Soldiers with cameras

Like most Americans, I know I have only a shadowy impression of what the war in Iraq is really like. You don’t see much footage on the TV newscasts because they’re more concerned with Anna Nicole Smith or the astronaut who wore the diaper. “But it’s OK not to know what’s going on there,” I tell myself; “I don’t support the war so the details are irrelevant.” So much for ignorant bliss; now I can no longer ignore what’s taking place in my name.

On Saturday night I attended a showing of The War Tapes as part of our local Big Muddy Film Festival. This isn’t mainstream media’s take on the war. It is the first war movie ever made by soldiers filming all the war footage themselves. An unvarnished picture, you might say.

One of the most striking themes of this movie is the Americans’ contempt for the Iraqi people. One memorable scene shows a tanker truck filled with urine and feces being emptied by spraying the waste into a ditch along the side of a busy road. There are scenes of humvees barreling down city streets at 60 miles an hour, escorting convoys of Halliburton trucks. Caution: I’m going to give away a “climactic” scene in the next sentence. When one of those speeding humvees runs over a little girl who tries to dash across the highway in front of it, all the carnage and confusion is captured on videotape. The soldiers more or less scrape her severed body parts over to the side of the road while they search for her head. Iraqis come and shovel the parts into a body bag.

This is what’s being done in our name. If you want to see for yourself, buy this movie (only $19.95) and ask your friends and family to watch it.

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