http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15319.htm
FULL MOVIE
The Ground Truth : The Human Cost Of War

Sometimes the greatest act of courage is to tell the truth

In the opening scenes of Patricia Foulkrod's powerful documentary, we're introduced to a number of young soldiers who speak candidly and powerfully about the motivations that led them to join the military. As their stories unfold, we hear their surprised reactions to boot camp and combat training as they were taught to dehumanize their enemy, to "kill hadjis and ragheads."

"The Ground Truth" is a documentary that should be watched by everyone who has a friend, relative or loved one who's served--or is about to serve--in Iraq and Afghanistan.

10/17/06 - Video - Runtime 78 Minutes

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http://thegroundtruth.net/
THE GROUND TRUTH
Hailed as "powerful" and "quietly unflinching," Patricia Foulkrod's searing documentary feature includes exclusive footage that will stir audiences. The filmmaker's subjects are patriotic young Americans - ordinary men and women who heeded the call for military service in Iraq - as they experience recruitment and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home – with personal demons, an uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. As these battles take shape, each soldier becomes a new kind of hero, bearing witness and giving support to other veterans, and learning to fearlessly wield the most powerful weapon of all - the truth.

Quote:Published on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
The Ground Truth: Iraq War Veterans Speak Out
by Susan Van Haitsma

On Friday, September 15, the film, "The Ground Truth," opened in selected cities around the country, including Austin. The riveting documentary directed by Patricia Foulkrod is scheduled to run for one week at the Dobie Theatre. The film gives voice to young veterans of the Iraq war, who speak candidly about the successive phases of their military experience: recruitment, basic training, combat, re-entry into civilian society, physical and psychological war injuries and the consequent realization that their country is unprepared for the levels of support they really need. Yellow car magnets and heroes' welcomes don't cut it.

"The Ground Truth" is rated "R for disturbing violent content, and language," according to its listing in the Austin American-Statesman. Most of the disturbing violent content and language is contained in footage from basic training and from the Iraq war. Drill instructors are shown dehumanizing recruits as part of the process of training them to dehumanize the adversary. Rare video footage from Iraq, accompanied by first-hand accounts from soldiers featured in the film, reveal the ways their training to "Kill, kill" leads them to target Iraqi civilians.

A film review of "The Ground Truth" in the Austin Chronicle includes the reviewer's suggestion, "It would be a good idea to show Foulkrod's movie nationwide on high school career days." As it happened, I attended a local high school career fair the evening before the film opened. Counseling staff at the school had invited Nonmilitary Options for Youth to participate with a literature table along with the many college and occupational trade representatives who were present. My colleague and I set up our table near the Army and Marine recruiters who came with their chin-up bar and give-away items.

One of the points made by the veterans interviewed in "The Ground Truth" (including a former Marine recruiter) is that recruiters do not tend to use the word "kill" when they talk to young people about enlistment. The military recruiters I observed at the career fair encouraged students under age 18 to display their physical strength on the chin-up bar and to fill out cards with their contact information. The students weren't told that the primary purpose of the military is to harness their youthful energy for killing.

Materials at our Nonmilitary Options table did address killing and the human costs of war. We invited students to consider signing cards that read in bold letters, "I WILL NOT KILL." The postcards are part of a youth-organized campaign sponsored by the international organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation. The 'I Will Not Kill' campaign (www.iwillnotkill.org ) gives young people a way to document their beliefs about killing in war, not only in case of a draft, but to encourage them to explore their own moral values as they enter adulthood.

If "The Ground Truth" could have been shown as part of that high school career night, the truths offered by the young veterans in the film would have done much more than we could at our table to inform and enlighten both students and recruiters about the realities of enlistment. Unfortunately, the film is not likely to be shown in the school, partly because of its 'R' rating, which is due precisely to the film's candid revelation of the disturbing violence and language that is required to make students into soldiers.

Included in AISD school regulations is the following statement: "Students shall be informed that physical violence and threats of physical violence as a means of addressing interpersonal conflict and discipline or control are inappropriate and destructive." At the same time, military recruitment in schools means that students are sought to join an institution that relies on physical violence and threats of violence as a means of addressing conflict, discipline and control. If military training and combat is described accurately, those descriptions may be considered too violent for minors to access, yet access to minors is what military recruitment is all about. Such layers of cognitive dissonance become part of the soldier's psychological burden described so honestly by the young veterans in the film.

