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    "Truth" of Troops in Iraq Gets Past Politics
    By Claudia Puig
    USA Today

    Thursday 21 September 2006

    The Ground Truth is a cinematic call to arms. It asks that we not only support the troops but also bear witness to their anguish, no matter what position we may have on the war in Iraq.

    It is a documentary for those who proudly emblazon yellow ribbons, and for those who vehemently oppose the war. It should also be seen by those who may be uncertain what to think.

    This troubling and gripping chronicle of the men and women who served in the military is profoundly moving. Through interviews with a half-dozen American soldiers who returned from fighting in Iraq scarred in myriad ways, we get a visceral sense of the heavy burden they have borne.

    The film - spanning recruitment through deployment in Iraq and back to US civilian life - is told from the vantage point of several strikingly articulate, candid and gravely disillusioned military personnel. Most sign up with hope and belief in the cause. Some regarded a military stint as a way of gaining career training, believing the recruiters who lured them with promises of top-notch medical and educational benefits.

    Once there, some say, they were haunted by the sight of dead children. They return home alienated, guilt-ridden and depressed. Some come back missing a leg, an arm or otherwise disfigured. They contend that the government minimizes their physical and psychological pain.

    While on duty, Marine Jimmy J. Massey lamented the toll of casualties - including women and children - from an attack on an Iraqi town. When his superior asks why he's so glum, he explains that being responsible for so many dead and wounded Iraqis made it a "bad day." He is sharply reprimanded by the officer, he says, with the rejoinder: "No, that's a good day."

    This is undeniably one of the year's most compelling films, and also one of the saddest. Unflinching, disturbing and fascinating, The Ground Truth never weighs in on the merits of the war, nor engages in Bush-bashing. This is how these soldiers feel and there is no denying their sense of outrage.

    Documentaries like this one have a valuable place in the world of film. Clearly, this is not intended to be an objective news report. Still, you wonder why there were no interviews with soldiers who felt their time in Iraq was well-spent.

    It is not clear whether director Patricia Foulkrod tried to find such people and was unable to, or decided to focus solely on the war's gut-wrenching effects on the psyche.

    The voices of these brave young people reverberate hauntingly. A Marine named Sean Huze is plagued by his experience in Iraq. Images of the destruction of villages and murder of innocents remain with him once he's back home with his wife. "Your purpose (in the military) is to kill, make no mistake," Huze says. "There was nothing honorable about what we did. And that broke my heart."

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    Movie Review: The Ground Truth
    By Jessica Reaves
    The Chicago Tribune

    Friday 15 September 2006

    What if they gave a war and nobody came? Given the US military's relentless recruitment techniques and the lack of viable alternatives for the country's most disadvantaged kids, that scenario doesn't seem particularly likely. So let's try this: What if they gave a war, and people went, but later came home and dedicated their lives to ending the same war they just fought in?

    This is the premise behind "The Ground Truth," a compelling and intensely provocative new documentary that profiles a dozen veterans of the current Iraq war, all of whom are suffering its aftereffects.

    Patricia Foulkrod, a longtime documentary filmmaker, has created a movie with an unmistakable anti-war agenda; no opposing views are given screen time, and each soldier she profiles has, at the very least, serious doubts about the current war. But what saves "The Ground Truth" from the trap of offensive simplicity - and what will help insulate it from most of its potential critics - are the subjects themselves: soldiers, some of whom are barely 21, who have left everything they knew to serve their country in a mission that becomes to them more and more nebulous as time goes on.

    "Truth" leads us through the life cycle of the recruitment process: the hard-sell, where kids with precious few options are promised everything from education benefits to cushy stateside posts, followed by the induction ceremony, which provides a flash of pomp and circumstance for proud families. Finally, basic training, where verbal abuse and physical strain are carefully designed, military psychologists tell us, to break the spirit and cast the battlefield as a moral black hole - neatly wiping away any of the soldiers' lingering ethical concerns.

    Then it's off to war, where the "mission" becomes quite simple: kill or be killed. A grisly year (or more) later, the soldiers return home, transformed but expected to reintegrate themselves into the families and society they left behind. Those lucky enough to make it home physically "whole" are suffering from a range of psychological injuries. The nightmares, the violent urges, the crises of conscience: Whether by luck or sheer perseverance, the filmmakers are on hand to capture the veterans' struggles to reintegrate into their "old" worlds.

    Foulkrod began her investigation into what she calls "our invisible injured soldiers" after reading a report on the lack of body armor and general protection being provided to US troops in Iraq. Indignant, Foulkrod embarked on a fundraising spree, and a few months later, she started talking to recently returned soldiers recovering from war injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

    Some have lost limbs, others are suffering from something less obvious, but with equally devastating consequences. "The Ground Truth" feels particularly sharp, and particularly timely, when it deals with the solitary torture of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), a post-Vietnam diagnosis that's either too controversial or too potentially expensive to be recognized by the powers that be. Returned soldiers find the military that promised them the moon before they signed their lives away gives their returned "heroes" very little or no support. One Veterans' Affairs psychologist delivers this rebuff to a Marine who asks for help dealing with the lingering horrors of war: "I can't help you. We don't treat conscientious objectors here."

