Sean Penn reports from Iraq

[dudeness]

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COMMENTARY
2nd act A year later, Sean Penn returns to Iraq and files a personal, candid report from the front


Sean Penn went to Iraq a year ago not as an actor, but as a father, a husband and an American. He made the visit, from Dec. 13 to 15, 2002, to learn about the American-Iraqi conflict from the people who were living through it. A year later, the week before Saddam Hussein was captured, Penn returned to Iraq to find out how life had changed after the American invasion. What follows is his account of what he saw.

Doc Birnbaum filled the last of three receptacles with my blood (he was concerned about my looming cholesterol problem and had graciously made a house call), then slid the needle out of my vein as my phone rang. I answered as the doc pressed a cotton ball onto the puncture in the crook of my arm. It was Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Global Exchange, a San Francisco human rights organization. I had put out the word that I wanted to return to Iraq to write a piece for The Chronicle, having been granted a press credential by its editor, Phil Bronstein. Medea called to tell me that she would be taking a delegation of parents of servicepeople, both killed in action and on active duty, for a weeklong "mission of peace" to Iraq -- a trip unprecedented in the history of U.S. military activity. They would be departing Saturday, Nov. 29 (our phone conversation took place on Thanksgiving Day), embarking from various U.S. airports with a rendezvous point at the "Meditation Room" at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. Our conversation ended as the doctor placed a Band-Aid over the cotton ball, wished me a happy Thanksgiving and left with my blood.

Ever since the bombing of the U.N. building in Baghdad in August, I had felt increasingly tugged toward Iraq. As I had made my cautionary opinions known prior to our military engagement, in a self-financed letter to the president in the Washington Post (Oct. 18, 2002), and then reiterated those thoughts after our invasion of Iraq in a self-financed ad in the New York Times (May 30, 2003), I felt a responsibility to change or reaffirm my position in the context of the new situation for our U.S. soldiers, and Iraqi civilians as well. The call from Medea fixed my decision to go. Gaining the support of my family would be tricky. My reputation within our home is one of impulsiveness, hubris and an overall bloated sense of my own survival instincts. Of course, this is entirely unfounded, but we'll leave that for another day.
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/14/DDGG048F0G1.DTL


not really GD stuff..but I enjoy SP's views..

[fishguy]

1. Very good article, long but definitely worth the read

To sum up the war and Iraq in one word, confusing.

My personal prediction is that Iraq will no longer be a country in its present state within a generation.
Probably resemble something like the old Yugoslavia.