Mike Shiley went to Iraq for some mopping up. He was looking for images you don’t see in the American media, and what he brought back has been made into a documentary: “Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories.”
Journalistic purists will want to note that until he went to the Portland ABC news affiliate and scored his credentials for Iraq, Shiley’s previous film career consisted of making travel videos (for example “Amazing Thailand.”)
Those who are strongly for or against the Iraq war won’t find their positions unequivocally supported by this film. Which is what makes it worth seeing.
“Ever since Sept. 11 hit, as a budding filmmaker and as an adventure traveler, I’ve wanted to see what’s behind the media stories in Iraq,” Shiley says. “I knew the way (the American media) portrayed them as savages, ignorant and unable to govern themselves, was untrue.”
The film begins with his crossing from Jordan to Baghdad in December 2003. For civilians such as media and aid workers, it costs $3,500 to travel in a convoy of armored Suburbans across this tricky stretch of road. Shiley makes the point that journalists flock together, and their editors keep them back from the action (and the everyday Iraqis). Hence they often send back the easiest, safest story.
But Shiley, 37, struck out with his 25-year-old guide in Baghdad and instead found the pornography market. This is a locals-only affair, where young men browse the new DVDs brought in by the liberation/occupation. A bit later he found another new market — one for weapons — by the side of the road.
Shiley — who traveled with a number of units including the Oregon National Guard — says he tried to write as many favorable stories as he could on his blog. He saved his criticisms, articulated in lengthy pieces on camera, for when he got back to Portland.
Good views, bad views
There is, for instance, an interesting segment about American soldiers guarding a dump where U.S. troops have illegally tossed tons of untouched groceries and materials just before leaving for home. One of the guards, Master Sgt. Kenneth Leyson, speaks openly on camera, pointing out the local children who have formed gangs and compete for the best of the trash, risking their lives to sneak through razor wire and pools of engine oil.
“Sgt. Leyson sacrificed a lot of his career to tell me that story,” Shiley says of the Oregon Guardsman who was abruptly forced to retire upon return from Iraq with no satisfactory explanation.
The film also shows Iraqi men queuing for hours to get menial jobs, dealing with soldiers who can’t even say hello in the local language. It gives credit where it is due, however. A soldier in charge of a crew cutting down reeds is shown to be fair and enterprising, and the young GIs with game consoles at the end of their cots have their moments of sympathy.
The film captures moving scenes inside a military hospital where children who have been maimed by land mines are treated, and the primitive way that mines are removed — with a very long rope.
“An embedded journalist would never film that, because it’s not really news,” Shiley says. “But it’s news to me.”
Many Iraqis feared he was from the CIA because he was a short-haired Yankee traveling alone. Few would talk to him on camera. He prizes one snippet, of a woman shouting from the safety of her car: “I want the world to look at us and see that we are totally destroyed! If they are hoping for democracy and freedom, these things can never happen in this situation.”
Mixed message
Shiley’s message is that a year ago not enough was being done to restore Iraq’s roads, power and clean water, and he hasn’t read anything since to make him change his mind. “Unemployment, street crime and bounties are more likely to push a young Iraqi toward grabbing a rocket launcher,” he says, than the rebuilding of military bases.
The filmmaker rode in a tank and even learned to fire a gun. He patrolled with some Americans who fired their machine guns down the river-bed of a town near the Syrian border in a show of strength, which, he later realized, might not be winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.
But he’s honest about the buzz that motivates warriors and some war reporters:
“I wanted to feel the fear, I wanted to feel my toes tingle. … I didn’t want to just watch it, I wanted to feel it.”
He tours college campuses with the film and has been rewarded with a local theatrical release. For his part, Shiley demonstrates how a young man can grab a video camera and go out into the world and try to make a difference.
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