TERRE HAUTE — Much of Mike Shiley’s 84-minute documentary film could serve as a recruitment piece for the U.S. Army, while other segments would not leave Uncle Sam so proud.
But by the end of “Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories,” those who viewed the film at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College Monday night had few questions about Shiley’s approach and instead focused their queries on the complexities of international trade and America’s military/industrial complex.
The story of Shiley, an independent filmmaker, is nearly as impressive as the documentary he made. Using frequent flier miles and a fake press pass from Kinko’s, he talked his way onto the front lines of the ongoing war in Iraq in March 2003.
Posing as a journalist, Shiley embedded himself within U.S. Army units and wound up winning two Civilian Combat medals for his engagements after talking his way into a gunner position on an M-1 Abrams tank with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment
Along the way, Shiley detoured from the normal press routes, paying drivers to take him from central Fallujah up into the hills where Kurds sold machine guns by the side of the road.
“Manipulating the message is very easy,” Shiley told the audience in the Cecilian Auditorium as he recounted his frustration at watching war coverage back in America.
“Car bombs and press conferences” dominate the mainstream media’s focus on the war, he said. But for the producer of six feature-length documentaries, it was the stories of individuals that interested him most.
At the closing credits of the film, large white letters against a black screen rolled the words, “The End Is Nowhere In Sight,” something Shiley said he still believes to be true almost six years after his experience.
“You can have two houses on the same street in Iraq and in one, the people are making car bombs, and in the one next door, the people are signing up to fight for the U.S. Army,” he said, repeatedly emphasizing the emotional complexity and contradiction of people who inhabit a country of ruins and rubble.
“I would give my life for Mr. Bush,” one Iraqi woman said into Shiley’s camera, just moments after his footage showed the burning frame of a car bomb that had accidentally detonated before making it to its target — a U.S. Air Force base.
Iraqis interviewed were interchangeably optimistic and inconsolable about any chance for peace, as Shiley filmed children recovering from limb-shattering land mines at a hospital and former college professors begging in line for $10-a-day jobs. Some of those jobs included digging up some of the 4 million land mines that have been found since the initial invasion.
Opinions of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein varied as well. While his rule was iron-fisted and cruel, the film demonstrates, the Chicago-sized Baghdad also had a thriving nightlife and community.
Other Iraqis remembered the torture and the murders, and the Kurds interviewed from the northern regions said they had no interest in returning to an Arab’s rule.
Uncensored by any government or network affiliates, Shiley interviewed soldiers at “the dump,” one of several areas in which tons of food, supplies and building materials were thrown away, unopened, by the American military instead of being distributed to the Iraqi people.
Gangs of Iraqis fought outside razor-wire fences that ringed “the dump,” and U.S. soldiers were ordered to shoot anyone who attempted to steal the crates of unopened food and materials.
“It’s a waste,” one soldier interviewed said, referring to the sheer tonnage. At the end of the film it was revealed that the soldier interviewed was passed over for promotion and forced into early retirement when the film was screened.
The entire budget for the documentary was $5,000, Shiley said, adding that he recouped that money by selling to ABC one video of a Blackhawk helicopter “smoking” Iraqi insurgents running to and from a truck.
At the end of the film, Shiley offered some of his own perspectives on the war and agreed with one audience member who recounted President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to America of the entangled military/industrial complex.
“Every war in history has been fought for economic gain,” Shiley said, noting that politicians may preach “God and country” to inspire soldiers, but bureaucrats and industrialists reap the profits.
And in the case of Iraq, it all comes down to oil.
“After all this time in Iraq, I think we can now safely say this was about oil,” he said, noting the incredible petroleum reserves buried in that nation’s sands. “If we wanted to spread democracy around the world, we’d build bases in Darfur and Somalia.”
But America already has bases in 120 of the world’s 170 nations, making it more sprawling than Rome and even more expensive to maintain, Shiley said.
With some of the Earth’s largest military bases now in Iraq, America has a power block against Iran and other Mideastern nations that might try to leverage that away.
“I feel the end is still nowhere in sight,” Shiley said, noting that America still has troops in South Korea and Europe as a result of conflicts stemming back 60 and 70 years.
When asked if he suffered any repercussions from “infiltrating” military units in the guise of a journalist, Shiley said he’s had no problems to date.
But, “I don’t like to use the word infiltrate,” he said. “I’d call myself ambitious.”
Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
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