Word: iraq
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...soldiers heading to Iraq, especially before the 2007 surge, had little to look forward to. Just the 130° heat and streets full of men, women and kids, any one of whom could detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) and blow a street and all its people, American and Iraqi, to bits. In this hell-storm, what's left for an ordinary soldier...
American movies took ages to address Iraq and its satellite wars, and then tended to point fingers at the military. Documentaries said that soldiers were bred to be mindless killers (The Ground Truth) and then discarded when they lost their limbs or their minds (Body of War). Dramatic films like In the Valley of Elah and Redacted said that Iraq was a communicable disease that turned decent guys into psycho killers...
These worthy films were based on fact and told a microscopic truth, but they left untold the larger ache of an Iraq tour: how men in peril survive. Finally comes The Hurt Locker, a scary, thrilling patrol of those Baghdad streets by men who defuse IEDs. Written by journalist Mark Boal (whose reporting was the basis for Elah) and directed by action-movie maven Kathryn Bigelow, this film looks, feels and smells real; you'll need to rinse off the grit after seeing...
Operation Khanjar - Pashto for "dagger" - is the first test of the Obama Administration's new strategy for Afghanistan. No longer treated as a concern secondary to Iraq, the Afghanistan theater will see the number of American soldiers serving there increase by 17,000 by this fall. And under McChrystal, they'll be waging a different kind of war. Limited troop availability in the past meant that while NATO forces could clear an area of insurgents, they were unable to hold the terrain. Now the plan is for the Marines to set up combat posts in villages to provide the residents...
...Iraq • U.S. combat troops are removed from without the U.S. president making a fool of himself by wearing a stupid costume under a moronically ill-advised sign...