After one mission, which has been woefully unsuccessful because of bad intelligence, a sarcastic Major Mitch Dunning (Mackenzie Astin) tells Major Nick Reed (Patrick Muldoon), "Try not to think of this as a humiliating failure." Dunning reminds Major Reed that we cannot attack based on hunches or second-hand gossip.

The war-loving and all-around tough guy General Tasker (John Rixey Moore) is a Rumsfeld-type character who is all too often swayed by Major Reed's overconfidence in what turns out to be shaky or tragically insufficient intelligence. General Tasker gives "rush to war" its true meaning, and reminds us of recent sprints to war by the Bush Administration that would rival Jesse Owens in a 50-yard dash. After an embarrassing intelligence failure, he asks the rhetorical question, "What sort of nation would we be if we sent in troops just because something might be there? What we need is rock-solid roof." Major Reed desperately apologizes, "I'm sorry I couldn't manufacture any for you!"

This deftly contrasts the stubborn and sometimes venomous defenses we've heard from the likes of our current Vice President and his band of neoconservative "yes-men" who publicly swear — to this day — that evil terrorists lunched in Prague, plotted with, and had connection to Saddam Hussein.  All of this in the absence of credible evidence from any serious journalistic source and an actual recent acknowledgement of no connection made by the President himself. As unfortunate as the current real-life situation in Iraq is, the Bush Administration's reliance upon such extremely horrible intelligence in a rush to war in Iraq has provided a wonderful — albeit unspoken — backdrop to Mr. Kutzera's witty spoof.

A love interest for Major Reed spices up the instruction film. She goes by the name of Lt. Monica Tasty (Elizabeth Bennett), currently the girlfriend of Major Dunning, who'd had a heated affair with Nick Reed before he changed and took on the cold, hard job as a Central Command Major. (Reed's self-description: "I'm am an empty hollow shell devoid of emotion.") Lt. Tasty had joined the Army when she'd begun to feel shopping wasn't quite enough to satisfy her prescribed patriotic duty to her country. Major Reed delivers an unforgettable line, "If we stop buying things, then ... well ... then I guess they really have won."

Lt. Tasty is the little angel on Major Reed's shoulder he generally ignores while he lusts for her womanly form. She's a patriotic lady, as we can see in the conversation with Major Dunning when Lt. Tasty questions how anyone can hate Americans, the good guys.  Major Dunning has a bit of patriotic myopia himself and has resigned himself to go against his own better nature; accepting, by rationalization, what he feels in his heart is wrong.

Captain Jack Smith is an expert intelligence photography analyst who knows that any speculation on his part could lead the U.S. to attack a harmless target - "and we wouldn't want that, would we?" asks the narrator.