Students are deceived if ground truths about military training, war and inadequate veteran care are withheld from them. And if images of real war are inappropriate to display to young people, then it is inappropriate to recruit young people to fight. The veterans who speak in "The Ground Truth," several of whom are only a few years out of high school themselves, have undertaken a truth-telling mission. Supporting the troops means listening to what they have to say.

Susan Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth in Austin, TX and can be reached at jeffjweb@sbcglobal.net

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Notice how she dropped the word "interpersonal" the second time?

So what? The morality is the same regardless of scale. What's moral for me to do to my neighbor is moral for the United States to do to Canada.

Personally I'm not a pacifist and do not accept her assumptions, but she is merely being morally consistent in my opinion.

So if the moral thing to do is walk away from a fight, that means that the moral thing to do is refuse to resist an invasion?

She didn't use the word "interpersonal" the second time around because by the AISD's own definition, the life lesson of how to resolve differences and conflicts one happens upon in interpersonal exchanges, already made it clear. She would have been redundant to repeat the subject twice. Since interpersonal echanges define how we act and the AISD school teaches non aggression as the way to resolve these differences we come across in daily life, how odd that an istitution that teaches interpersonal discipline of peaceful resolve also teaches aggression as a means of resolve to larger life issues. Funny that since the larger life issues may not be interpersonal that it makes the aggression that much more OK then?

There is a difference in how one deals with interpersonal conflict and how nations deal with international conflict. I am perfectly willing to accept that the best way to deal with physical aggression on an interpersonal level is to walk away, run away, or do whatever you have to do to get away from the aggressor. How did that work for Czechoslovakia in 1938, or Kuwait in 1990?

As I said, I'M NOT A PACIFIST. I only wrote four sentences, I don't think you could have missed that.

If a thug gives you shit on the street, you should walk (or run) away.
If a thug breaks into your house in the middle of the night, you should blow him to hell.

That's my morality, and it applies the same globally as locally.



I respectfully disagree. States have no rights except those derived from the consent of the governed, therefore the US has no right to self-defense which is not an incorporation of each individual's rights. The only meaningful difference is that international laws are not as comprehensive as criminal laws, but this has little to do with morality.

I didn't. I asked a question. The "if" in the sentence means it's a hypothetical or conditional. That little fishhooky-looking thing at the end means it's a question.

I grew up being taught that the bigger man is the one that can walk away.
That it takes more courage to NOT fight and face the ridicule, than to knuckle under and use knuckles.

As I have grown older I know this to be true.
Further more, many times in my life I have been presented with a situation in which I had to make this decision,
and not once have I been able to justify the use of testosterone logic.

I have never in my world known a good situation to justify a physical fight. These justifications do absolutely exist.
I would fight to protect friend or family from harm. But that is almost never the case for the use of personal force.


Walking away from a personal fight is not only a measure of the bigger man, it's also what the smarter man would do.
In my 51 years I have never been in a fist or street fight. There has yet never been a time when I could justify it as my only available option.

It took me a lot longer to wise up than it took you. Good man!

So you're just dodging my point and asking rhetorical questions that imply that there's a moral equivalence between avoidable pissing matches and existential threats.

Hmmm... avoidable pissing matches... what was the lesson there...

We could have had an intelligent discussion on whether avoidable pissing matches between nations are or are not morally equivalent to avoidable pissing matches between twelve-year-olds.

But it's better if I just walk away.

[Monty Python British accent]Come back and fight, you bastard![/Monty Python British accent]

OK, point taken. However, my original point stands as well. It's ridiculous to say there's an inconsistency between teaching non-violent interpersonal conflict resolution and allowing recruiters on campus, unless you really are a pacifist. The military exists to impose the will of the government by force. It's a valid moral question whether the military is being used for a moral purpose in any given conflict, but the author of the article was implying that saying it's OK to join the military is like saying it's OK to resolve interpersonal conflict by punching people out. And that's rubbish.

I thought the purpose for military was national protection, and that as I stated in my personal view of personal violence, there is almost never a good valid reason to use it, accept unavoidable protection of those who have ultimately authorized the formation of a national military.


But here you're saying that the purpose of the military is to impose it's governments will by force.
Is this more of a freudian discription of the US in Iraq? (And ultimately GW's big anti-constitutional power grab)


Having a military does not mean you HAVE to use the military for agressive purpose.
We have thousands of Nuclear warheads, does anyone expect that we will have to use them, just because we have them?

Really? And the events of the past hundred-odd years haven't shown you the error of that?


