I couldn't disagree with Ms. Zacharek more.

I loved "The Bourne Identity" but hate both sequels largely because of the Greengrass formula. The directing, editing and shooting are from the MTV school of film making. The result indicates a mediocre director trying to compensate by throwing in every music video trick in the book. Character development and plot are secondary to technique.

For example, in the first sequel by Greengrass, 75% or more of the film is comprised of cuts that are 1 second or less. There is no shot longer than 7 seconds. (I actually sat through it a second time with a stop watch.) This, combined with the excessive camera shake, persistent dim lighting and extreme closeups of action sequences, is disorienting, disconcerting and "motion" sickening.

The flashbacks include all of the above with the added annoyance of a distorted lens. Both sequels are very hard to watch in one sitting because of the mind numbing pace.

Imagine trying to watch Fred Astaire dance with the entire screen filled with a closeup of his pocket, in dim light, with a hand held, shaking camera, in one second bites, and no wide shots for context and you'll get an idea of how visually confusing both sequels are. One wouldn't even be able to know who Astair was dancing with. Likewise with Greengrass, you can't tell who's fighting whom, who's chasing whom and all you can remember are short visual images that don't connect; which is an apt description of the movie itself.

Within the first 10 minutes of this second effort, it becomes apparent that Greengrass sticks to the same formula, which is why I had to get out of the theater ASAP. I prefer digestion to heartburn. Give me Stanley Kubrick's or Robert Altman's long langourous scenes that encourage reflection rather than the adolescent, addictive adrenaline rush.

The fact that most critics are praising Greengrass' latest effort sadly indicates how the "nano-second attention span" has been fully integrated into our culture.

It's not only a sad commentary on the movie itself but our culture in general.

Many of the letter writers here defend nuclear based on the propaganda that it does not produce greenhouse gases like coal. Fact is that the enrichment of uranium requires huge amounts of coal produced electricity. Most of greenhouse gases in the Ohio Valley Region are produced by large coal fired plants at Portsmouth Ohio and Paducah Kentucky for the uranium enrichment process.

Nor is the recycling of nuclear waste viable. It has been a bust in France as well as here in the U.S. where it has been tried. Check out what happened at Morris Illinois where a recycling facility was built and abandoned. 40,000 French citizens marched on the recycling facility in France last year as a result of the consequences of recycling.

Nuclear energy has been subsidized by the taxpayer since its inception. If the Price/Anderson Act, which indemnifies the nuclear energy against accidents, were to be repealed, corporations would run from nuclear energy faster than any enviro.

Presently, over a third of the uranium mined in the world sits in the form of nuclear waste in 50,000 cylinders each holding 14 tons, at the cylinder yard at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah Ky. Check it out on Google Earth. Some are so fragile from age that it costs hundreds of thousands to move just one. 2,000 more are produced each year with no end in sight. And uranium is more finite than oil.

We presently have it within our means to make every home in the nation a net energy producer rather than a net energy user while at the same time decentralizing the grid. Decentralizing the grid would make it terror proof and thus improve national security. And this could be done in less time than it would take to build enough nuclear reactors to satisfy our energy needs. All we need is the leadership which seems to be in short supply these days.

Nuclear energy is a thing of the past and should be consigned to the dust bin of history where it belongs.

Forget the pics and videos. Simply based on the machinations of Bush/Cheney surrounding the 9/11 Commission Report and its demonstrably flawed analysis, the official report that Mr. Manjoo accepts will always be open to suspicion by critical thinkers.

If, like Mr. Manjoo, you believe the official explanation, then you too are a conspiracy theorist. At this late date, without a legitimate, no strings attached, fully funded, subpoena powered investigation, we will never know the truth.

However, lost in the debate is the indisputable fact that while we invaded Iraq over WMD, the only real WMD attack this nation has ever suffered has gone uninvestigated and unsolved. I can't wait to read what Mr. Manjoo thinks of the anthrax attacks that (coincidentally?) occurred during the same time period of 9/11.

Weapons grade anthrax that could only been made at 2 sites in the U.S., requiring technical expertise that only a handful of people had, that was sent by mail before 9/11 and arriving a week after, that shut down Congress for a month at a cost of billions, killing innocent people, targeting 2 Dem leaders who were holding up the passing of the Patriot Act, etc. And to date, the crime is still unsolved.

Until Mr. Manjoo has demonstrated that he has done even the most rudimentary research on the attacks surrounding 9/11, both anthrax and WTC, he is no more credible on the issue than Philip Jayhan.