Mr. Weiser told Reuters news agency earlier this year that he read 17 books about the president while researching the film. Yet the movie lacks any eyewitness verification – even for incendiary charges that the Bush administration, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, exploited the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and exaggerated the threat of Iraqi nuclear capability to establish hegemony over the Middle East and Eurasia, regions rich in the oil that would fuel a 21st-century American empire and deter emerging rivals like China.

Keith Urbahn, spokesman for former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said: “No one from the film gave us a call. Donald Rumsfeld has neither the intention nor interest in seeing ‘W.’ Judging from what I’ve seen from the trailer, it doesn’t seem like veracity and the historical record were high on Stone’s priority list.”