I applaud Michael for expressing his convictions.

Yet I saw this film and did not take away from it that Winterbottom's intent was to justify the beheading of Daniel Pearl.

Also, in thinking about what has been improperly handled at Guantanamo, and how some Muslims use that as a point of justification for extremist actions, we should remember that it is necessary to understand what is in an enemy's head, and that stating what's there, or illustrating it in a movie, is not the same as condoning it. A murder mystery eventually tells the killer's motivation, but doesn't justify the act.

Besides, what the Bush regime has done at Guantanamo is reprehensible. To hold a human being prisoner without giving them a fair trial is antithetical to civilized behavior. Surely the US has the resources to restrain persons suspected of being severe imminent threats, and yet treat them with basic fairness. There have been, in addition to the bad moves at Guantanamo, CIA abductions of suspected terrorists, with the abducted parties sent to be tortured for months abroad, and then suddenly, somebody in an office says "Whoops! We were mixed up with the names," and then the CIA abandons the person on a hillside in a foreign country with no money in their pocket.

This behavior does our cause no good and is not necessary to a vigorous self-defense. Throwing people in jail and not giving them access to a legal system is not worthy of the United States of America.

Yes; it's often not as glaringly depraved and horrifying as a video taped beheading. But it is shameful. And it and things like it really do motivate some Muslims to be more virulently and violently anti-US.

Think where we might be today if instead of all these transgressions against justice against suspected terrorists we had given the accused fair trials with all transcripts open to the public. Think where we might be if instead of perpetrating such senseless means against an imprisoned human being, US leaders had regularly and loudly spoken up in support of the Human Rights of the oppressed in Muslim societies.

We would have all those oppressed people . . . the religious minorities, the women, the GLBTers et cetera . . . thinking of the US as a force for their eventual liberation. Instead, even the oppressed in Muslim countries know that they could on the whim of a CIA agent be whisked away and held and tortured without even being accused of wrongdoing.

In sum, I don't think Winterbottom was comparing two situations and asking us to look within ourselves to see why Daniel Pearl was beheaded. I think rather that he was presenting irreconcilable difference in points-of-view, and saying that one tool towards getting control over a situation is understanding opponents' viewpoints. He was showing, truthfully, that just because one of two sides in a conflict is just about completely wrong doesn't mean that the other side is just about completely right.

The reason not to treat prisoners as the US has at Guantanamo is because without making us one iota safer, it has worsened Muslim hatred of us where that exists. It's also plain wrong.

Bush called the United Arab Emirates, Dubai in particular, one of the US's strongest allies in the fight against terror. Yet Sharia law is enforced there, and foreign workers who get pregnant out of wedlock get whipped to death. What message are the oppressed people in Muslim lands . . gays for example . . . supposed to take away from that as regards the US's commitment to justice and human rights?

Our national strategies and diplomacy for defusing the Islamic threat over the long term are a total ineffectual shambles. If instead of acknowledging that and bringing about change we say that our methods must not be criticized because the enemy sometimes beheads people, we are actually strengthening that enemy, by giving it credible arguments that we are "bad" and must be fought. This was my interpretation of Winterbottom's movie.

I too saw "A Mighty Heart" and while you are entitled to your interpretation, you are utterly wrong. There was no attempt to justify the murder (lynching actually) of Pearl. You are right abut there being footage of Guantanamo Bay but Pearl's kidnappers used that as their "excuse."