Tonights HBO Presentation--Baghdad E.R.

[Dies Irae]

This is a documentary filmed in a U.S. Forces Field Hospital in Iraq.

It tells the story of our heroic fighting men and women ,and the doctors and nurses that also fight, but to save their lives after they've been grieviously wounded and maimed in this senseless war. Loss of limbs, (both legs and arms) loss of vision and hearing, horrible injuries to the torso, abdomen, lungs and heart, are all shown in their grimest reality. G.W. Bush, "Dick" Cheney , Rumsfeld and Rice should be forced to watch this film repeatedly, and then come before the american people and say this war is justified. What a load of bull crap that would be.

Interviews with the Doctors and the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, all seem to feel that this war is a waste of young lives and should never have been fought. The scenes of bloodshed are horrific, and anyone that defends this senseless war, ought to be made to take the place of a fighting man or woman.
Grown men weep after they see the carnage afflicted on their buddies, or see them (what's left of them) carted off in a body bag.
\
This film is far more thought provoking than any "sensational" trash brought forward by Michael Moore. GOD, this war is a waste. And it should be ended as soon as possible.

For those of you that missed this program, HBO usually repeats its films several times in the next few weeks. Watch for it, see it, and then tell me that you're in favor of this sham of a war.

[Ralph]

This film has gotten much publicity especially since the Army's Surgeon General sent out an all-points memo warning that seeing it might trigger PTSS in vets. I don't get HBO so I won't see it.

[Dies Irae]

This film has gotten much publicity especially since the Army's Surgeon General sent out an all-points memo warning that seeing it might trigger PTSS in vets. I don't get HBO so I won't see it.

Pardon me Ralph, but not being a veteran myself, just what is PTSS? And you MUST know somebody that gets HBO. It will be worth your time to impose upon them to arrange for you to watch it.

[jbuck919]

This film has gotten much publicity especially since the Army's Surgeon General sent out an all-points memo warning that seeing it might trigger PTSS in vets. I don't get HBO so I won't see it.

Pardon me Ralph, but not being a veteran myself, just what is PTSS? And you MUST know somebody that gets HBO. It will be worth your time to impose upon them to arrange for you to watch it.

Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and while Ralph often jokes with us and I usually receive a cc on any APB of this type and did not this time, I don't think he's kidding.

[Corlyss_D]

GOD, this war is a waste. And it should be ended as soon as possible.

Well, that is the point of the show, slyly timed for this year's elections, isn't it.

I might watch it if I had HBO but I don't.

[Corlyss_D]

Pardon me Ralph, but not being a veteran myself, just what is PTSS? And you MUST know somebody that gets HBO. It will be worth your time to impose upon them to arrange for you to watch it.

He's already against the war. Why should he bother?

[Dies Irae]

Yeah, that's typical of this administrations philosophy.

Don't risk Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome by watching that film. By not watching it (and discouraging anybody else from watching it ) all the horror and bloodshed, all the senseless deaths of our young people, will fade from the publics mind. But the REALITY won't disappear. And the slaughter will continue. All in the name of trying to make the boob that currently occupies the Oval Office seem like a "leader". IMO, the only place he can lead this nation to, is the outhouse.

[Corlyss_D]

Yeah, that's typical of this administrations philosophy.

Don't risk Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome by watching that film. By not watching it (and discouraging anybody else from watching it ) all the horror and bloodshed, all the senseles deaths of our young people, will fade from the publics mind. But the REALITY won't disappear. And the slaughter will continue. All in the name of trying to make the boob that currently occupies the Oval Office seem like a "leader". IMO, the only place he can lead this nation to, is the outhouse.

I watched the History Channel's documentary on Black Hawk Down again for the umpteenth time last night. All of the men interviewed were proud of the way they had acquitted themselves in the worst firefight since Viet Nam. And all of them were dismayed, frustrated, and humiliated by Clinton's decision to tuck tail and run the day after they counted and mourned their dead. You guys who wring your hands over the fate of the warrior who choses to place himself in harms way for folks like you and me are not doing them or the nation any service with your free-floating pacificist urges to save them from themselves.