    If Foulkrod and her team planned only to tell a story that gives credence to anti-war sentiment, they undersold themselves. Thanks largely to the brutal honesty of its subjects, "The Ground Truth" transcends the protest genre and delivers a much broader cautionary tale: Any country that turns people into killing machines, hands them weapons and sends them off to war owes them more than a pat on the shoulder and a bus ticket home. More is owed to their families, their children and the society that will be dealing with their rage and hurt for the rest of their lives.

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    The Memory Remains
    By Tim Grierson
    LA Weekly

    Wednesday 06 September 2006

In Patricia Foulkrod's Iraq documentary, coming home is only half the battle.

    As the Iraq war lurches into its fourth year and popular opposition grows, a litany of muckraking films and documentaries have recently inundated the marketplace. Violently anti-Bush works such as The Road to Guantanamo don't offer fresh perspectives, though - they're content to flatter the left's cozy assumption that supporting a movie is akin to doing something productive about this endless conflict.

    Patricia Foulkrod's new documentary, The Ground Truth, ostensibly falls into that same category, except that it's a genuinely upsetting call to action that remains apolitical in its message. Foulkrod uses Iraq as a leaping-off point for a larger conversation about the consequences of America's military mindset - how prospective soldiers naively romanticize the notion of combat heroism, and how the same civilians who buy patriotic decals to "support" the troops refuse to help them once their service ends.

    The Ground Truth examines the lives of several soldiers who have returned from Iraq but cannot escape the memories of combat. Losing a limb is horrifying enough, but Foulkrod argues that the mental scars (and the often unsympathetic treatment from bureaucratic government agencies) prove more damaging, no matter the happy-ending news footage of valiant veterans getting off planes to kiss crying loved ones.

    "Like many Americans, I hoped things would get better after you came home," Foulkrod tells me one recent morning at a Melrose caf . "The biggest mythology in American culture about war is that if you sign up for the military, you'll be taken care of. And I think many soldiers believe that. Even as they're watching someone they know - a brother or a father who was in Vietnam who came back messed up and never spoke about it and never got help - they think that somehow they will be different."

    Foulkrod lacks the self-righteousness that can make a well-meaning activist insufferable. Her r sum includes many passion projects: documentaries about the history of Native Americans and the children of women in prison; a teaching position at an L.A. juvenile hall; working as a director for Arianna Huffington's gubernatorial campaign during the 2003 California recall election. The Ground Truth was inspired by a similar desire to get involved: Three years ago, convinced that the number of war wounded was being underreported, she interviewed Iraq veterans about their combat experience and their difficulties re-entering civilian life. As she continued to compile testimonials, Foulkrod thought of an old Tom Waits lyric: "He came home from the war/With a party in his head." But while she knew a worthwhile film existed somewhere in her rolls of footage, she struggled to find a narrative arc.

    "I was afraid to commit to making a film about the effects of killing," she now admits. "I was afraid to say the word. I was afraid to ask the soldiers questions about it. But I realized it was the only film I wanted to make."

    Her hesitation is understandable. Even the military's slick advertisements, which appeal to young people's sense of belonging and adventure, smoothly evade any implication that wartime service will very likely involve the taking of another human life.

    But while The Ground Truth highlights the disparity between the reality of war and the military fantasy, the movie's subjects feel surprisingly little anger or betrayal about their tours of duty - only confusion. Turned away by overworked VA centers, Foulkrod's veterans can find no healthy way to exorcise that pain in a society that doesn't want to hear about any more atrocities, lest they further taint our noble view of a "just" war. Aside from a mawkish score, The Ground Truth is riveting, unadorned oral history, a companion piece to the Vietnam-era documentary Winter Soldier, which similarly allowed a group of servicemen to finally share their internal terror. "One of the most taboo things you can ask a soldier is, 'Did you kill anyone?'" she says. "It's really offensive to them. But the flipside is, many of them need to talk."

    Foulkrod insists that The Ground Truth has no agenda aside from asking viewers (regardless of their political leanings) to recognize their responsibility to veterans. Again and again during our meeting, she makes it clear that she's tired of civilians buying ribbons and offering cursory thanks: She wants people to reach out to our troops and listen to them as she has.

    "We're very good at creating organizations and institutions to take care of people," she says. "But we're not very good at the one-on-one. You go to other places in the world, and if you get a flat tire, people invite you into their house and cook you dinner."

    She marvels at that for a moment.

    "Here, we just call AAA."