I would agree. That's why I oppose any notion of using the military in Sudan.


Yep.


I'm not sure what the Austrian witch doctor would say about it, and I don't particularly care.


Glad to see you agree with me.

The purpose of military is NOT To impose this governments will.
THough that may in fact be what happens, that's NOT why you and I and I suspect a couple hundred million other tax payers agree to continue to fund the US Military. Further, the more these several hunderd million believe this is not the case, the more they will expect political chance, such as we are just beginning to see right now.

I remind everyone that this national mood for change, the anti-Bush bent in America is only a few months old, and has had real teeth for only a few weeks.

Maybe if you say it enough times, it'll become true. Worth a shot, I guess. I mean, the Bush administration lied often enough and consistently enough that lots of people eventually believed them. For a while. Maybe the same tactic will work for you.


I never agreed to fund the US military. I wouldn't speculate about anyone else.


The Truth in a typo. Well done! I'm not sneering, I just think it's funny.

I reccomend this movie to everyone, even if they don't think it is the "truth" I just think it is showing that for most wars, the cost isn't enough.

This movie really hit home with me because when my dad returned from Panama, he was in charge of a lot of prisoners for a year and half, and when he returned he acted extremely harsh with my mother and I, and still does a little bit 12 years later.

Think what you want, this movie is great, and if you don't agree with it, it never hurts to see another point of view on something.

Omegabob, Hi

Sorry to hear about your dad's experience and how it showed itself in his INTERPERSONAL relationships.

I hope Jubal reads your post and...



Jubal,

have you seen this film yet?

No, I haven't. I assume there's some point here?

Because this movie explores how the military tears down an individual's ability to relate to the outside world, aka interpersonal relasionsips, in favor of building up a character of strength and courage that is well suited for the battle field and does not cross over well into the home as highlighted by Omegabob's comment.

This is a new concept for you?

By the way, it appears to me from Mr. Omegabob's post that his father was more of a prison guard than the traditional infantry soldier. Speculate for me here, Mr. Max. Do you think maybe the prison guard aspect had something to do with his family difficulties?

My father is actually a nurse(as is my mother) he just dealt with prisoners, and had to act harshly sometimes.... It just really suprised my because he never acted that way before..... and if he were a grunt, I'm sure it would have been A LOT worse.

The movie also shows the treatment that the military offers to the soldiers... which isn't that great.. there's one part where a guy goes into a VA hospital and goes to the mental health place, and when he tells the phycologist his problems she says "I'm sorry, we don't treat consiensous(spelling?) objectors"

Anyways, before you speculate too much, look into seeing the movie. I had to order mine, but you might be able to find another way to watch it if you don't want to make the investment. Also, you know that I'm a journalist(in training ) I've written a review of this movie too, so I could post it here when I get it again at school... and if I don't post the FINAL version yet, well.... im just not too impressed with my current evaluation... I kinda rushed it to make deadline

Jubal, I don't play those circular, dog-chase-tail, games.

For some people, the military has a negative effect on their interpersonal lives and it shows in a variety of ways. For others, the military is a perfect fit for their personality and they can handle what the military makes them into. Not everyone is the same. I would suggest that you do some research on this subject. Look up PTSD for a start. Second, this film covers a lot more than issues of 'personality fit' in the military. I suggest you view it before we continue this banter. K???



The video link for free viewing is in the first /originating topic thread that I posted.

Good luck with the journalism. As far as VA treatment goes, I basically thought the same. Imagine my surprise when a very good, very old friend of mine, whom I knew before, during, and after my service time told me that he went to the VA hospital and got excellent service!

Technical point. The VA is not the military. It's a separate branch of the government, with a separate budget and a separate chain of command. So whatever you may wish to hold the military responsible for, it can't possibly be responsible for the VA.

I don't see how suggesting that factors other than simply being in the military can affect a person's personality is a "circular, dog-chase-tail, game," especially since that's basically the same thing you say below.


In addition to the extensive research and twelve years of military service I've already done?



I don't have to. I know a great deal about PTSD, thanks.


Fair play. I'll look at it and get back to you. Might be a few days.

That's why they are called "Jar Heads"

Unscrew the top of the head, dump out all that mommy crap, then stuff it full of god, country and oorah!

What a superb documentary. You must hear the stories from these soldiers themselves if you ever hope to understand the real cost of Iraq.

The soldiers are paying the cost of this war the rest of their lives. Physically, with their more obvious wounds, and psychologically, much less obvious wounds but just as severe