WHAT:  Discussion of "Syriana" (2005; written and directed by Stephen Gaghen)
WHEN:  Monday, August 7, 2006 -- 7:00 p.m.
WHERE:  Mandolin Café, 3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, WA

"Syriana" has some connection to recent events, since it portrays Hezbollah in action in Beirut.  (These parts of "Syriana" were actually filmed in Morocco.)  In the film's most harrowing episode, Bob Barnes, the character loosely based on Robert Baer, goes to Lebanon.  With a safe passage he thinks he has secured from a Hezbollah leader, Barnes contacts a mercenary with whom he has worked before.  Barnes hires the mercenary to murder a progressive Persian Gulf prince, but he turns out to be an Iranian agent who has Barnes kidnapped, then tortures him to get information about Barnes's involvement in an earlier assassination of Iranian arms dealers that figures in the beginning of the film.  Barnes seems doomed, but is saved by the Hezbollah leader.  The CIA decides to scapegoat Barnes by portraying him as a rogue agent when it is learned that the Iranian agent intends to publish the CIA's involvement in the murder of the Persian Gulf prince.