Back to Iraq
25’ 25”
| Tanks roll through Iraq. Iraqis applaud | Music | 00:00 |
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| THOMPSON: Five years ago US troops invaded this country buoyed by national enthusiasm and fervent hopes for a quick campaign welcomed by the Iraqi people. | 00:10 |
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| Music | 00:21 |
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| THOMPSON: For the young marines I was embedded with back then, it was their first experience of war. Now after the deaths of more than four thousand troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, America’s attitude to the invasion have changed | 00:24 |
| MONTAGE OF THE FIVE MARINES. | and so have the men who led it. | 00:41 |
| Photo. Gomez. Super: |
| 00:50
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| File Footage. Joe Gomez in truck from “TV CONVOY IRAQ” news story March 25, 2003 | THOMPSON: Back in 2003 we met Sergeant Gomez when he was just twenty three, and second in charge of the war’s first big supply convoy to cross the border from Kuwait into Iraq. | 00:56 |
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| SERGEANT JOE GOMEZ: [March 2003 in Iraq] I think it’s pretty good. I think we’re moving pretty fast. | 01:10 |
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| THOMPSON: It was here Sergeant Gomez and the young marines he led, got their first taste of war and death, just some of the civilians who got in the way of operation Iraqi freedom. | 01:14 |
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| SERGEANT JOE GOMEZ: [March 2003 Iraq] It kind of feels disturbing you know the first time I seen a… | 01:26 |
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| something like this. It’s pretty gruesome and it almost sounds messed up to say it. At the same time it feels kind of motivating seeing, seeing something like this. | 01:29 |
| Gomez on monitor |
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| Gomez watches earlier footage | THOMPSON: Five years after he first went to war, Sergeant Gomez is now a recruiter. | 01:47 |
| Armed forces recruiting centre/Gomez exits | STAFF SERGEANT JOE GOMEZ: I think the recruiters these days have to work a little bit harder. Before it was like 2003/2004 timeframe you probably still have the more motivated people who remember September 11th and kind of want to defend their country. | 01:57 |
| Gomez. Super: | Now you’re talking five years later, it’s like why would I want to sign up and go to Iraq? | 02:12 |
| Chicago skyline | Music | 02:20 |
| Gomez at Richards High School careers day | THOMPSON: It’s careers day at Richards High School in suburban Chicago. While Sergeant Gomez plays poster boy, | 02:34 |
| Marines’ push up challenge | he lures students to his stall with the Marines’ push up challenge. | 02:44 |
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| SERGEANT JOE GOMEZ: They have to actually do push ups, sixty five push ups they can get whatever they want. | 02:50 |
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| Music | 02:53 |
| Gomez with students | THOMPSON: Sergeant Gomez’s sale’s pitch is boosted by his own living example of an Iraq war veteran. | 02:57 |
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| STAFF SERGEANT JOE GOMEZ: When they come by they’re like wow you’ve been to Iraq? And I’m like yes. By me speaking to them it kind of lets them know that hey, not everybody does come back in a box. | 03:05 |
| Excerpt. Geoff Thompson’s news story, Baghdad push, APRIL 04, 2003 | THOMPSON: Coming back to Iraq was certainly not on the minds of marines during their quick march to Bagdad in 2003. We joined | 03:14 |
| Bragg in Iraq | an artillery battery, commanded by Captain Phil Bragg. | 03:32 |
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| CAPTAIN PHIL BRAGG: [April 2003 in Iraq] We’re pretty much overwhelming all their defences and moving pretty rapidly, | 03:37 |
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| probably about as fast as you can go. I don’t think you could go any faster. | 03:41 |
| MONTAGE OF THE FIVE MARINES | [Marine chant] | 03:45 |
| Photo. Gomez. Super: |
| 03:54 |
| Bragg in marine training classroom | Bragg: What you’re looking at, what you’re sitting in front of is called the ‘Deployable Virtual Training Environment’ okay? | 03:57 |
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| THOMPSON: These days Major Phil Bragg draws on his Iraq experience, teaching marines how to train others in the not always accurate art of artillery warfare. | 04:01 |
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| MAJOR PHIL BRAGG: We try to ensure that we have positive identification of our targets and that we minimise collateral damage. That doesn’t mean that sometimes civilians don’t get killed. | 04:16 |
| Bragg | THOMPSON: Do you spend much time thinking about that? | 04:26 |
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| MAJOR PHIL BRAGG: I don’t dwell on it, no. | 04:30 |
| Protest -- Washington | THOMPSON: But as the war drags on, many Americans are dwelling on its uncomfortable facts. Civilian casualties were a key point of protest for the few thousand demonstrators who marked the fifth anniversary of the war in Washington. | 04:39 |
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| The number killed since 2003 is notoriously disputed. Estimates range from fewer than one hundred thousand to more than one million. Most civilian deaths are now at the hands of other Iraqis. | 04:55 |
