The Triangle

Issue date: 6/3/05 Section: Entertainment
Originally published: 6/3/05 at 1:10 AM EST
Last update: 6/3/05 at 11:04 AM EST

In response to a two-day Iraq War teach-in held by various members of the faculty, College Republicans presented the documentary "Voices of Iraq" to the student body on May 26 in Stein auditorium at no cost to students. The critically acclaimed film is a compilation of individual footage taken by free Iraqis where they finally get to speak for themselves unlike the propaganda of Michael Moore or the rhetoric of smug Drexel professors. This footage was gathered from 150 camcorders that were sent to Iraqis.

Produced by former MTV associates Eric Manes and Martin Kunert, as well as Gulf War veteran Archie Drury, the film is incredibly balanced. The documentary is set in a chronological order beginning in 2003 and ending in 2004. At first, the Iraqis are scared about their security, some venturing that perhaps it was better under Saddam Hussein, since he provided stability. The heart-wrenching scene of a mother grieving over her son, who was accidentally killed at a military checkpoint, is a painful reminder of the horrors of war. However, the audience begins to see a side of Iraqi opinion that hungers freedom and loathes dictatorship.

A silent theme of the movie was that the press was too far from the story. Such a fact couldn't be overstated. The audience views testimony from former victims of torture who ask the world, especially those who champion animal rights, "What about our rights? We are humans!" Additionally, one group of former Abu Ghraib prisoners under Hussein jokingly refer to recent prisoners of the American abuse scandal, "they get all the good torture." Not that we should condone what happened, but realize the vast difference in prisoner treatment on part of Hussein's regime and American presence in Iraq. The same Iraqi went on to say that America apologized about the scandal, which completely shocked him since he never saw any powerful force apologize about anything.

One of the most powerful images of the film is when cameras reach the Kurds. The audience is taken to a center where the atrocities of chemical bombings-streets littered with the bodies of dead children and women, are documented. Additionally, they also showed the annual reenactment of the Anfal campaign was seen. As part of the procession, Kurdish men dressed in Iraqi military uniforms randomly grab civilians to be carried off in trucks. As many as 100,000 Kurds died in the actual atrocity in the late 1980s.

Additionally, we also see testimony from a former soccer player whose team was owned by Uday Hussein. They were forced to perform hard labor when they lost games, but he didn't consider it "torture" since others suffered much worse. The executive committee of the Olympics banned Iraq in 1988 from participation in order to protect the lives of Iraqi athletes.

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