Voices of Iraq

I watched this film expecting a documentary, what I saw was propaganda. After seeing the film, one would imagine that all Iraqis love Americans, that the world press exaggerates the bloodshed, and that daily life in Iraq includes dancing, laughing, and freedom from fear. Even when bombs go off, off-screen, the Iraqis on camera laugh. "Oh, a mortar just went off...", is all they say. Ha-ha-ha. A little Google research turns up army and government connections for the producers and media relations. This is a Disneyland piece produced by the right to strengthen their political agenda. Watch for Voices of Iraq II, where George W. appears blessing the happy crowds wearing a halo and an animated twinkle in his eyes.

I'm glad I saw this. It was heartening to see dozens Iraqis express such optimism and determination. I'd recommend the movie to pretty much anyone, along with "Control Room," "9/11" and pretty much any other documentary or reportage on America's roles in the post-9/11 world.

Just make sure you have some idea of who made the movie and why, and with whose money.

Given what we know about Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon, is it really so hard to believe that Bush administration or some arm of the US government was involved in shaping the message in "Voices of Iraq"? One IMDb user suggested this and got shouted down with something like "Michael Moore something something something U.N. Oil-For-Food Program something something something anti-Bush liberal media bias." Come on, guys, if you want to talk about bias and undisclosed motivations, you've got to do more than call names. The PR firm pushing the movie did the same thing for the "Army of One" commercials. That may not be damning evidence of a connection, but it does seem interesting enough to check out.

One of the producers, Archie Drury, is a Democrat and a former Marine, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. If you want to read into his motivations, I suppose you could go in either directions with him.

What I found suspicious was several Iraqis repeating the theory that democracy in Iraq would spread throughout the Middle East. That's not a harebrained pipe-dream, and it's possible that dozens or even millions of Iraqis believe it, but it's also strikingly similar to what the Bush administration is saying. It's similar enough at least to make me want to do a little more research.

And what's up with, like, 95% of the people in the film saying that America's so great? Jeez, man, the U.S. gets even better ratings in Iraq than it gets here at home. Sure, it's plausible. Iraqis are right to thank the U.S. military for freeing them from Saddam's regime. The important questions here, though, are whether they ARE actually thanking the U.S. for this, and whether or not they THINK they're better off. Obviously, at least 50 people out of 20 or 30 million say they're better off.

But a lot of them think that Saddam was great and the U.S. sucks. They may be wrong or even delusional, but you've at least got to put their comments in your "Voices of Iraq" film alongside the positive comments if you want to call it a real documentary. A survey conducted by Gallup in April 2004--the same time as the cameras were going around--found that the numbers of Iraqis who said the U.S. presence had improved their lives was about the same as those who said it hadn't. (Unless you're convinced that the Christian Science Monitor is a front for Michael Moore Inc., you may want to brush up on recent history at www.csmonitor.com/2004/0429/dailyUpdate.html).

A film that includes those voices but explains why they're wrong is a documentary with a clear point of view. A film that leaves them out in a wildly disproportionate way is propaganda. Including only one or two complaints in a propumentary doesn't reflect reality, guys. Somebody had an agenda here. That's fine--it was Somebody's prerogative. I just wish Somebody had revealed his own identity. "The People of Iraq" starred in this film. They probably did so at some risk to their lives. Bless them. But the producers and editors, presumably the ones who chose what interviews to include, were named "Drury," "Kunert," "Manes," "Robison," "Mark," and "Russell." Iraqis? Give me a friggin' break.

