The "Passion" of 2006

Remember how Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ became the (to Hollywood) surprise blockbuster of 2004 and one of the scapegoats cited by left-wingers for their comprehensive drubbing at the polls a year ago?

Now Mr. Diehard himself, Bruce Willis, has announced the probable (to Hollywood) surprise blockbuster of 2006 that will be blamed for the left's next drubbing at the polls a year from now:

Angered by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.

It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

Willis attended Deuce Four’s homecoming ball this month in Seattle, Washington, where the soldiers are on leave, along with Stephen Eads, the producer of Armageddon and The Sixth Sense.

The 50-year-old actor said that he was in talks about a film of “these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom”.

Unlike many Hollywood stars Willis supports the war and recently offered a $1m (about £583,000) bounty for the capture of any of Al-Qaeda’s most wanted leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, its commander in Iraq. Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003.

“I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,” he told MSNBC, the American news channel.

He is expected to base the film on the writings of the independent blogger Michael Yon, a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics.

Yon was at the soldiers’ ball with Willis, who got to know him through his internet war reports....“What he is doing is something the American media and maybe the world media isn’t doing,” the actor said, “and that’s telling the truth about what’s happening in the war in Iraq.”

We have discussed Mr. Yon's Deuce Four reports previously. If you haven't been to his blog, please, go and immerse yourself in the truth of what's really going on on the ground in Iraq.

Trust me, if Bruce Willis makes this flick, and it is anywhere near faithful to Mr. Yon's Mosul accounts, it will kick Passion-sized ass.

[HT: Double-M]