'Baghdad ER' brings Iraq horrors to U.S. audience

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Tweet'Baghdad ER' brings Iraq horrors to U.S. audience
Fri May 19, 2006 2:34 PM ET



By Daniel Trotta

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. public can see images of the Iraq war on television on Sunday that are so potentially disturbing the Pentagon has warned soldiers it may cause them to relive the trauma of war.

Cable TV network HBO will show the documentary "Baghdad ER" with scenes from a combat hospital emergency room, including an amputation and one showing Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Mininger dying despite the exhaustive efforts of the medical staff.

"I hope that when the American people see this film they have a clearer idea of what the soldiers are flashing back to when they suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome and get a clearer idea of why we need to support these soldiers," co-director Matthew O'Neill told Reuters.

Jon Alpert, the other co-director, said bringing the images home was the most patriotic job he felt he ever had. He also said the most graphic images were cut from the film.

"We very consciously backed way off. What's happening over there in that hospital is just too terrifying for a documentary. We can't show that," Alpert said.

The Pentagon gave Alpert and O'Neill unfettered access to the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone, the vast fortress at the center of U.S. operations, and the film is being screened at bases around the United States, where it will be used as a training tool for medical personnel.

But at the same time Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley has cautioned soldiers who watch "Baghdad ER."

"If they have been stationed in Iraq, they may reexperience some symptoms of post-traumatic stress, such as flashbacks or nightmares," Kiley wrote in a memo to medical staff at Army posts.

One of the people most affected by the film -- Paula Zwillinger, the mother of Cpl. Mininger -- has wholly endorsed it, joining the directors on a promotional tour.

Zwillinger sees it as a tribute to the medical staff and said "complacent" Americans need to see the war more starkly.

"If people aren't thinking about what we're dealing with, then they should take off their rose-colored glasses," she said.

Zwillinger heard about the images of her son dying in the hospital from his combat wounds five months after it happened.

"That's a gift," she said. "It literally puts me at my son's bedside, and fills this void I've had."

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