Our Dutch TV just aired a HBO documentary called “Bagdhad ER“. HBO cameramen 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. This documentary shows in to painstaking detail how useless the war in Iraq is and why it is wrong for America and the rest of the world to be there. I watched this documentary on a day when the soon to be ex-secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, said in an interview to the BBC that Iraq is in a worse state than it was then when Saddam Hussein ruled the country. Even though Bush denies it, the country definately is in civil war and has been for months. Iraq has turned into the Vietnam of this century.
I think the documentary speaks for itself, and so do some of the people that are quoted in it:
“You can learn about war by walking through this facility…the horrors of what man can do to man are visualized right here. But we do our best, our level best, to make sure our people survive and make it back to their homes.”
— Col. Casper P. Jones III, Commander, 86th Combat Support Hospital
“This is hard-core, raw, uncut trauma. Day after day, every day. 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.”
— Specialist Saidet Lanier, an operating room nurse