Based on Norman Solomon's book of the same name, this film narrated by Sean Penn tracks how five decades of American presidents have sold wars to the public using nearly identical rhetoric. Archival news footage runs Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin claims alongside George W. Bush's case for invading Iraq, matching the language beat for beat: manufactured threats, patriotic framing, and journalists who repeat official claims instead of testing them. Solomon narrates the throughline himself in interview segments, pointing to Vietnam, Panama, the Gulf War, and Iraq as recurring instances of the same playbook. Retired reporters and former government officials describe the pressure inside newsrooms to fall in line once troops are committed, and clips of network anchors adopting military talking points make the case without needing much added commentary. The film's argument is less about any single war than about a pattern: how quickly skepticism disappears from American media once a president decides to fight, and how rarely anyone in a position to ask hard questions actually does.