What American Sniper did is much, much worse than rewrite history

waterfield wrote:

“So anyway, to me telling a big lie about american history is a bad thing.”

But Eastwood didn’t “tell” “the big lie”.

Yeah he did. The film advances that view (the lie), never undercuts it, and lets it stand. It is also reflected in the enemies they fight in the film.

The article above puts it best: And when Kyle gets to Iraq, his commander explains that they are hunting the leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The inference we’re supposed to gather is clear: that Kyle is fighting the same people who attacked America in 1998 and 2001. By contrast, the actual reasons for the Iraq war go unmentioned. The words “Saddam Hussein” are never uttered in the movie. Nor are “George Bush,” “Sunni,” “Shia,” or “weapons of mass destruction.”

Veteran on ‘American Sniper’: The Lies Chris Kyle Told Are Less Dangerous Than the Lies He Believed

Brock McIntosh

Brock McIntosh served eight years in the Army National Guard as a combat MP, including a tour in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009. He is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has been involved in numerous veteran support and advocacy organizations. He is currently a Harry S. Truman Scholar pursuing an MPA at New York University.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17597/american_sniper_veterans

Enough about Chris Kyle. Let’s focus our anger against the authorities and the institutions that craft the lies that the Chris Kyles of the world believe

After watching the movie American Sniper, I called a friend named Garett Reppenhagen who was an American sniper in Iraq. He deployed with a cavalry scout unit from 2004 to 2005 and was stationed near FOB Warhorse. I asked him if he thought this movie really mattered. “Every portrayal of a historical event should be historically accurate,” he explained. ”A movie like this is a cultural symbol that influences the way people remember history and feel about war.”

Garett and I met through our antiwar and veteran support work, which he’s been involved with for almost a decade. He served in Iraq. I served in Afghanistan. But both of us know how powerful mass media and mass culture are. They shaped how we thought of the wars when we joined, so we felt it was important to tell our stories when we came home and spoke out.

I commend Chris Kyle for telling his story in his book American Sniper. The scariest thing I did while in the military was come home and tell my story to the public—the good, the bad and the ugly. I feel that veterans owe it to society to tell their stories, and civilians owe it to veterans to actively listen. Dr. Ed Tick, a psychotherapist who has specialized in veteran care for four decades, explains, “In all traditional and classical societies, returned warriors served many important psychosocial functions. They were keepers of dark wisdom for their cultures, witnesses to war’s horrors from personal experience who protected and discouraged, rather than encouraged, its outbreak again.”

Chris Kyle didn’t view Iraq like me and Garett, but neither of us have attacked him for it. He’s not the problem. We don’t care about the lies that Chris Kyle may or may not have told. They don’t matter. We care about the lies that Chris Kyle believed. The lie that Iraq was culpable for September 11. The lie that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The lie that people do evil things because they are evil.

The film American Sniper is also rife with lies. This was not Chris Kyle’s story. And Bradley Cooper was not Chris Kyle. It was Jason Hall’s story, a one-time actor in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and screenwriter for “American Sniper,” who called his film a “character study.” Don’t believe him. His movie is as fictional as Buffy Summers.

In the movie’s first scene, Cooper faces a moral dilemma that never happened in real life. Cooper suspects a boy is preparing to send an improvised explosive device, or IED, toward a convoy of approaching Marines on the streets of Fallujah. Either he kills a child or the child kills Marines. A soldier next to Cooper warns, “They’ll send your ass to Leavenworth if you’re wrong.” In writing this line, Hall implies that killing civilians is a war crime and U.S. military members are sent to prison for it. If U.S. soldiers, including Kyle, don’t seem to be getting punished for killing civilians, then they must not be killing civilians.

Garett and I agreed that even if that boy was a civilian, nothing would have happened to Cooper for shooting him. Both of us were trained to take detailed notes with the understanding that if something went wrong, it would be corrected in the report. Americans were responsible for thousands of Iraqi deaths and almost none were held accountable.

