The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
WAR WITHOUT EXIT
Once Upon A Time In Iraq - BBC2
In Once Upon A Time In Iraq, awardwinning documentary maker James Bluemel examines the lead-up to, and the catastrophic climax of, the 2003 invasion of Saddam Hussein’s benighted thraldom by America and her allies.
In his customary style, Bluemel chose to focus on the experiences of the ordinary people on the ground to get the story across, including Iraqi citizens, journalists, photographers and former soldiers.
Each one of the interviewees had their own tale to tell, but the standout was Waleed Nesyif, a bright and breezy 30-something who, at 18, was a member of the only heavy rock band in Iraq. They always finished their gigs with a song extolling their great leader’s virtues in case some of Hussein’s spies were in the audience.
We also saw Waleed taking part in a televised pre-invasion cultural exchange between some Baghdad teens and their opposite numbers in America, during which he turned to the camera, waved and called out: “Hello, people of America!” All these years later, he had the grace to ask: “Am I wrong or did I sound like Borat?”
The answer is yes, but he has worked on his American accent since then, a skill which earned him $50 a day as an interpreter for the perpetrators of “shock and awe”, a sum that his father took six months to earn.
Waleed said he was more than happy, before the first shots were fired, to welcome the allied forces. While he appreciated that Saddam had kept the lid on the sectarian boiling pot, he wanted to see the back of the tyrant who had butchered tens of thousands of his fellow citizens.
Sally, another bright, articulate and personable Iraqi recalled, as a six-yearold, greeting an American soldier, who was passing out sweets in the midst of the rubble. She gave him a flower, although she did wonder at the time how someone so kind could be capable of such violence.
The answer to that one came from former Sgt Rudy Reyes, a member of the 60-strong company of the Recon Marine division, who spearheaded the attack on the Iraqi capital. Reyes is no stranger to the camera, having portrayed himself in a TV mini-series that featured that very attack.
He revelled in his ability to kill, even when that included wiping out an entire family who, it turned out, couldn’t read the sign telling them to stop at a roadblock manned by Reyes and his mates.
Worse was to come. The seemingly irrepressible Waleed was finally crushed when he visited an Arab campsite in the desert, where a bereaved father dug the bloodstained clothes and schoolbooks of his dead children out of the sand.
A fleet of American gunships had used it as target practice. It was a gut-wrenching, poignant end to this first episode. Waleed’s love of everything American died that day.
The one thing that everyone, with the exception of Rudy Reyes, agreed on was that America was wrong to enter into war with Iraq without first having an exit strategy.