[Ralph]

Pardon me Ralph, but not being a veteran myself, just what is PTSS? And you MUST know somebody that gets HBO. It will be worth your time to impose upon them to arrange for you to watch it.

He's already against the war. Why should he bother?

*****

What has being against the war got to do with anything?

And I've been in a combat casualty Army hospital including the so-called "E.R." Have you?

And, no, I don't "impose" on people to watch THEIR TV for anything - I have better things to do (like going to an opera recital tonight).

[Ralph]

The War Brought In, Stretcher By Stretcher The New York Times May 20, 2006 Saturday


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

May 20, 2006 Saturday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section B; Column 6; The Arts/Cultural Desk; TELEVISION REVIEW; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 644 words

HEADLINE: The War Brought In, Stretcher By Stretcher

BYLINE: By GINIA BELLAFANTE

BODY:


At one point in the documentary ''Baghdad ER,'' on HBO tomorrow night, the camera finds a young emergency room doctor making his way into the 86th Combat Support Hospital with the tempered expedience of someone about to catch his evening train.

''We're off shift, we just actually came back from the gym,'' the doctor, James Hill, reports. ''We had a call on our cellphone telling us we had some casualties coming in, they didn't know how many. We ran back five blocks from the gym, and, uh, to get back to the E.R. and take care of business.''

The business of the E.R. at the Army's central medical facility in Iraq is a business of immeasurable horror. Limbs are routinely removed, shrapnel extracted from innards and eye sockets, blood mopped and remopped from the floor like spilled water in a taxed kitchen.

Directed by Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill, ''Baghdad ER,'' which chronicles two months in the life of the hospital, is as intimate a depiction of the war's miseries as we have seen. And it has arrived as a news event in itself.

This month Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the surgeon general of the Army, wrote a memo to military personnel warning that a viewing of the film could provoke symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder among those who have served in combat. Though the Army fully sanctioned the project, obviously allowing filmmakers broad access to the medical unit, some officials have more recently withdrawn support, declining to attend the film's premiere in Washington this week.

Mr. Alpert and Mr. O'Neill avoid didacticism while delivering a message that no one could plausibly call neutral. A film choosing to show us a soldier's amputation is hardly uncertain of its intent. And yet its political agenda seems almost peripheral to its larger investigative interests.

''Baghdad ER'' is an unusually commendable film not because it tries to argue that war is madness -- a generic idea -- but because its perspective forces the viewer to focus on the clinical facts of physical injury, a consequence of war that lacks the narrative grandeur of death or psychological displacement. In addition to the more than 2,400 American soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq, nearly 18,000 have been wounded, a number that seems to receive relatively less attention.

As a genre, war movies are concerned with the spectaculars of death. Stereotypically, dying is seen as ennobling in wars of great purpose, or resonant with the recklessness of statesmen in conflicts considered groundless and unjust. But pain is interpreted how, exactly? What does it signify to lose an arm, a leg, eyesight in a war for which there is little support? What accrues to the sufferer?

At one point in the film a wounded soldier loses a thumb, and you are left to feel that he is lucky and unlucky at the same time, robbed somehow of stigmata that would more dramatically convey his courage.

''Baghdad ER'' is in many ways as subtle as it is gory and graphic. The doctors, nurses and medics are portrayed not as heroes but as workaday professionals with more than an average measure of psychological fortitude. Some play basketball and drink beer on the roof of the hospital, as explosions are seen and heard in the background. One doctor has taken some golf putters to Iraq. Another tells a tasteless surgery joke.

They are hungry not for recognition but for routine. ''It's strange, the things you miss,'' one nurse says. ''What I miss more than anything else is to go a half a mile in any direction.''

Baghdad ER

HBO, tomorrow night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.

Directed by Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill; produced by Joseph Feury, Mr. Alpert and Mr. O'Neill; Roberta Morris Purdee, line producer; edited by Patrick McMahon; Carrie Goldman, editor; Sara Bernstein, supervising producer; Lee Grant and Sheila Nevins, executive producers.

