I need a camera to my eye, to my eye reminding, which lies have I been hiding, which echoes belong

I just saw my second Oscar-nominated film for best picture today, and will have my brief take on it and the Oscars in general in a second, but first a couple of stories that go to the heart of how the picture we have about events in Iraq is woefully incomplete.

The past week has seen two examples of fine journalism that should be broadly commended. First was the story of the battle for Haifa Street, the main front of our attacks on Sunni insurgents/militias in Baghdad. According to a superb NYTimes article by Damien Cave and James Glanz, American troops are getting the usual help from the Iraqi army on joint American-Iraqi patrols, i.e., none whatsoever. Basically, we're cleaning out Sunni fighters, ostensibly for security, more practically so Shiite militias can trail behind our soldiers and clear out as much of the remaining Sunni population as possible. Second was the AP getting to the truth of the story behind four soldiers kidnapped in Karbala before they were executed 25 miles away (or "briefly kidnapped in raid", according to the FoxNews propaganda service). From the AP, which is an actual news source:

U.S. Confirms GIs Seized In Sneak Attack: Contrary To Previous Reports, It Now Says 4 Soldiers Were Abducted And Killed By Militants In Karbala

The U.S. command on Friday confirmed that four American soldiers were abducted during a sophisticated sneak attack last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. It said three were shot to death and a fourth was fatally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province.

A week ago, the Defense Department lied to the AP, the people of America, and the entire world, further eroding their minuscule credibility, as follows:

"The group used percussion bombs and broke into the building, killed five Americans and kidnapped two others, then fled," the governor said, adding that Iraqi troops later found one of the SUVs with three bodies of uniformed men.

The U.S. military, which has said that five U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded while repelling the attack, denied that two U.S. troops were kidnapped.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman, said all American forces "were accounted for after the action."

In the underreported bad news (again covered well by the AP), we turn to the story of just who was on the helicopter that crashed last weekend in Baghdad, killing 12 American troops:

Two colonels, one lieutenant colonel and two command sergeants major were among the 12 soldiers killed last weekend in a Black Hawk helicopter crash northeast of Baghdad, the Pentagon said. One of those killed on board was based in Fort Huachuca.

It appeared to be the largest number of key officers and command sergeants killed in a single incident during since the Iraq war started nearly four years ago.

The U.S. command has not said why so many key officers were aboard a single helicopter, which went down Saturday in Diyala province, one of the flashpoints of the Iraq conflict.

One of those Colonels was Brian Allgood, the Chief Army surgeon in Iraq. The crash happened either while new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was finishing up a tour of Baghdad, or soon thereafter. Let me suggest that the first successful shootdown of a military helicopter in months, taking out a shocking number of officers, was the result of militants being tipped off to the value of the target. This reeks of an inside job.

Now, on to the movies. Today, we finally saw The Departed, which was very good, and will almost certainly win Scorcese his first Best Director award, even though I suspect that Alejandro González Iñárritu probably deserves the prize for Babel (more on this in a second). The movie was very good, with fine acting performances all around (Nicholson as the crazy Mob Boss, DiCaprio and Damon as the respective police mole in the mob and vice versa, Wahlberg and Sheen as the police unit leaders, and Vera Farmiga as the woman caught in the middle) and great location shooting in Boston. I still can't get over the fact, though, that the movie is a remake of the Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs, which was just as good if not better. Too much credit is often given to screenwriters who adapt novelists, as if the good lines belong to the guy who quoted the lines, rather than the one who write them in the first place, and a similar dynamic applies to remakes. Simply put, the original takes more vision than the remake. If you have to see one of the two, try the original first. Infernal Affairs is available in every video store in the known universe, and its worth the time.

At the movie theater, we entered the Oscar competition drawing they had, so here were my picks:

Film: I picked Babel, which I haven't seen since I've heard that it is phenomenally depressing (for similar reasons, I am wary of 9/11, Holocaust and war movies, and saw neither Flags of our Fathers nor Letter from Iwo Jima, the latter of which is nominated in this category). I think The Departed has an outside chance, better than Little Miss Sunshine, which I really liked, and The Queen, which I've yet to see.

Director: Scorcese takes this one over Eastwood and the directors of Babel, The Queen, and United 93 (missed it, see above).

Actor: Forest Whitaker was my pick, because I can't imagine the award going to Leo for Blood Diamond, Ryan Gosling, Peter O'Toole, or Will Smith. impressively, I've seen none of these.

Actress: Helen Mirren will win, as dignified mature British actresses always do, over the equally dignified and British but recently awarded Judi Dench, equally British Kate Winslet, equally dignified Meryl Streep, and Penélope Cruz, who was the best of all the actresses I've seen in these respective roles. She was also the only one i've seen in these respective roles.

Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy takes the comeback lifetime achievement award over Honsou and Haley, who I haven't seen, as well as Arkin and Wahlberg, who I have. Arkin and Wahlberg were both very good, but neither role really struck me as Oscar material.

Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett was born to win Oscars, and has the fact she's from the British Commonwealth and approaching "dignified" working for her. No one knows who Barraza or Kikuchi are, Breslin hasn't even hit her teens, and Jennifer Hudson was previously seen on American idol. I've only seen Sunshine from this group.

Foreign Film: Pan's Labyrinth in a heartbeat. I'll be seeing it next weekend.

Oddly enough, Volver didn't get a nomination for Foreign Film, but Cruz is up for Best Actress. This is ridiculous. For one thing, I don't see why we have to pretend that foreign films qualify for all the other awards. If the Academy was serious about this, than English-speaking actors would only occasionally get a nomination for an acting prize, and rarely if ever win (same for the technical awards). America may have the second-largest film industry in the world after Bollywood, but the rest of the world makes many more films than we do, and the Academy just doesn't make the time to review them all, since their focus is, has been, and will be on English-language film. Instead, we get token nominations from the rest of the world when leaving them out would be too criminal, but these nominations are tokens all the same. In the end, few people really mind because most of the Americans reading Oscar recaps in People magazine and on Entertainment Tonight don't like to watch movies with subtitles anyway. So, kids, remember that on a night where we celebrate the best of Hollywood (or at least claim to do so), the best cinema is often lost in translation (unlike a few years ago, when it was Lost In Translation). Hopefully, more on this theme next week when I review Pan's Labyrinth.