During one incident in Iraq, Garett was involved in a firefight that left six to seven civilians dead. He received his orders from an intelligence officer who got his intelligence wrong. He led Garett and a small convoy to an Iraqi deputy governor’s compound, which was supposedly under attack. As the convoy approached, the soldiers spotted a cluster of trucks with armed Iraqis. The armed Iraqis saw the American convoy inching closer, but they didn’t fire. It seemed obvious to Garett that these Iraqis were not who the intelligence officer was looking for. Then the officer screamed, “Fire!” Confused, no one in the convoy pulled their triggers. “I said fire goddamn it!” Someone fired, and all hell broke loose. In the ensuing chaos, one of the Iraqi trucks struck a civilian seeking cover on the sidewalk. As it turned out, those armed Iraqis were the deputy governor’s own security detail. The officer didn’t go to Leavenworth.

In Hall and Cooper’s Fallujah, it’s as if the Americans just found a city that was already laid to waste. The movie leaves out America’s bombardment of Fallujah. An officer explains that the city has been evacuated, so any military-aged male remaining must be an insurgent. Conveniently, every Iraqi that Cooper kills happens to be carrying a rifle or burying an IED, even though the real Chris Kyle wrote that he was told to shoot anymilitary-aged male. Obviously, every non-insurgent did not evacuate Fallujah.

“Many Iraqis didn’t have cars or other transportation,” Garett explained. “To get to the nearest town, you’d have to walk across very hot desert, and you wouldn’t be able to carry much. So a lot of residents just decided to stay indoors and wait it out. It’d be like telling people in San Antonio that they have to walk to El Paso; then they come back home and their city is bombed and contaminated with depleted uranium.”

So what brought Bradley Cooper’s character to Iraq? Early in the film, Hall sets the stage for the moral theme of the movie. When Cooper was a child he sat at a kitchen table with his father, who explained that there are only three types of people in the world: sheep who believe “evil doesn’t exist,” wolves who prey on the sheep, and sheepdogs who are “blessed with aggression” and protect the sheep. In this world, when Cooper watches the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings on television, there is only one explanation: just evil wolves being evil. So he joins the military. When Cooper watches September 11 on television, there is one explanation: just evil wolves being evil. So he goes to war with them.

Amazingly, Hall and Cooper’s war seems to have absolutely nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. It’s about al-Qaida, which in real life followed the United States into Iraq after we invaded. Cooper’s war also seems to have nothing to do with helping Iraqis, only killing them. Except for the military’s interpreters, every Iraqi in the movie — including the women and children — are either evil, butchering insurgents or collaborators. The sense is that there isn’t a single innocent Iraqi in the war. They’re all “savages.”

Finally, it seems that a voice of criticism will be heard through the character of Marc Lee. When Lee voices his skepticism, Cooper asks, “Do you want them to attack San Diego or New York?” Cooper somehow wins with that absurd question. Later in the film, Navy SEAL Ryan Job is shot in the face. Distraught, Cooper decides he should lead a group of SEALs back out to avenge Job’s death, which is portrayed as the heroic thing to do. While Lee and Cooper are clearing a building, an Iraqi sniper shoots Lee in the head. The audience is then at Lee’s funeral, where his mother is reading the last letter that Lee sent home expressing criticism of the war. On the road home, Cooper’s wife asks him what he thought about the letter. “That letter killed Marc,” Cooper responds. “He let go, and he paid the price for it.” What makes Cooper a hero, according to the film, is that he’s a sheepdog. In Jason Hall’s world, Lee stops being a sheepdog when he questions his actions in Iraq. He becomes a sheep, “and he paid the price for it” with a bullet from a wolf.

Hall claims his film is a character study, yet he shamelessly butchered Marc Lee’s real story (and part of Kyle’s) to promote his moral fantasy world and deny legitimacy to veterans critical of the war. Here’s the truth: On the day that the real Ryan Job was shot, the real Marc Lee died after stepping into the line of fire twice to save Job’s life, which apparently was either not “sheepdog” enough to portray accurately in the movie or would have taken the focus off of Cooper’s reckless heroics. You can’t have people believe that critical soldiers are actually not sheep, can you? And as it turns out, Kyle never said those things about Lee’s letter and never blamed Lee for his own death for being skeptical of the war. (Here is Marc Lee’s actual last letter home in full.http://americasmightywarriors.org/_a/marcs-last-letter-home/)

Chris Kyle was like so many soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He believed in doing the right thing and was willing to give his life for it. That trait that drives many veterans is a truly special one I wish we all had. Was Kyle wrong that the Iraq War had anything to do with September 11, protecting Americans, seizing weapons of mass destruction, or liberating Iraqis? Without a doubt. But that’s what he was told and he genuinely believed it — an important insight into how good people are driven to work for bad causes. Was Kyle wrong for calling Iraqis “savages”? Of course. In one interview, he admits that Iraqis probably view him as a “savage,” but that in war he needed to dehumanize people to kill them — another important insight into how humans tolerate killing, which was left out of the movie.

