Topic: Movies
This is movie based on the life of Dr.Gerald Bull,an eminent Canadian scientist, whose life had to be terminated by parties interested.
Dr.Bull lead a very interesting life. No doubt! he was a very brilliant person. He helped US build HARP cannon in 1960s. He helped US, Israel and several NATO countries to meet their military objectives. After some time he started feeling that he was being juiced by all his benefactors but without helping him to achieve his life long dream. His lifelong dream was to build a huge cannon which can launch a projectile for very long distances only limited by the length of the barrel and ammunition used. He even argued that this super gun when built was going to be much cheaper to launch satellite etc. Even then people felt that Gerald Bull was only obsessed with his dream regardless of its practicality as it was fairly common knowledge that such a huge super gun which could not be moved around was a very poor choice for military purposes. Such huge gun was hard to hide and could not moved. It would be a sitting duck target for bombers. Also, it had limitation as each shot caused severe wear on the barrel.
But, even smart people become blind when life long dream gets into their head and has remained there for long time. When western powers discarded Bull, he looked at other places which could finance his super gun project. Saddam Hussein was ready with money. Saddam actually knew that Bull's super gun was really a bull. But, he proposed that he (Saddam) would fund Bull's project if he could help improvise Iraqi SCUDS for longer targets by modifying them. Bull was willing to do anything to get his pet project going. He worked to help Saddam improvise SCUDS. These modified SCUDS were rained by Saddam on Israel during first gulf war of 1991.
Many western powers and some mid east neighbors of Iraq such as Iran and Syria were becoming concerned. They warned Bull using many subtle and non-subtle means. When he did not yield, he was killed with few point blank gun shots to the back of his head at Brussels where he had relocated to pursue his projects. That's how a brilliant scientist was ruthlessly used and dumped.
Movie does a good job of giving a nice account of Bull's life. If you go by movie, US is shown is very good light where US secret service person (Kevin Spacey) does everything he could to disuade Bull but he would not listen. Same thing by Mossad and Britain's MI6.
It has not been established as who killed Bull. But needle of suspicion points towards Mossad more strongly than other intelligence agencies.
Belgian government was trying to reopen the case of his assassination after 16 years after coming across some new evidence. Search for Bull and Mossad and you will find info on the net.
This incidence also appears in many books that I read on Mossad. Again a 'kidon' job.
Cheers!
Posted by Mahesh
at 2:13 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, 12 June 2006 10:46 PM EDT