This is a review of the Documentary "The Ground Truth" that I wrote for Iraq Veterans Against the War's upcoming newsletter.
The Ground Truth tells the story of seventeen Iraq War veterans, but it serves as more than that: these seventeen stories are a microcosm of the problems America's war veterans are facing everyday. The seventeen soldiers and Marines are an eclectic group. They represent all regions of the country; all races and colors. Their motivations for enlistment are diverse, as are the ways with which they have dealt with their war experiences. This is a melting pot; this is America.
Your first glimpse of the military in this documentary is the same as the veterans' in the film: Recruit induction day, complete with all the pomp and circumstance that that entails. Start learning about the war by learning what motivated these young Americans to join the military and, ultimately, participate in the war. Everything from duty to honor to college money to job training to a desire to leave a comfort zone is cited as reasons for joining our military; no one says they want to kill someone. That desire is learned, and you are given a crash course in the sociology of training our brothers and sisters to kill. It is not what you see in the recruiting advertisements on television.
Our narrators found themselves in different cities in Iraq, performing different missions, but having the same conflicting thoughts about their role in what they were witnessing. Innocent civilians were shot and killed. Iraqi men were humiliated for the purposes of intimidation. Children are dead on the side of the road. These weren't acts carried out by monsters; this is what happens when you train an animal to fight and then lock it in a cage. Soldiers and Marines give personal accounts of atrocities they witnessed or even committed; it becomes easy to understand how war has changed them.
When the soldiers and Marines were not witnessing the horrors of war on the civilian population of Iraq, they were busy crafting their own armor and wondering when they were going to see the best military equipment in the world. For two soldiers, the wait was too long and limbs were lost as a result. Sadly, the Department of Defense officially listed them as "wounded", just as they classify anyone missing an arm or a leg as merely being wounded. Regretfully, these soldiers can count themselves as lucky: at least the VA can see their wounds.
Of the thousands of soldiers who return to the United States from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), most of them will never receive help. Of those that do pursue help from the VA, some are flat out denied service while others are diagnosed with a previously unknown personality disorder, effectively ending the military career and mental health eligibility of the veteran. The military that worked so hard to condition the personality of a Marine to kill without thinking is abandoning the man once he starts to think about what he's done. The Marines turned him from a civilian into a killer; once he becomes a civilian again, he is useless.
In a very political time in our history, on a subject that can be very political, The Ground Truth never once uses the words: Bush; Republican; Democrat; Saddam Hussein; or Conspiracy. This is simply about the soldiers and Marines: what they saw; what they did; what they encountered when they returned home. There is nothing to disagree with; it is a film of facts and emotion. You might become angry. You might find yourself sad, but whether you scream or cry, you will know the story of the American Veteran . . . You will know The Ground Truth.
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