I rented this enthusiastically to see what people in Iraq have been going through in the past year. We see so little from their POV on the news. It starts out great, about 50% of the people are glad the US is there and the other 50% would be willing to go back to the pre-Hussein days. Yay, this is going to be a nice and balanced documentary! Then I started to notice an interesting trend. Even though the film proudly touts that it has no narrative voice, every now and then titles would come up telling us how some US newspaper (like The Washington Post) would say that it's too dangerous for people to go out of their homes. Then we'd see people happily bustling around doing their shopping and what not. All right, so there is a little outside narrative but okay, I'm willing to be told that it looks like the press has been exaggerating things. That's good to know. Then we see an angry crowd protesting in front of TV cameras around an armored vehicle that had just been bombed. There is a cut and then we see the same area with the smoke still rising but the crowds have now dispersed. The titles tell us that once the TV press dispersed, so did the crowd. It doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to figure out that people don't protest to each other or the walls. Why should they continue to stand around? I still tried to keep an open mind. Soon what followed was about ten minutes or so of grisly stock footage of people being tortured, mutilated and murdered by Hussein's regime. My heart broke about a million times over. I'm so glad that that sadist is gone although I can't stop thinking to myself that maybe if we'd not originally sold him so many of the arms and chemicals that he used on his people, he never would have been able to stay in power so long. Then we see a video from the insurgency (I wonder how people get a hold of it, is it sold in video stores?) showing the dead and wounded from the American bombing with chants of 'Abu Grahib! Abu Grahib!' Maddening propaganda, though my mind can't help but see a slight connection between what we are being made to see in order to feel good that we got rid of Hussein, and what they want the Iraqi people to see so they'll feel good about getting rid of us. That's war for you.

The fact is, the film is sadly an exploitation of a complicated, harrowing situation in order to help us Americans feel less guilt about the numbers of Iraqi dead in the past 21 months (which the British journal Lancet has recently estimated is around 100,000). The overwhelming majority of people interviewed in this 'documentary' are very, very cheerful but one also notices, most of them are also very well off financially and from what we can see, living in areas that have not been involved in any bombings. The people who are not cheerful understandably, are living in the areas that have been bombed but strangely, that footage ultimately amounts to about five to ten minutes of the film. I'm not saying I want to see a film all about that. I want to see a film that shows us both the best and the worst EVENLY so we can better understand the people and what it is that really needs to be done to help them. The producers made a decision to use this particular 78 minutes out of over 400 hours worth of footage, and their intentions are very clear. The film has been released exclusively through Netflix through a 'unique relationship' with Freedom Republic: The Premiere Conservative Newsforum ('unique relationship' is what they say they have with Netflix on their site). And the producer Archie Drury is quoted as saying that the film 'does make Bush look good' (and it was released just a couple of weeks before the election, gee!). Not exactly balanced! If you feel you must watch this – and I do think it is important to see the horrors of Hussein and the merits of the good people of that country, particularly the Kurds – also give yourself the opportunity to balance it with the documentary 'Control Room'. Between the two, you'll manage to get a fairly clear picture of the range of hopes, dreams, despair, worries and resilience of the people of Iraq. I just wish those who ended up on the editing room floor could have had the chance to get their voices heard as well.

I wonder how many of the people here calling this film propaganda believe Farenheit 911 is gospel? Some of you seem to be willing to deny that people can possibly be happy now that Saddam is gone because the media (who by the way are here in the US and not in Iraq) tell you they aren't. You say that we shouldn't have gone to Iraq because we had no good reason to do so. Mass graves, murder, and rape were our only reason for going into the Balkans, yet there was no outcry from the left. I guess fiction and fact are in the eyes of the beholder. If it makes your position look good, it's fact. If it makes your opposition look good, it's propaganda.

i thought this film was great it gave a unique perspective on the life of Iraqi's i have been stationed in Iraq for about 7 months now and have talked to many Iraqis and almost all of the Iraqi's i have talked to share the same points of view as the people in this film. i read some of the other reviews and people say that this film is just propaganda to make Bush look good and to gain support for the war. My response to that is why don't they come over here and get a front row seat at the good that is being done over here. This film offers a great view on the situation over here. I am not sure why people just can't get it in their heads that we are doing good over here maybe because then they wouldn't have anything to complain about, and would have to focus on their own faults. As to everyone screaming about how we should bring our soldiers home why don't they realize all the good we are doing and let us do our job. Every soldier over here volunteered for this job. Many after 9/11 so they all knew what the risks where and they accepted them. the question is why isn't there more movies like this one. Is it because people just can't accept the fact that we ARE doing some good in the world.