'We're Americans!" shouts the soldier to the fleeing Arab. "We're here to help!"

The Yank with a yen for service is Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a graduate of a top-secret program to produce a new breed of peacekeeper. In the loopy comedy "The Men Who Stare at Goats," Americans are the good guys — not in the John Wayne sense, but in the Jedi warrior sense. These psychic soldiers are trained to disarm enemies with love.

If that sounds like a fantasy cooked up by a hippie, you're only half right. A vibey Vietnam veteran, Lt. Col. Jim Channon, proposed the First Earth Battalion in the 1970s, and his "operations manual" became the basis for some real-life army psychological operations.

In the movie, directed by Clooney comrade Grant Heslov, the notion of karmic commandos is stretched to the absurd limit and launched into the heart of the Middle East. Channon is fictionalized as Lt. Col. Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a ponytailed pothead who acquired mystic wisdom in Southeast Asia and New Age bohemia. He starts a program to counteract Soviet psychic warfare and plays the role of Yoda to the handpicked recruits.

Django's star pupil is the half-witted Cassady, who learns to disable enemies — and hapless lab animals — with mind power. But there's a jealous Darth Vader in the unit: Larry Hooper, who accuses Django of misconduct to get the pacifist program shuttered.

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a down-and-out reporter who learns about the program and follows the clues to the Middle East. In an enclave of civilian contractors, Wilton meets the drunken Cassady, who uses the Force to find Django, now working for the Dark Side under Hooper.

In nearly equal measure, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" evokes the comic cynicism of "Dr. Strangelove," the dewy optimism of the "Star Wars" era and the brutal opportunism of today's privatized battlefield. This jam-packed picture is too zippily scripted and edited to get stuck in message mode, yet the stellar cast achieves a rare harmonic convergence.

Bridges gives his loosest and most likable performance since "The Big Lebowski," and Clooney once again seduces by diluting his charm with a dose of stupidity.

The closer you look at "The Men Who Stare at Goats," the better you see that its shaggy coat is covering some pointed truths.