Army Brass Worried About HBO Movie With Bloody Images Of Our Soldiers

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Army Concerned About HBO War Film



May 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14hbo.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Senior Army officials have scaled back their planned participation in an advance screening of a documentary about an Army Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad out of concern that its grim medical scenes could demoralize soldiers and their families and negatively affect public opinion about the war, Army officials said Friday.

Two senior Army officers, who were granted anonymity to publicly discuss the private deliberations of Army leaders, said the secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey, had declined to attend the screening by HBO, scheduled for Monday night at the National Museum of American History in Washington.

High-ranking military officers, including Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, who is the Army chief of staff, and Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the surgeon general of the Army, had been expected to attend the screening but now will not, people involved in preparations for the event said.

The documentary, titled "Baghdad ER," chronicles two months at the 86th Combat Support Hospital, where filmmakers were given broad access to follow doctors, nurses, medics and others as they treated soldiers wounded by roadside bombs and in combat. As one nurse, Specialist Saidet Lanier, says in the film: "This is hard-core, raw, uncut trauma. Day after day, every day."

article:

http://freeinternetpress.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6882
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14hbo.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[porphyrian]

1. Yeah, we shouldn't make war seem violent on TV.

It might hurt recruitment rates.

Fuck the Army brass for letting traitors remain in our White House.

[soup]

2. Out of sight, out of mind?

>>The film, directed by Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill, will be shown May 21 on HBO.

HBO has been promoting the documentary as a tribute to the heroism of the soldiers and medical personnel who are shown working under severe stress. But the producers acknowledge that its harrowing scenes could be interpreted differently.

"Anything showing the grim realities of war is, in a sense, antiwar," said Sheila Nevins, president of HBO's documentary and family unit. "In that way, the film is a sort of Rorschach test. You see in it what you bring to it."<<

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Reality could negatively affect public opinion. Look away!

[NNN0LHI]

3. Army Brass Worried That Bloody Images Of Soldiers Will Hurt Recruitment nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Golly, you mean that people get hurt in war?

What a shock to the brass.

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5. It will be a shock to soldiers and their families. How could they know?

As for the American people:

"The problem is that we're in war, and sometimes it's hard for people to get a positive message about the economy when they're troubled by scenes of violence on the TV screens," the president said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060505/pl_afp/usbushiraqpolitics

[WePurrsevere]

6. Can't have REALITY interfering with the recruiters lying & bs'ing to get

more fodder for the war machine. :grr: :sarcasm: :grr:

[norml]

7. They must be ashamed of the 86th Combat Support Hospital.

How dishonorable of them!

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8. 86th Combat Support Hospital- Photo Essay

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Angela Smith and Sgt. Wilson Griffin, pharmacy technicians, prepare medications for patients in the 86th Combat Support Hospital, Jan. 30, 2005. Over 500 soldiers with the hospital are deployed to Baghdad, Iraq. The hospital made history by being the first unit in combat to collect blood platelets from soldiers using a technique called aphaeresis. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Dave Ahlschwede


The 86th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) at LSA Adder in Tallil, Iraq on April 4, 2003. (Official photo by SSGT Michelle Labriel, 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera) LSA Adder, Iraq; VIRIN: 030404-A-6132L-009)


U.S. Army SGT Wendy Oehlman and MAJ Spencer Dickens, of the 86th Combat Support Hospital, give post operation care to a civilian Iraqi child on March 30, 2003, at an undisclosed location in south central Iraq. (Official photo by SGT Kyran V. Adams, 55th Signal Co., Fort Meade, MD (Combat Camera) Camp Doha, Kuwait; VIRIN: 030330-A-6727A-003)


U.S. Army medical of the 86th Combat Support Hospital move an Iraqi civilian to a care facility on March 30, 2003, at an undisclosed location in south central Iraq. (Official photo by SGT Kyran V. Adams, 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera) Camp Doha, Kuwait; VIRIN: 030330-A-6727A-010)



