But that's just Hollywood.   Those movie makers aren't trying to make documentaries, or tell the truth.   They're creating entertainment.   They just want to make money.

The way I think of it is this: all over the globe, America has intelligence operatives.   They're working hard to protect us from terrorists.   Their main modus operandi is to recruit the locals; in spy school, that what they're trained for.   Forewarned is forearmed.   If we can learn where the terrorists plan to strike next, we can stop the attack.   And that's about it.   That's what intelligence work is, in the real world.   It isn't glamorous at all.

But Hollywood has been making movies for the last 40 years that depict intelligence work as:

»   karate fights;

»   travel to exotic locales;

»   driving expensive sports cars at high speeds;

»   shootouts in the streets of foreign capitals (the hero snaps off a shot, from the hip, with a .32 caliber Walther PPK; 75 yards away, a big Russian collapses to the ground and dies without even twitching);

»   gadgets such as cigarette lighters that shoot bullets (or steel-melting laser beams);

»   lots of sex with unbelievably beautiful women.

I doubt that the real intelligence folks are offended by "Never Say Never Again" or "Die Another Day."   They do what everybody else does at the movies: they suspend disbelief.

Yes, I do groan and roll my eyes at the stuff I see in the witch movies.   But I evaluate them for what they are: entertainment.   Nothing more.