Army concerned about HBO war film.

[Clarkie1]

By EDWARD WYATT
Published: May 14, 2006
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."

The Army officials said that concerns about the documentary — which includes footage of an amputation, wounded soldiers undergoing surgery , and, in some cases, dying — were also raised by the wives of top Army officers who had seen the documentary.

"Given the subject matter, it's not something you're going to cheer at the end," said one senior Army official.

More at link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14hbo.html


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[stopbush]

1. Boo-hoo. Reality intrudes its ugly head on bushco's sanitized

war.

Tough shit.

[Poor Richard Lex]

2. They don't want you to think about the butcher's bill

I am suprised the military even let them film it.