Venice, Sept. 1 (Reuters): US conservatives were outraged when country music band Dixie Chicks criticised President George W. Bush.

But a new documentary about John Lennon and his run-in with the Nixon administration over the Vietnam War suggests Bush got off lightly.

David Leaf’s The US vs John Lennon, screened at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week, uses footage not seen before and news clips aired for the first time in decades.

Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono allowed Leaf and co-director John Scheinfeld to use her library of images and the former Beatles’ music in a 100-minute documentary that portrays a turbulent US in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It opens with Lennon seeking to soothe US opposition to his comment that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

He is shown staging his famous honeymoon “bed-ins” for peace, addressing huge rallies, performing a concert for a jailed friend, criticising Nixon in interviews and funding an international advertising campaign called “War is Over!”.

By comparison, the Dixie Chicks are synonymous with the protest movement today because the lead singer said in London in 2003 that she was “ashamed” of Bush.