| Adam Kokesh at protest. Super: | ADAM KOKESH: We change rules of engagement more often than we change underwear and the rules of engagement are held up as this great moral standard for the use of force in Iraq -- and at one point it was you can shoot anything that moves after dark. | 05:12 |
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| THOMPSON: Iraq war veteran Adam Kokesh, served two tours in Iraq including during the bloody battles for Fallujah in 2004. Like many Iraq veterans, Kokesh returned with psychological distress. He’s now a full time anti-war protestor. | 05:27 |
| Kokesh addressing protest | ADAM KOKESH: [At protest] If this government will not make peace for us, we will make it for ourselves! | 05:47 |
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| You don’t hear any more what I heard when I was going to Iraq, which is that yeah I’m going to fight the good fight and enthusiastically risk my life. Now all you hear is well, I want to come back home, I want to come home alive not in a box. I want to get my marines home safe and alive and that’s what the troops are fighting for now. They’re not fighting for the mission, because they know that it’s a load of crap. | 05:53 |
| Arlington cemetery | Music | 06:13 |
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| THOMPSON: As the fifth anniversary of the war passed, the number of American military deaths crossed the four thousand milestone. At least fifty thousand more have been seriously injured. Perhaps it is true of all wars, but as I walked among the gravestones of Iraq’s dead at Arlington Cemetery in Washington, I was struck by how young they were. | 06:22 |
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| Music | 06:51 |
| Phil Bragg at home with family | THOMPSON: At just thirty-six, Major Phil Bragg is among the older generation of Iraq’s war veterans. | 07:10 |
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| MAJOR PHIL BRAGG: I don’t look forward to leaving my family, I don’t think anybody does | 07:21 |
| Bragg and wife. Super: | but I’m definitely ready to go back and get back in the fight so to speak. | 07:26 |
| Bragg watches video with children | THOMPSON: Bragg expects to be deployed again soon, to Iraq or Afghanistan. | 07:36 |
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| CANDICE BRAGG: I think it’s the anxiety beforehand. | 07:42 |
| Bragg and wife. Super: | It’s the anxiety of him getting ready to go, that’s the hardest part. | 07:48 |
| Bragg watches video with children | THOMPSON: In 2003, Phil Bragg fought alongside Lieutenant Steven Thompson. Back then Thompson was a cocky and colourful twenty five year old, second in command of an artillery battery. | 07:58 |
| Geoff Thompson news story, CLEARING BAGHDAD, APRIL 06, 2003 | LIEUTENANT STEVEN THOMPSON: [April 2003 in Iraq] Night vision sights and rickety AK-47s are pretty good but they’re not much help when you’ve got artillery raining down on your head. | 08:12 |
| MONTAGE OF THE FIVE MARINES. |
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| Photo. Steve Thompson. Super: |
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| File footage. Insurgency at peak | THOMPSON: Thompson returned to Iraq in 2004, when the insurgency was reaching its peak. He was no longer an artillery man, but a platoon commander. It was also when the US began losing most of its forces to the roadside bombs, known as IED’s - Improvised Explosive Devices. | 08:30 |
| Improvised Explosive Devices explode | Music | 08:55 |
| Capt Steven Thompson in Humvee. Super: | CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: April 16th, 2004 I was on security patrol going from Ramadi to Fallujah and I remember I looked at my driver, Sergeant Durant and I saw this big fifty galloon drum with a sign on top of it and I, I just hadn’t remembered seeing it there before. I’m grabbing the mic and I’m going to tell all my vehicles to | 09:03 |
| Steven Thompson. Super: | swerve over to the left hand lane. As I do I look down at the radio and look back and then boom, just this huge percussion. | 09:25 |
| Re-enactment | I just remember it being black, then some smoke and then I kind of opened my eyes and I | 09:32 |
| Steve | look over at my right arm and about the time I do, blood just kind of plop, plop two nice little spurts across my lap and I screamed. It’s kind of embarrassing to say now but I screamed and I was like ahhh you know? | 09:40 |
| Burning Humvee | I tried to get out of the Humvee and when I did, I stepped down with the… my left foot, and my shin just buckled underneath me and as I rolled over I kind of looked down at my leg and it’s got this smoke coming out of it. My driver Sergeant Durant, | 09:55 |
| Steve | I remember he took my flak jacket off, my blouse off and just like this -- it’s kind of gruesome I’m sorry -- but like this hunk just kind of went plop and fell off right onto the street, you know, like oh God. | 10:12 |
| Steve photos | THOMPSON: Thompson’s lower left leg was shattered and he lost chunks of muscle from his right arm and back. He was medivac’d out of Iraq to Germany and then to the United States. | 10:28 |
| Steve changes tee shirt, shows injury | CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: They put a titanium rod and four screws in my shin and in my arm, they cut my lat muscle out, flipped it upside down and stuffed it into my arm. | 10:47 |
| Steve | A bit of a Frankenstein procedure quite frankly but it works, so I’ve got no complaints. | 11:03 |
| Steve lifts weights | THOMPSON: After seven months of rehabilitation, Thompson returned to active duty and started flight school a year later. | 11:10 |
