Indiana Jones leads Hollywood version of battle for Falluja

[emad]

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Friday December 17, 2004
The Guardian

Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced yesterday that it is to make The Battle for Falluja. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.

The film - Hollywood's first foray into the second Iraq conflict - is due to go into production next year and will be based on a yet-to-be-finished book, No True Glory: The Battle for Falluja by Bing West, a former marine, politician and now war correspondent.

The movie and book take as their starting point the killing of four civilian contractors in Falluja and the ensuing decision to order an assault on the city by US marines. That first assault, which was abruptly stopped by the White House, was led by General Jim Mattis, who will be played by Ford.

Six months later, shortly after the US presidential election, the marines attacked Falluja for a second time, successfully occupying the city. Almost 80 US marines were killed in the two assaults, while some sources have estimated that 800 Iraqis and insurgents died in the April assault on the city and a further 1,000 in November.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1375730,00.html

[Jo March]

1. Are they going to show the rotting corpses? The hundreds of dead

women, children and old people? The bloated bodies being fed on by the dogs in the streets?

[rkc3]

2. The FCC would be appalled by such footage.

[emad]

3. Or the soldiers suffering from post combat stress who said on UK

TV this week that having been turned into killers for their country it is excruciating to go back home and try to flick off that switch.

One of the interviewees, who had checked himself into a civilian hospital after the US Army dismissed his post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, said he is being court martialled.

Bet none of this goes into the movie...

[emad]

4. Callista Flockhart to play Lyndie England?

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Oh, Harrison. Why?

I know Fallujah was the center of hostilities, and that it was the place where they took and tortured our hostages, but we didn't fight this one cleanly. We fought to win, which is the only way to fight. But it should not be commemorated in a movie, because it would have to include the slaughter of innocent Iraqi women and children if it is to remain accurate. If it was a Mossad style stealth & destroy mission, pinpointing the enemy and taking them out without harming civilians, then I would applaud Hollywood's effort. But the world knows the truth and if Hollywood films the truth, what they're going to do is justify a method of war that will hurt us all in the long run. It will tell the world that indiscriminate genocide is acceptable.

[NashVegas]

6. locking

duplicate - discuss here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1076018