[Texgreen] The war

[Roger Baker]

Bush is listening. Use big words.

                *******************************

This is from a review of a documentary published Friday in the SF Chron.

'The Ground Truth'

Documentary. Directed by Patricia Foulkrod. (R. 78 minutes. At Bay Area
theaters.)

For people willing to hear the soldiers' experience of war rather than
just define it in comfortable terms, through yellow ribbons and
high-sounding slogans, "The Ground Truth" is an enlightening
documentary. Virtually everyone interviewed on screen is a veteran.
Some came back able-bodied but afflicted in spirit. Some lost a limb,
and one man had his face destroyed.

No, it's not pretty. "The Ground Truth" packs in a lot of information,
from stories about recruitment officers' lies to accounts of the ways
the Veterans Administration avoids treating soldiers for post-traumatic
stress. These combat veterans, male and female, speak with candor and
introspection about the war, from a vantage point the public is never
privy to. They tell stories about soldiers abusing innocent civilians
and killing women and children. These veterans aren't pacifists, but
patriotic individuals, some of them Marines, who enlisted in the
aftermath of Sept. 11.

Directed by Patricia Foulkrod, this is a documentary with a point of
view, and obviously not every veteran of the war was interviewed. Some
veterans would undoubtedly feel differently about the experience. But
feelings aside, just some of the facts revealed by "The Ground Truth"
are surprising. For example, in World War II, according to Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, too many men came out of basic training unwilling to
take human life, so the training was revamped during Vietnam to turn
soldiers into killing machines. Several Iraq veterans recall the
marching cadences used stateside, violent and supposedly funny,
intended to desensitize soldiers to killing civilians and mowing down
children. This training makes it very difficult to assimilate
themselves back into civilian life.

Unforgettable footage shows Iraqis, as seen through gun sights, getting
either shot or blown up. Soldiers are shown manhandling prisoners, who
are probably innocent, and standing in people's homes, armed to the
teeth and pushing old ladies around. According to the soldiers
interviewed, such actions are a direct consequence both of their
training and of the circumstances surrounding an occupation. As one
veteran puts it, "You don't go to war with a country without going to
war with its people."

Soldiers share the memories that keep them up nights: killing an
innocent woman, or the sight of dead children or of entire dead
families. One soldier tells the story of a supposedly big-time
terrorist who was hung from a tree for three days by his hands. By the
time the soldier came to interrogate the man, his hands were gangrenous
and had to be amputated. Upon release from the hospital, the supposed
terrorist was set free. It turned out he was an innocent man.

All the veterans talk about the impossibility of returning to life as
usual following their discharge. "You don't fit in anywhere, except by
yourself, and you hate yourself." Outbursts of violence, nightmares,
and irrational flarings of temper plague them. "Your world is gone,"
says Guardsman Demond Mullins, "and you have no world to replace it
with." "The Ground Truth" powerfully documents the human cost of the
Iraq war.

-- Advisory: Strong language and very disturbing footage of real-world
violence and carnage. -- Mick LaSalle