Baghdad ER

This movie hit a little closer to home for me because my husband is Spc Chester Keenum. I know first hand the sacrifices that our soldiers and their families make. The news does not show things like this and I think people should know. My husband and these soldiers fight for us. My husband makes the sacrifices he does for this country to insure that our children and your children will have a safe country to grow up in. We lived at Walter Reed For 4 months as he had numerous surgeries. These people are only a handful who have made serious sacrifices. You will meet some of the bravest men and woman in the world at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. If ever in the D.C. area you should visit them, they are truly inspiring. My husband did return to Iraq and finished his tour and now is back home with us. His eyesight is better than the doctors ever imagined and we thank God every day that he blessed us. Keep our soldiers in your prayer constantly, they need it.

Friendly helpful people, who give candies to Iraqi children are targeted by some crazy Iraqis. We follow the daily lives of professional medics who work tirelessly to save lives of American soldiers. They do not seem to be too much interested in sharing why they do it, some do it for money, some do it and hope the carnage they witness will bring a positive change in the world and especially in Iraq.

The movie nicely skips the fact that the US was a brutal occupying force in Iraq which invaded the country on a false pretense of having a Weapon of a mass destruction and teaches us to empathize solely with an oppressor.

This hour-long film documents the day-to-day activities of a US Armed Forces field hospital in Baghdad, with often very graphic, disturbing images. This unit sees an unending stream of carnage, both injured US service men and women, most of whom are very young, as well as Iraqi civilians; all are swept up in the vicious internecine struggles and the violent resistance to the US-led occupation of Iraq. The film highlights the humanity and dedication of the hardworking doctors and nurses of the unit amid the utter chaos of the occupation and the long-simmering civil war; it brings home the tragic impact of this ill-conceived military adventure on the lives of ordinary individuals.

Perhaps the most moving moment of the documentary are the words of an army chaplain next to the body of a fallen soldier whose life the doctors were unable to save: "We hope that his life and his death will hasten the cause of peace -- and this senseless war and violence will end".

I decided to watch this movie thinking it would be a more objective view of what went on in Iraq. Unfortunately, this movie only focuses on American soldiers and their injuries. You will see nothing about injured Iraquis.

This movie shows what it's like for American soldiers to be in a war, to get injured, and what they have to deal with. The setting of the whole movie is one specific hospital. We may speculate about what the message of the movie is. With remarks about Iraqui "assholes with IEDs" causing harm to brave American soldiers, the message I see here is mostly, "Look how our brave soldiers suffer in this war."

Well, excuse me if it doesn't bring me to tears. I've seen at least a hundred war-related documentaries, and I know the civilian populations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, and other places suffer a lot more than American soldiers. And let's make something clear: This war was an act of aggression by the US. The US invaded a sovereign country based on a completely fabricated premise (nonexistent WMDs) and in a course of several years completely destroyed the whole country, killing about a million people, mostly civilians, and ruining the lives of many more.

The loss of American lives is certainly a tragedy, but the movie fails to address the fact that this tragedy is not caused so much by Iraqui fighters, but rather bad policies of the US government. It also fails to mention that the cost to the Iraqui population is incomparably higher, and they were only defending their country.

It's all right if a documentary decides to focus on one specific issue. I have no problem with that. Often that's a necessity. But the message that I see in this movie is taken out of context and highly distorted. It paints aggressors as victims, and I believe this impression could be easily accepted by people who don't know better.

Some say that this movie shows what you never see on the screen. I find that sad because that's a sign of great ignorance. There's nothing in this movie that I haven't seen over and over before. All of this happens all the time in many places of the world, and more often than not, it's caused by the US. That's a sad but well documented fact.

Now, I'm not saying the movie is bad or even that it's lying. It's worth a watch if you don't know much about what war looks like. But it has to be understood that it shows a very specific and limited view of the war, and if people want to understand anything, this movie alone shows just a small piece of the puzzle, which on its own can be quite misleading. It simply lacks context. As it is, it brings nothing new to the table for people who are well informed. (To be honest, I found it mostly boring. Seen it all before countless times.) There are certainly much better war documentaries out there.

I rated it 10 the efforts given by the doctors in the documentary. I'd give it 1 star for the complete and utter pointless waste of life . End all wars .