So enough about Chris Kyle. Let’s talk about Cooper and Hall, and the culture industry that recycles propagandistic fiction under the guise of a “true story.” And let’s focus our anger and our organizing against the authorities and the institutions that craft the lies that the Chris Kyles of the world believe, that have created a trail of blowback leading from dumb war to dumb war, and that have sent 2.5 million veterans to fight a “war on terror” that persists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Pakistan. Critics and nonviolent organizers can be sheepdogs too.

There is so much information available today–so many sources, that people can find the truth they want.

To me the issue is people not knowing they don’t know. There’s famous stories about Soviet Communists admiring American propaganda. The Soviets lied, and their people did not believe them. Americans on the other hand have info all around them, and they never know to look.

See the lie is central to that movie. It can’t be about the burden he carries being a sheepdog and protector IF at the same time they let it be known that his views of the war were not valid. It becomes a different story. It stops being Saving Private Ryan, about heroic sacrifice, and becomes a Vietnam film. Vietnam films don’t allow for unironized pure heroism.

PA Ram wrote:

I disagree about the lie being central to that movie.

His views of the war were valid to HIM. That’s all that mattered in this film, IMO.

‘

The film completely allows the lie to dictate the narrative. It does not question it and in fact does everything to support it. Again, if it DIDN’T, his whole story would look different. Like, COMPLETELY different.

And it is honestly really easy to have put his ideas in context and show that they were not true. A 30 second scene would do it. Also, NOT having the enemy be Al qaida in Falluja would do it too.

Speaking of info being all around us, people should read the real story of Fallujah. Once you do that you realize the film is a complete and total collaborator in the revisionist take on the war. For one thing, the insurgents there had nothing bloody to do with Al Qaida — they were Iraqi sunni insurgents associated with the old regime.

There was no bloody way on earth that film was going to show a realistic version of Fallujah. It was revisionist in every single frame. And badly so. Like way out of its way from the truth and deep into falsehoods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah_during_the_Iraq_War
2003 invasion of Iraq
Downtown Fallujah, December 2003

Although the majority of the residents were Sunni and had supported Saddam Hussein’s rule, Fallujah lacked military presence just after his fall. There was little looting and the new mayor of the city—Taha Bidaywi Hamed, was selected by local tribal leaders—was pro-United States.[4] When the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion / 2nd Brigade 82nd Airborne entered the town on April 23, 2003, they positioned themselves at the vacated Ba’ath Party headquarters, a local school house, and the Ba’ath party resort just outside town (Dreamland)—the US bases inside the town erased some goodwill, especially when many in the city had been hoping the US Army would stay outside of the relatively calm city.

Instability, April 2003 – March 2004
Main article: Fallujah killings of April 2003

On the evening of April 28, 2003, several hundred residents defied the US curfew and marched down the streets of Fallujah, past the soldiers positioned in the Ba’ath party (which did not exist any more at that point) headquarters, to protest the military presence inside the local school. The protest remained peaceful but US soldiers fired upon the crowd, killing as many as 17 and wounding more than 70 of the protesters. US soldiers alleged that they were returning fire, but protesters stated they were unarmed.[5][6][7] Independent observers from human rights group found no evidence that US forces had come under attack.[1] The US suffered no casualties from the incident.

Two days later, on April 30, the 82d Airborne was replaced in the city by 2nd Troop (Fox) / U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The 3rd Cavalry was significantly smaller in number and chose not to occupy the same schoolhouse where the shooting had occurred two days earlier. However, on the same day a daytime protest in front of the Ba’ath party headquarters and mayor’s office (which are adjacent to one another) led to the death of three more protesters. At this point in time the 3rd Cavalry was in control of the entire Al Anbar province, and it quickly became evident that a larger force was needed. The now battalion-sized element of the 3rd Cavalry (2nd squadron) in Fallujah was replaced by the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division.[citation needed]

During the summer, the US army decided to close down its last remaining base inside the city (the Ba’ath party headquarters; FOB Laurie). At this point the 3d ACR had all of its forces stationed outside Fallujah in the former Baathist resort, Dreamland. After the May 11 surrender of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the incoming 3d Infantry Division also began using the large MEK compound adjacent to Dreamland to accommodate its larger troop presence in Fallujah. Under its control, the 3d Infantry Division maintained no bases inside the city of Fallujah.

