Lucas tells the truth...

Two lines from the latest Star Wars movie especially resonate:

"This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause", as the Senate cheers the dictator while he announces a crusade.

and-

"If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," the line echoes Bush's international ultimatum after the Sept. 11 set-up.

That quote is almost a perfect citation of Bush, a politician trying to increase his power to wage a phony war.

George Lucas said he patterned his story after historical transformations from freedom to fascism, never figuring when he started his prequel trilogy in the late 1990s that current events might parallel his space fantasy.

"As you go through history, I didn't think it was going to get quite this close.
Maybe the film will waken people to the situation," said Lucas.

" The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable..."

Lucas began researching how democracies can turn into dictatorships with full consent of the electorate.
In ancient Rome, "why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew?" Lucas said. "Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler.

"You see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption."