We missed PBS's Frontline program "A Company of Soldiers" earlier this week, but caught it last night when our local PBS affiliate KUHT re-aired it. What a great piece of reporting: open, honest, timely.
If you missed it, or want to see it again, PBS has posted the entire show online, along with detailed supporting material. Here's producer Edward Jarvis:
The objective of the film was to document the realities of life in Iraq for the average American soldier. To this end, we were left to our own devices and allowed to film everything, with no restrictions. The only time we were asked not to film was when a personal threat was made to an officer, and his men were asked if they wanted to leave the team because of the heightened threat level; in the end none did, but they didn't want the presence of the cameras to inhibit this decision. We selected the unit we wanted to be with and we chose those whom we wanted to film. Under the terms of our embedding agreement, the film was shown to a Pentagon official prior to broadcast for security clearance only; they had no editorial control at all. Their only request was blur the name of an intelligence officer named in a document which appears briefly in the film. Everything else is a faithful documentation of this company of soldiers during the month we spent with them last November.
The soldiers of Dog Company, part of the 1-8 Cavalry from Fort Hood, Texas are nothing less than inspirational. Check 'em out.
Posted by Alan at February 27, 2005 09:04 AM