On 30 June a “huge explosion” occurred in a mosque in which the imam, Sheikh Laith Khalil, and eight other people were killed. Residents of the city claim the army fired a missile at the mosque while the army displayed evidence that a terrorist bomb training class had gone wrong.[8] Just a couple of days earlier things had been much quieter, although US troops had been confiscating motorbikes as a preventive measure against terrorist attacks.[9]
Timeline showing the sequence of units in control of Fallujah in just the first year of the war

Just 2 months after the 3rd Infantry had taken control of Fallujah from the 3rd Cavalry, the entire 3rd Infantry Division was redeployed home. The 3d Cavalry was once again put in control of Fallujah, and again was only able to devote one squadron to Fallujah. Attached to that Squadron was the 115th MP Company from Rhode Island. Unarmored and ill-equipped the 115th MPs kept order with routine patrols and frequent house raids searching for insurgents and weapons caches. In September 2003, the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne was deployed to replace the 3d Cavalry in Ramadi and Fallujah. The 3rd Cavalry was then left to control all of the al-Anbar province except for these two cities.

Approximately one year after the invasion, the city’s Iraqi police and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps were unable to establish law and order. Insurgents launched many indiscriminate attacks and some on police stations in the city, killing at least 20 police officers. Beginning in early March 2004, the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division commanded by Major-General Charles H. Swannack Jr. gave a transfer of authority of the al-Anbar province to the I Marine Expeditionary Force commanded by Lt. General Conway. The 3rd Cavalry and the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne were then sent home.
Attack on contractors

Main article: 2004 Fallujah ambush

On March 31, 2004 – Iraqi insurgents from the Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin in Fallujah ambushed a convoy containing four American private military contractors (mercenaries) employed by Blackwater USA, who were at the time guarding a convoy carrying kitchen supplies to a military base, for the catering company Eurest Support Services[10]

The four contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague, were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set ablaze. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates.[11]
Siege, April 2004
Main article: First Battle of Fallujah

In response to the killing of the four US citizens, and intense political pressure, the US Marines commenced Operation Vigilant Resolve. They surrounded the city and attempted to capture the individuals responsible as well as others in the region who might have been involved in insurgencies. One out of every two mosques in Fallujah were used to hide fighters or weapons.[12] The Iraqi National Guard was supposed to work alongside with the US Marines in the operation, but on the dawn of the invasion they discarded their uniforms and deserted.[13] Under pressure from the Iraqi Governing Council, the US aborted its attempt to regain control of Fallujah. The US Marines suffered 40 deaths in the siege. Estimates of the number of Iraqi deaths (both fighters and civilians) in the attack range from 271 (according to Iraqi Ministry of Health officials[14][15]) to 731 (according to Rafie al-Issawi, the head of the local hospital[16]).

The occupying force on April 9 allowed more than 70,000 women, children and elderly residents to leave the besieged city. On April 10, the US military declared a unilateral truce to allow for humanitarian supplies to enter Fallujah. US troops pulled back to the outskirts of the city. An Iraqi mediation team entered the city in an attempt to set up negotiations between US forces and local leaders, but as of April 12 had not been successful. At least one US battalion had orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not.[17] In violation of the Geneva Convention, the city’s main hospital was closed by Marines, negating its use, and a US sniper was placed on top of the hospital’s water tower.[18]

There were also reports of the use of cluster bombs by US forces in Fallujah during this time, including reports from Al Jazeera on April 9 and 15, which US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher later described as “totally false.”[19][unreliable source?] Similar reports came from several other sources who reported on 26 April 2004: “A spokesman for an Iraqi delegation from the violence-gripped city of Fallujah on Monday accused U.S. troops of using cluster bombs against the city and said they had asked the United Nations to mediate the conflict.[citation needed] Mohammed Tareq, a spokesman for the governing council of Fallujah and a member of the four-person delegation, said U.S. military snipers were also responsible for the deaths of many children, women and elderly people.” And the Economic Press Review reported on 17 April 2004: “American F-16 warplanes are blitzing the Al-Julan residential area in Al Fallujah 50 kilometers west from Baghdad with cluster bombs.”[citation needed]

The ceasefire followed a wave of insurgency activity across southern Iraq, which included the capture of two US soldiers, seven employees of US military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, and more than 50 other workers in Iraq. Several of the prisoners were released within days of their capture, while the majority were executed.[citation needed]

The US forces ostensibly sought to negotiate a settlement but promised to restart its offensive to retake the city if one was not reached. Military commanders said their goal in the siege was to capture those responsible for the numerous deaths of US and Iraqi security personnel. As the siege continued, insurgents conducted hit-and-run attacks on US Marine positions. The Marines had announced a unilateral ceasefire.[citation needed]
Truce, May 2004

At the beginning of May 2004, the US Marine Corps announced a ceasefire due to intense political pressure. Most of the fighting was limited to the southern industrial district, which, had the lowest population density inside the city limits and the northwest corner of the city in the Jolan district. There were also Marine battalions in the northeast and southern portion of the city. While both sides began preparations to resume offensives, General Conway took a risk and handed control of the city to a former Iraqi general with roughly 1,000 men who then formed the Fallujah Brigade, while acknowledging that many of the people under control of the general were probably insurgents themselves (no verification was provided). The general, Major General Muhammed Latif, replaced a US choice, Jasim Mohammed Saleh, who was alleged to have been involved in the earlier atrocities against Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war.[20] The ceasefire terms were to give control of Fallujah to General Latif on condition that Fallujah becomes a secure region for coalition forces and halt incoming mortar and rocket attacks on the nearby US bases. Latif’s militia wore Iraqi military uniforms from the Hussein era. Another tenet of the cease-fire was the establishment of a Traffic Control Point (TCP) on the eastern side of the city just west of the “cloverleaf”. This TCP was constantly manned by a platoon of Marines and a platoon from the Iraqi National Guard and saw almost daily firefights for the rest of the summer.

Inside the city, mosques proclaimed the victory of the insurgents over the United States.[citation needed] Celebratory banners appeared around the city, and the fighters paraded through the town on trucks. Iraqi governing council member Ahmed Chalabi, after a bombing that killed fellow IGC member Izzadine Saleem, blamed the US military’s decisions in Fallujah for the attack, stating “The garage is open and car bombs are coming repeatedly.”[21]

Fallujah, according to reporters who have visited in mid-summer, had since become a sort of Islamist mini-state, with Sharia law enforced by mujahedin.[citation needed] Owners of shops that sold US-style magazine and barbers who offered “Western-style” haircuts were beaten and publicly humiliated. Inter-faction fighting was also rampant.[22] The Fallujah Brigade was soon marginalized and ceased to be more than another faction in what had effectively become a no-go area for coalition troops.
Counter-insurgency, May – November 2004

Throughout the summer and fall of 2004, the U.S. military conducted sporadic airstrikes on Fallujah. U.S. forces reported that all were confirmed targeted, intelligence-based strikes against houses used by the group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an insurgency leader linked to al-Qaida.

In October and early November, 2004, the U.S. military prepared for a major offensive against the rebel stronghold with stepped up daily aerial attacks using precision-guided munitions[23] against militant “safe houses,” restaurants and meeting places in the city. U.S. Marines also engaged in firefights on a daily and nightly basis along the perimeter of the city. There were again conflicting reports of civilian casualties.[24]:256–267

CNN incorrectly reported on October 14, 2004, that the US offensive assault on Fallujah had begun and broadcast a report from a young Marine outside Fallujah, 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, who announced that “troops have crossed the line of departure.” Hours later, CNN reported their Pentagon reporters had determined that the assault had not, in fact, begun. The Los Angeles Times reported on December 1, 2004, that, according to several unnamed Pentagon officials, the Marine’s announcement was a feint—part of an elaborate “psychological operation” (PSYOP) to determine the Fallujah rebels’ reactions if they believed attack was imminent.

On November 7, 2004, the U.S.-appointed Iraq interim government declared a 60 day state of emergency in preparation for the assault, as insurgents carried out several car bomb attacks in the Fallujah area which killed Iraqi army and police, U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians. The next day Prime Minister Iyad Allawi publicly authorized an offensive in Fallujah and Ramadi to “liberate the people” and “clean Fallujah from the terrorists”. Marines, U.S. Army soldiers and allied Iraqi soldiers stormed into Fallujah’s western outskirts, secured two bridges across the Euphrates, seized a hospital on the outskirts of the city and arrested about 50 men in the hospital. About half the arrested men were later released. A hospital doctor reported that 15 Iraqis were killed and 20 wounded during the overnight incursions. The US armed forces have designated the offensive as Operation Phantom Fury.

In the first week of Operation Phantom Fury, government spokesman Thair al-Naqeeb said that many of the remaining fighters have asked to surrender and that Iraqi authorities “will extend amnesty” to those who have not committed major crimes.[25] At the same time, US forces prevented male refugees from leaving the combat zone, and the city was placed under a strict night-time shoot-to-kill curfew with anyone spotted in the Marines’ night vision sights shot.[26][27]
U.S.–Iraqi offensive of November 7, 2004
Main article: Second Battle of Fallujah

Journalists embedded with U.S. military units, although limited in what they may report, have reported the following:

On November 8, 2004, a force of around 2,000 U.S. and 600 Iraqi troops began a concentrated assault on Fallujah with air strikes, artillery, armor, and infantry. The New York Times reported that within an hour of the start of the ground attack, troops seized the Fallujah General Hospital. “Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs”.[28] Noam Chomsky in his book Failed States commented that according to the Geneva Conventions, medical establishments “may in no circumstance be attacked, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.” [29] Troops seized the rail yards North of the city, and pushed into the city simultaneously from the North and West taking control of the volatile Jolan and Askari districts. Rebel resistance was as strong as expected[citation needed], rebels fought very hard as they fell back. By nightfall on November 9, 2004, the U.S. troops had almost reached the heart of the city. U.S. military officials stated that 1,000 to 6,000 insurgents were believed to be in the city, they appear to be organized, and fought in small groups, of three to 25. Many insurgents were believed to have slipped away amid widespread reports that the U.S. offensive was coming. During the assault, Marines and Iraqi soldiers endured sniper fire and destroyed booby traps, much more than anticipated. Ten U.S. troops were killed in the fighting and 22 wounded in the first two days of fighting. Insurgent casualty numbers were estimated at 85 to 90 killed or wounded. Several more days of fighting were anticipated as U.S. and Iraqi troops conducted house-to-house searches for weapons, booby traps, and insurgents.
On 9 November, CNN Correspondent Karl Penhaul reported the use of cluster bombs in the offensive: “The sky over Falluja seems to explode as U.S. Marines launch their much-trumpeted ground assault. War planes drop cluster bombs on insurgent positions and artillery batteries fire smoke rounds to conceal a Marine advance.”[30]
November 10, 2004 reports by the Washington Post suggest that U.S. armed forces used white phosphorus grenades and/or artillery shells, creating walls of fire in the city. Doctors working inside Fallujah report seeing melted corpses of suspected insurgents.[31] The use of WP ammunition was confirmed from various independent sources, including U.S. troops who had suffered WP burns due to friendly fire. On November 16, 2005 The Independent reported that Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable “disclosed that (white phosphorus) had been used to dislodge enemy fighters from entrenched positions in the city”…”We use them primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target marking in some cases. However, it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants.”[32] But a day before, Robert Tuttle, the U.S. ambassador to London, denied that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon: “US forces do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons.”[33][34]
On November 13, 2004 a Red Crescent convoy containing humanitarian aid was delayed from entering Fallujah by the U.S. army.[35][36]
On November 13, 2004, a U.S. Marine with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines was videotaped killing a wounded and unarmed prisoner in a mosque. The incident, which came under investigation, created controversy throughout the world. The man was shot at close range after he and several other badly wounded Iraqi prisoners had previously been left behind overnight in the mosque by the U.S. Marines. The Marine shooting the man had been mildly injured by insurgents in the same mosque the day before.[37][38] In May 2005, it was announced that the Marine would not face a court-martial. In a statement, Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, commanding general of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, said that a review of the evidence had shown that the shooting was “consistent with the established rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict.” [39]
On November 16, 2004, a Red Cross official told Inter Press Service that “at least 800 civilians” had been killed in Fallujah and indicated that “they had received several reports from refugees that the military had dropped cluster bombs in Fallujah, and used a phosphorus weapon that caused severe burns.”[40]
As of November 18, 2004, the U.S. military reported 1200 insurgents killed and 1000 captured. U.S. casualties were 51 killed and 425 wounded, and the Iraqi forces lost 8 killed and 43 wounded.[41]
On December 2, 2004, the U.S. death toll in Fallujah operation reached 71 killed.[42]
Some of the tactics said to be used by the insurgents included playing dead and attacking, surrendering and attacking, and rigging dead or wounded with bombs. In the November 13th incident mentioned above, the U.S. Marine alleged the insurgent was playing dead.[43]
Of the 100 mosques in the city, about 60 were used as fighting positions by the insurgents.[citation needed] The U.S. and Iraqi military swept through all mosques used as fighting positions, destroying them, leading to great resentment from local residents.
In 2005, the U.S. military admitted that it used white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon in Fallujah.[44]

