe Schmoe had neither. True, he might have been an obnoxious cheerleader - which may make him a despicable person whom I would never invite to a dinner - but he could neither influence the course of events, nor foresee the outcomes (I suspect that most policy makers could not foresee those outcomes either due to the narrow-mindedness characterizing a typical US politician who typically has the mentality of a small town lawyer rather than that of a statesman.)
Therefore, ex post facto blaming people for something they had nothing to do with, but supposedly "benefited" from it is nothing but a bunch of crock. This ex-post facto rationalization is fallacious because it fails to take into account the counterfactual - namely the benefit a Joe Schmoe would gain from an alternative course of event. It is not hard to imagine the huge economic and social benefits resulting from an alternative use of economic resources in the US i.e. from diverting them form military to civilian programs.
Wojtek