Oh no, I think you and I are on the same page about bin Ladin, and believe me, I brought that up in the post-showing brouhaha. Within the movie are clear statements that 1) there is NO WAY "al Qaeda" could have pulled off something of this magnitude and that 2)the CIA and the ISI worked hand in glove to create the mujahedeen and thus "al Qaeda. What the movie does not do (unless it's the last 15 minutes) is pull out a 2x4 and beat the viewer over the head with the concept that bin Ladin is a CIA puppet. Basically, the movie offers a lot of dots for the viewer to connect, including stuff I didn't know, like the airlift out of that Afghan city that was like a parade down mainstreet in its covertness. The thing is, it does not connect all the dots FOR the viewer, which I personally think is just fine, because I trust people to do their own research when they have questions, and this film provokes many really good questions. Others in the group, however, have a kind of mass-hypnosis film theory -- if you show "them" (Mr. and Mrs. Average, but slightly concerned) too many images of bin Ladin, they're going to get permanently stuck in the idea that it was "just" al Qaeda and the ISI.

As for the Jersey Girls outside the Commission making their criticisms, the volume on that could have been turned up for me. I could've gone for something a little more like -- I'm blanking on her name -- the mother of one victim who just went full-on Clytemnestra over her daughter's death. But that's not them, and it doesn't need to be them.