On 17 May 2011, AFP reported that 21 bodies, in black body-bags marked with letters and numbers in Roman script had been recovered from a mass grave in al-Maadhidi cemetery in the centre of the city. Fallujah police chief Brigadier General Mahmud al-Essawi said that they had been blindfolded, their legs had been tied and they had suffered gunshot wounds. The Mayor, Adnan Husseini said that the manner of their killing, as well as the body bags, indicated that US forces had been responsible. Both al-Essawi and Husseini agreed that the dead had been killed in 2004. The US Military declined to comment.[45]
Aftermath

Residents were allowed to return to the city in mid-December after undergoing biometric identification, provided they carry their ID cards all the time. US officials report that “more than half of Fallujah’s 39,000 homes were damaged, and about 10,000 of those were destroyed.” Compensation amounts to 20 percent of the value of damaged houses, with an estimated 32,000 homeowners eligible, according to Marine Lt. Col. William Brown.[46] According to the NBC,[47] 9,000 homes were destroyed, thousands more were damaged and of the 32,000 compensation claims only 2,500 had been paid as of April 14, 2005. According to Mike Marqusee of Iraq Occupation Focus writing in The Guardian,[48] “Falluja’s compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city’s 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines”. Reconstruction is only progressing slowly and mainly consists of clearing rubble from heavily-damaged areas and reestablishing basic utility services. This is also due to the fact that only 10% of the pre-offensive inhabitants had returned as of mid-January, and only 30% as of the end of March 2005.[49]

Health effects

Research by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi published in 2010 lent credibility to anecdotal news reports of increases in birth defects and cancer after the fighting in 2004.[51] Results from a survey of 711 households in Fallujah on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality suggested that large increases in cancer and infant mortality had occurred. Responses to the questionnaire also suggested an anomalous mean birth sex ratio in children born a year after the fighting, indicating that environmental contamination occurred in 2004. Although the authors noted the use of depleted uranium as one possible source of relevant exposure, they emphasized that there could be other possibilities and that their results did not identify the agent(s) responsible for the increased levels of illness.

I want to be clear that I am not arguing that this film represents THE truth. I don’t think I ever said that and if I did I didn’t mean to. I always said it represented HIS truth and that’s the point that I think we disagree about. I find that acceptable for this film and you do not.

Yes it’s absolutely no big deal that we disagree about this one film.

Anyway.

I saw the film. But I knew the history so DURING the film, I kept seeing how the narrative–the way the story works–underscores and supports the myths I have been complaining about. It’s not just HIS beliefs, the movie as a whole supports and repeats his beliefs at every single level. The story, not just the hero’s beliefs, is built around distortions of history. Not just any distortions of history. Bad ones, very dangerous ones (like the idea that they were fighting al qaida or that the iraqi insurgency was tied to al qaida). I saw how it was trying to be Saving Private Ryan (in a sense) but that in order to be that, it had to seriously distort history. The entire movie did. It was not just a case of them not challenging the hero’s beliefs–the very way they present the whole story of Fallujah reproduces his false beliefs.

I don’t even think the movie tells “the truth” of HIS story since in fact “the truth” of his story is that he acted on, believed, supported, and repeated lies he himself believed. THAT is his REAL story.

I remember the debates on the old huddle politics board about what the iraqi insurgencies were about (there was more than one) and I remember the board righties kept presenting this false picture it was easy to blow up. They didn’t get what the various insurgencies were, they didn’t get whose side we were on in Iraq, they didn’t get the nature of the conflicts there during the occupation, and so on. They just thought we were at war with Muslim Evil.

Well the movie as a whole buys every myth those board righties were posting. All of them, down the line.