Voices of Iraq

O.K. I not at all ashamed to admit it...I'm the moderate liberal white female the red states love to hate. I was against this war before it ever started. And this movie didn't really change my mind. It is the right wing answer to Fahrenheit 9/11. It's not fair and balanced, unless you're Fox TV. However, in spite of it's partisan leanings the documentary was really compelling. The people are fascinating. However, while watching you quickly realize you are being lead by the nose, especially when the happy activities of the citizens are juxtaposed with quotes from major news journalists about the failures going on in Iraq. The next tactic was to show a disproportionate amount of footage of the torture Saddam had wrought on his detractors. Alright already, the whole worlds knew Saddam was a sadistic megalomania (BTW the pope is Catholic) but it still doesn't make him responsible for the 9/11 attacks or the possessor of WMD.

Curiously there is very little footage of American soldiers and a most perplexing scene in which insurgents are shown acting up only as long as American TV reporters were filming them. What was that all about? Is it to suggest that the insurgents only play out their terror if America is watching?

These trivial complaints aside, Voices Of Iraq has it's moments and will endear you to the people of Iraq...the children especially. They are so like kids anywhere in the world. Hams in front of the camera and filled with dreams of a happy future. Still...I am left wanting to see some of the Anti-American footage on the cutting room floor. The film glossed over the shame of Abu Ghraib and the fact that the insurgents may become a serious threat to the occupation. My hope is that we didn't promise these people a new life and not be able to deliver. It may be overly simplistic of me, but if we are struggling at home to assure our own children a decent education, health care, and economic security...how the heck can we can do it for someone else? How do we pay for it? (The Shrub administration said the oil fields would foot the bill, remember?) But now it seems the American people are footing the bill...and it's a BIG one. And how do we train the Iraqis to secure their own towns when we don't have coalition enough to do the job...or oops I forgot Poland? How long will Americans be willing to sacrifice their own children if the situation becomes a hopeless cause? etc...etc? Anyway, the movie is worth a viewing. Just like Fahrenheit 9/11 the end got a little prolonged. Voices Of Iraq is not rated (something I don't understand) because for the extreme violence it should be rated X.

A little aside...about two weeks before the presidential election Netflix actually sent out an email to all their customers asking if you would like to put this movie at the top of your queue. They had exclusive rights to DVD distribution while it was playing only in selected cities. It was the first and only time (I'm a charter member) I remember Netflix recommending a film via email. Different.

"Some people say" us blue state mothers are living immoral hedonistic sexually deviant unloving family lives (heterosexual married with children)...but I pray every day (probably to the wrong God) that all our children (red states too) can survive this war without mortgaging their future. I also hope the people of Iraq were not sold a bill of goods just so the fundamental faithful can have a foothold in the Middle East.

REVISION:

I wish to stress that I do not have a problem with the Iraqi people in this documentary they are delightful and fascinating, a few are not so but most are. My complaint is with the documentary exterior editorial elements.

My original posting as follows:

This documentary pretends neutrality but in fact there are so many glaring omissions that in the political sense it cannot be taken seriously. Furthermore the questions asked of people are so bland and even to highly educated people the questions being bland assure bland answers. All the major elements of US/UK harm done to the country is omitted. The more than a decade long of US/UK bombing of the country and the even more devastating genocidal economic sanctions that cost 1 million Iraqi lives and cemented Saddam's power and provided the regime with an assurance of a people too ill and hungry to do the over-throwing themselves. In the section on the North Kurdish region there is no mention of the rewards given to Saddam by Thatcher and Bush senior after the chemical genocide nor any recognition that on the other side of the boarder in Turkey throughout the 90's Kurds were being slaughtered and ethnic cleansed by a NATO nation with the full backing of Clinton/Major/Blair and an endless flow of arms from the USA/UK/Israel to Turkey. Do the Iraqi Kurds feel nothing for Turkish Kurds ? Watching this documentary you would think so. I don't believe it however. In regard to the uprisings in the South in 1991 there is no mention of the US forces blocking anti-Saddam rebels from ammunition storehouses or US helicopters flying over and simply watching Saddam's helicopters and ground forces slaughtering people or that Bush senior told the Pentagon to let Saddam's Republican guard pass through coalition lines on their way to putting down the anti-Saddam rebellion. No mention of the origins of the Baathist regime and Saddam's history with the CIA. And why does the documentary say 24 years for the period of time lacking free speech. Is it not more? Saddam took control without the title of President in 1968 and the Baathists were installed into power by the Kennedy administration in 1963. Then Saddam had his power made formal with the Presidency in 1979. The documentary shows very real footage of barbaric crimes of the Saddam regime but shows nothing to counter one man's foolish idea that the victims of American torture are all evil, when in fact we know that it has been quite the opposite, countless innocent people rounded up by both American troops and government security forces and Blackwater thugs and thrown into prisons and tortured.

Who directed this....Condi Rice ?

PS. See the documentary PAYING THE PRICE: KILLING THE CHILDREN OF IRAQ which is part of the JOHN PILGER: DOCUMENTARIES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 4 disc REGION 2 DVD box set.

As journalist Robert Fisk always says if the primary export of Iraq were fruit and veg, Saddam would still be in power. The occupation authority was set up as a system of economic colonial rape. Only so far its not exactly working out as they planned. The idea that the Neo-Cons or the Clintonites were going to provide for the Iraqi people when neither provided for the people of New Orleans is simply a deluded farce.

It seems from the comments that people basically like or dislike the film based on what they think about the war to begin with.

The pro-war crowd seems to like the documentary but they are generally making overly broad conclusions about what the pulse of the Iraq people is based on these anectdotal episodes. The anti-war crowd on the other hand seems a little hostile to it since it focuses a lot on how bad Saddam was and how happy many are to see him gone.

Being objective as I can and analyzing it just as a viewing experience, it was nice to get a glimpse into a part of the world you don't get to see very often from the point of view of the people who live there. Usually, they are just the subject of a news item as directed from a Western point of view....

That said, it wasn't all that informative or tell me anything I didn't know... Saddam was bad... knew that already... Some are happy to see him go, some wish he was back, knew that too....

None of this really illuminates the question on whether invading Iraq was a good idea or not. One could've made a virtually identical film in South Vietnam back in 1965 too... The Commies are bad, Some are glad the US is in Vietnam, some aren't...

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 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.