[Kat]
While at the VFF event on March 26, I noticed a man with a camera, filming and then later interviewing Hegseth and Bellavia. I thought he was with VFF. Later, as I was speaking to someone else, Hegseth interrupted and said, "this man has been to Doura". The man slid a DVD across the table and said it was a film about his time there. I had to go on, so I thanked him, put the DVD in my folder and left to meet with some others. Later, as I looked at the DVD, I realized that I had just missed personally speaking with JD Johannes. The DVD he had given me was his latest "Outside the Wire" documentary.
I watched it last weekend. I think it is better than his first documentary. In fact, it was much better than some documentary type programs I had seen on The Military Channel, The History Channel, HBO and Showtime. The narration was well done, the interviews, interspersed with actual events, were excellent and highly educational. This would also be appropriate to show in any class room, at least high school and college. Frankly, they should be watching this instead of reading the papers or watching news because they are not getting the whole story nor the right story. Read Toby Nunn from Bad Voodoo. The WAPO took unverified, insurgent propaganda and turned it into a story about US forces attacking a bus. Bad Voodoo was there. You can see a good documentary about another side of the war with Bad Voodoo's convoy War.
This is one reason why JD's Outside the Wire is so important. This "Bad Voodoo" experience is the news that people get. This is the story that is being fed to the American people. This is what is being used to create Hollywood movies like "redacted" or "stop loss". This is why I am telling you that you should get this movie, "Outside the Wire", watch it and spread it around or recommend it to others.
The documentary is in three parts. Each could stand on its own as a thirty to forty minute segment. Together, they help pull together the disparate aspects of a "three block war" and really give a great understanding of the battle for Iraq today.
This is what you'll find in this documentary:
(continued in flash traffic)
The first segment, Danger Close showed a combat out post (COP) under attack. This segment was the heart stopping "battle" against suicide bombers and multiple elements of Al Qaida trying to over run the COP and take out a small patrol outside of the base.
JD asks one soldier there, "What do you tell your wife about being over here?" The response was interesting. I couldn't tell if he believed she didn't know, based on the media coverage, or, if he just did not want to think about what she might know because his life there was separate. In another section, as they were under attack, some soldiers are trading quips, alternately relishing the fight and deriding the fact that they are there when they could be at home with their wives. It's the real dichotomy of war. You are left somewhat wondering which they favor most at that moment: being in the fight or being at home?
What was really interesting was the difference in how the battle was reported by the media and what JD recorded while he was there and then documented from information and interviews. The press played the event as a near defeat for the Americans. An attempt to over run the base a la Khe Sahn. The advantage was to the insurgents. In the film and the later information, you realize that there was an element, a moment when the follow on second suicide bomber could have taken out most of the base. Except, he couldn't because the defenders took him out immediately as he sped up. After that and a few more tense moments of fire fighting, the "bad guys" faded away. The day went to the Americans. The media gave it to the insurgents and painted the men as "sitting ducks" when they were bristling with arms and defenses though taking an aggressive, offensive approach to patrolling and controlling the area.
The second and third segments of this film are just as good, if not better, though focused on the Anbar Awakening and the Baghdad Surge.
The Awakening was great because it gave you a first hand account of what exactly caused Al Anbar to turn from the Iraqis who were there, who formed the CLC (concerned local citizens) and who had an extremely malovent view of Al Qaida. In context, a local shiehk had basically been trying to stay outside of the conflict. He did not support the American occupation, but he did not want the "insurgents" to bring attention to his town. He had also heard that Al Qaida had been taking over towns, destroying property and killing people. So he had decided to keep them out. Al Qaida was not happy about that and sent an envoy to speak with the Shiehk. When the shiehk still refused, Al Qaida sent back a message saying they were going to destroy the entire village, behead the local police, kill their families, kill the shiehk and his family, too.
That is when the shiehk came to the Americans. They might have feared our military and political power, but they never feared us as a people.
Again, this is a first hand account from the shiehk who was speaking through an interpreter. Other Iraqis in the area also told their part of the story that confirmed the events and other events surrounding that which turned the local population. Al Qaida had made a new enemy.
The Baghdad Surge is a first hand look at "counter-insurgency" on the ground, in the soldiers' boots. It shows how a US commanding officer spends his day trying to tamp down the flames of sectarianism, get services to a local area, get the locals to work together, stomp out insurgents, protect the population, teach basic governance and basic "rule of law" and, in general, make Iraq work. JD followed this commander around to the different situations that occured. This final segment was the best for me. It really made the concept of "counter-insurgency" (COIN) come alive for me. As military history and the various theories at work here are a serious interest, this segment pulled it all together.
At one point, the commander is hearing a complaint from the head of a sunni neighborhood in West Rashid (bad side of town in Baghdad). Iraqi police had shot up the houses of the people. When the commander catches up with the IP, they are trying to clean up the blood from the bed of their vehicles because someone in that neighborhood threw a grenade into the truck, killing or wounding several police officers. That attack came because the Jaish al Mahdi had mortared the Sunni neighborhood the day before. The people think that the police are complicit (some might be).
The US commander tries to reason with the IP who are very angry about the attack, telling them that he was sorry for their loss, but trying to remind them that not everyone in that neighborhood is "Al Qaida" just like not everyone in the IP is Jaish al Mahdi (JAM). Later, a man in the neighborhood is found shot to death by a 9mm. The US commander said they were going to use forensics to track down the weapons' system it belonged to and go from there.
This is, as JD says several times, a blood vendetta and it is very strong in Iraq.
That is just one event. During another, the commander uses the Iraqi's fear of American satellites to convince some men that he already knows something that he doesn't in order to get them to cooperate. He calls a meeting and expresses his concerns that the city councils from the north and south cannot make an accomodation for moving food and other goods. Then he says he knows that some people have been interfering and possibly hi-jacking the goods. Suddenly, it is all about cooperation.
This entire segment is much longer and shows a very wide array of situations confronting commanders in Iraq as they attempt to put together a nation. I highly recommend this documentary to civilians who want to know what our soldiers are doing and what the war is all about, military theoriticians who want to see COIN in action and any officer, NCO or soldier who might be getting ready for his/her first deployment to Iraq or under the new "surge/COIN" doctrine.
Over all, I thought Outside the Wire was one of the best films I've seen about Iraq to date. It puts you there and goes well past the "black and white" of "sectarian violence" or "suicide bombings" or the daily attacks.
You can buy the DVD on line at Outside the Wire: buy the movie
As a side note, if for no other reason, you should buy this video to make sure that it beats the sales of the rest of the extremely poor, angst ridden and insulting films about Iraq and that JD makes exactly what he wants from it: the cost, so he can return to tell the stories of our men and women in uniform.
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