However, film-screening organizer George Benton contends that the abrupt cancellation unfairly cast the showing of Uncovered in a political light despite the fact that the film is “not antiwar.” The 56-minute film contains interviews with scientists, government-agency officials, U.N. weapons inspectors, and others who, Benton explained, “look at the information that was presented to us that led us to the war in Iraq.” He went on to say that he might host the last scheduled screening at his home.
Worcester County Library Director Mark Thomas told the Independent, “There was certainly no hostility toward [Benton] and certainly no opinion one way or the other about the film.” But an October 27 editorial that cited meeting-room policy rule two defining the space as available for “public gatherings of a civic, cultural, or educational character” concluded by asking rhetorically, “If examining the rationale behind our current war in Iraq is not considered part of our civic discourse, what exactly would be?”
Posted October 29, 2004.