[Corlyss_D]

What has being against the war got to do with anything?

That's the purpose of the documentary: to increase hostility to the administration's policy.

And I've been in a combat casualty Army hospital including the so-called "E.R." Have you?

What's that got to do with the price of tea in China? I said I would watch it if I had HBO. I'm no sissy.

I have better things to do (like going to an opera recital tonight).

Whose?

[Dies Irae]

And, no, I don't "impose" on people to watch THEIR TV for anything - I have better things to do (like going to an opera recital tonight).

The program isn't on tonight. But it will be repeated (probably several times at different hours for about a week) Go to your opera recital and enjoy it. But unless you have "better things" to do every night for the next week, do try to catch the program.

[Dies Irae]

That's the purpose of the documentary: to increase hostility to the administration's policy.

Good!! I hope that purpose has been fulfilled.
The administrations policies have led to this carnage, in which young men and women are killed or maimed for life. And its ALL GWBs fault and responsibility. A moron is occupying the oval office, and no amount or number of defenses or ripostes will change that.

[Ralph]

What has being against the war got to do with anything?

That's the purpose of the documentary: to increase hostility to the administration's policy.

bull crap. I just talked to my law partner who watched it and he thought it showed the dedication of our medical and nursing corps. But what does he know? He's only a retired brigadier general in the National Guard who was awarded one of the state's highest decorations for being in continuance command of New York Guard troops at Ground Zero for months.

And I've been in a combat casualty Army hospital including the so-called "E.R." Have you?

What's that got to do with the price of tea in China? I said I would watch it if I had HBO. I'm no sissy.

I have better things to do (like going to an opera recital tonight).

Whose?

Will post a review in the morning

[Corlyss_D]

What has being against the war got to do with anything?

That's the purpose of the documentary: to increase hostility to the administration's policy.

bull crap. I just talked to my law partner who watched it and he thought it showed the dedication of our medical and nursing corps. But what does he know? He's only a retired brigadier general in the National Guard who was awarded one of the state's highest decorations for being in continuance command of New York Guard troops at Ground Zero for months.

It don't matter who's in it. It matters what the intent of the documentarian is. You think he's gonna get permission to film and interview members of the Armed Forces if he says "High there! I'm against the war and I want to shock the sensibilities of the American public into forcing the administration to withdraw by showing the depth and breadth of the carnage actually happening to their sons and daughters." Yeah. Of course he would. I'm sure the interviewees are earnest and sincere, but it's not about them; they are just props to show the blood.

[Ralph]

What has being against the war got to do with anything?

That's the purpose of the documentary: to increase hostility to the administration's policy.

bull crap. I just talked to my law partner who watched it and he thought it showed the dedication of our medical and nursing corps. But what does he know? He's only a retired brigadier general in the National Guard who was awarded one of the state's highest decorations for being in continuance command of New York Guard troops at Ground Zero for months.

It don't matter who's in it. It matters what the intent of the documentarian is. You think he's gonna get permission to film and interview members of the Armed Forces if he says "High there! I'm against the war and I want to shock the sensibilities of the American public into forcing the administration to withdraw by showing the depth and breadth of the carnage actually happening to their sons and daughters." Yeah. Of course he would. I'm sure the interviewees are earnest and sincere, but it's not about them; they are just props to show the blood.

*****

Your imputation that the documentary filmmakers have a drug problem is evident through your having them say "high there" to our men and women in the Army Medical Corps.

[Corlyss_D]

Your imputation that the documentary filmmakers have a drug problem is evident through your having them say "high there" to our men and women in the Army Medical Corps.

You must have been tired. That's pretty lame, even for you.

[Ralph]

Your imputation that the documentary filmmakers have a drug problem is evident through your having them say "high there" to our men and women in the Army Medical Corps.

You must have been tired. That's pretty lame, even for you.

*****

Well, "lame" has a medical connotation.