U.S. Army medics of the 86th Combat Support Hospital give care to an Iraqi teenager on March 30, 2003, at an undisclosed location in south central Iraq. (Official photo by SGT Kyran V. Adams, 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera) Camp Doha, Kuwait; VIRIN: 030330-A-6727A-015)


U.S. medics of the 86th Combat Support Hospital transport injured Iraqi civilians to the hospital on March 30, 2003, at an undisclosed location in south central Iraq. (Official photo by SGT Kyran V. Adams, 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera) Camp Doha, Kuwait; VIRIN: 030330-A-6727A-018)


Members of the 86th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) from Fort Campbell, KY, transport a patient to the CSH after retrieving her from a UH-60 Helicopter at an undisclosed location on March 30, 2003. (Official photo by SSG Quinton T. Burris (Combat Camera); Iraq; VIRIN: 030330-F-8362B-018)


U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Centno completes the in-patient chart of an injured U.S. Army soldier in the 86th Combat Support Hospital's Trauma Room, while other members of the 86th CSH is deployed from Fort Campbell, KY. (Official photo by SSG Quinton T. Burris, (Combat Camera); Iraq; VIRIN: 030330-F-8362B-020)


Members of the 86th CSH from Fort Campbell, KY, and a U.S. Air Force C-130 medical evacuation flight crew, load injured U.S. soldiers onto a C-130 aircraft for medical evacuation at an undisclosed location on April 4, 2003. (Official photo by SSGT Quinton T. Burris (Combat Camera); VIRIN: 030404-F-8362B-024)


Members of the Army 86th CSH attend to a patient April 5, 2003, at a forward deployed location in southern Iraq. (Official photo by SSGT Shane Cuomo (Combat Camera) Iraq; VIRIN: 030405-F-2034C-004)


Members of the Army 86th CSH rush patients from an HH60 Air Ambulance to the hospital April 5, 2003, at a forward deployed location in southern Iraq. (Official photo by SSGT Shane Cuomo (Combat Camera) Iraq; VIRIN: 030405-F-2034C-023)

[leftchick]

9. you can't let the merikans know our soldiers get KILLED

and WOUNDED in a fucked up BOGUS War!

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10. The film, directed by Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill, will be shown May 21

12-time Emmy® winner Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill were allowed unprecedented access to the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq. Over a two-month period, they captured the day-to-day lives of doctors, nurses, medics, soldiers and chaplains in the Army's premier medical facility. BAGHDAD ER chronicles those two months, paying tribute to the heroism of U.S. military and medical personnel while offering an unflinching and at times graphic look at the realities of war.

BAGHDAD ER allows viewers to experience the physical and emotional toll of war by capturing soldiers and care providers in personal moments amidst intense crises inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital. Located in Baghdad's Green Zone, the facility was formerly the site of an elite medical center for Saddam Hussein's supporters. Thanks in part to the skill and dedication of trauma center teams like the one depicted in the film, wounded troops in Iraq have a 90 percent chance of survival - the highest rate of war survivors in U.S. history. The selflessness and dedication of those caring for wounded Americans and Iraqis stands in sharp contrast with the chaos of war.

"This is hard-core, raw, uncut trauma. Day after day, every day," says Specialist Saidet Lanier, an operating room nurse. "Even if you're lucky enough not to go home with war wounds on the outside, if you're not equipped with coping skills, you'll definitely have them on the inside."

The documentary offers a taste of daily life in the thick of war, including exclusive frontline rescue footage of the 54th Medical Company Air Ambulance Team, and dangerous missions of soldiers patrolling "IED Alley," also known as "Route Irish," the most dangerous road in the world. IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are homemade bombs, which are the leading cause of injuries and death in Iraq. Sometimes graphic in its depiction of combat-related wounds, BAGHDAD ER is an emotional, devastating and honest account of modern-day war.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/baghdader/synopsis.html

schedule: http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=620667

[bobbieinok]

11. we need MASH reruns.....a Korean War series really abt Vietnam

showed the trauma of war

[Placebo]

12. This should be on the TV every single day.

If people support sending American sons and daughters into war, they should have to, at the very least, see what happens in battle.