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"For 20 years now we have seen this pattern: Something terrible happens somewhere -- and what is happening in Syria is not just terrible but atrocious in the literal meaning of that term. Americans naturally feel we must "do something." The easiest something to do involves bombers, drones, and cruise missiles, all of which are promised to be precise and to keep our forces and people at a safe remove from the battle zone. In the absence of a draft, with no threat that taxes will go up to cover war costs, and with the reality that modern presidents are hamstrung in domestic policy but have enormous latitude in national security, the normal democratic checks on waging war don't work. We "do something," with bombs and drones, and then deal with blowback and consequences "no one could have foreseen.""

It was just such an exciting time across the board, so much change going on -the end of World War I, women getting the right to vote, Prohibition being enacted, of course, which is where the series begins. It was just a great time of upheaval. And when I had read about the character Steve plays, Nucky Thompson, this was just such a perfect guy to set a series around.

This six minute video excerpt from "Target America" comes at the end of the documentary, and just after the last terrorist attack during the Reagan administration is cited-the bombing of Pan Am Flight #103 on Dec. 21, 1988. This excerpt begins with the seeming policy shift by the Reagan White House in the war against terrorism. And it ends with the thoughts of key policymakers who had participated in the battles against terrorists during the 1980s, and the lessons they learned.

An NY Times analysis of the original movie just prior to the 2008 version coming out.

The 1999 airstrikes in Kosovo have been widely cited as a precedent for a possible Syria strike, but according to Rubin, who worked in the State Department at the time and is now an executive editor of Bloomberg News, the only similarity between the two countries is that, in both instances, Russia and China opposed the attacks. "Today, after more than a decade, Serbs and Kosovars are beginning to reconcile," Rubin writes. "Such an outcome in Syria is doubtful. The United States and Europe are at odds with Moscow, the Security Council is deadlocked, NATO has stayed on the sidelines, and the Arab League has been ineffectual. There is no strategy to achieve a stable endgame." Rubin recommended that the administration stick to the chemical WMD argument, and not base its argument on the fact that America has a moral duty to save lives.

"The question of humanitarian intervention has to be rethought thoroughly for our time. Today, it is nearly impossible to commit crimes against humanity in secret; efficient communication media will bring them to light immediately. We are more intimately engaged by them and with them than we were in the past. These acts that shock human conscience evoke the question of whether it is our responsibility to intervene, and what might be the moral justifications behind such intervention. "