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| CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: I kind of like being stronger than them in spite of the fact that I’m injured and it drives you. | 11:19 |
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| Music | 11:26 |
| Steve in helicopter sequence | THOMPSON: That drive got him back on his feet and into the air. Three and a half years after being wounded, he’s back in Iraq, flying attack helicopters. | 11:44 |
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| Music | 11:55 |
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| THOMPSON: Based at the Al Taqaddum Airbase, Thompson’s missions cover the western province of Al Anbar, which includes the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. | 12:03 |
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| Music | 12:12 |
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| THOMPSON: Al Anbar was once regarded as being effectively under insurgent control, now a controversial alliance between US forces and Sunni tribes has achieved what became known as the Al Anbar awakening, one of America’s few shining examples of peace in Iraq. | 12:22 |
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| CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: If you were here in ‘04 or ‘05, you would have probably heard a rocket | 12:48 |
| Steve. Super: | impact the space already, in the time we’ve been doing this interview. The insurgency was full blown at that time, and yes it is much better. | 12:51 |
| Steve in helicopter | Music | 13:05 |
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| CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: I’m really not trying to just sell you the party line, it is night and day. It’s almost to the point where at times you fight complacency. | 13:13 |
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| Music | 13:23 |
| Marines play games on base | THOMPSON: When attacks recently peaked again in Basra and Bagdad, Al Anbar remained quiet. | 13:31 |
| Marines relax | Two years ago, this squadron’s Cobra pilots were scrambling to support several combat missions and six medical evacuations every day. Now, medivacs are down to one a day and most of them are not combat related. There’s only been two combat missions in the last six months. | 13:38 |
| Chopper shooting sequences | On this tour at least, gunners are more likely to let loose on a firing range then shoot at insurgents. Captain Thompson’s glad just to be off the ground. | 14:08 |
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| CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: It takes a level of sophistication to shoot aircraft out of the sky, whereas | 14:31 |
| Steve | putting a bomb on the side of the road, I mean you or I can do, so training’s minimal, and they’re a lot more prevalent so you understand that on the ground | 14:36 |
| Chopper in sky | and maybe in the air, you’re just a little bit more separated from that. | 14:46 |
| California beach surfing | Music | 14:55 |
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| THOMPSON: The beaches of Southern California are about as far from Iraq as you can get. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Pete Owen has lived | 15:12 |
| Owen and family on beach | here with his family since leaving the marine corps last year. He’s now a civilian and a published military historian, paid to teach marines at a nearby base. | 15:24 |
| Owen | LIEUTENANT COLONEL PETE OWEN (rtd): You can read in a history book about collateral damage, about innocent people getting hurt and you kind of think you know what that’s about, but when you’re looking into the eyes of a little girl whose feet got blown off, that is just an overwhelming experience and you can’t, you can’t imagine that, you can’t prepare for that any way but to experience it, and there’s no way that you can experience that and feel good about it. | 15:39 |
| Photos. Owen in Iraq | I’d have to say that this Iraq war has changed me and certainly my career goals with the marine corps were kind of eroded after the Iraq war, not | 16:12 |
| Owen | because I was disheartened by the way it was going, or just because I, I just kind of lost my zest for that type of life. | 16:24 |
| MONTAGE OF THE FIVE MARINES. |
| 16:32 |
| Photo. Owen. Super: |
| 16:38 |
| Geoff Thompson’s News story: BAGHDAD FIREFIGHT APRIL 10, 2003 | THOMPSON: We first met Pete Owen in 2003 on the day Baghdad fell, on April the 9th. We joined a marines’ convoy, which entered the city that evening under his command. | 16:42 |
| Owen. Super: | LIEUTENANT COLONEL PETE OWEN (rtd): With retrospect, there’s no question I should have handled…. I should have done things differently that day. There’s no question I should have done things differently that day. | 16:59 |
| Geoff Thompson’s News story: BAGHDAD FIREFIGHT APRIL 10, 2003 Super: | THOMPSON: Anxious young marines at the back of the convoy fired warning shots when civilian vehicles got too close. They were convinced one of them was a suicide bomber. | 17:08 |
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| [Gunfire] | 17:27 |
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| THOMPSON: Suddenly the marines believe they are also under attack from the side. | 17:37 |
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| [Gunfire] | 17:41 |
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| THOMPSON: Three unarmed civilians were killed. That still disturbs Pete Owen. | 17:55 |
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| LIEUTENANT COLONEL PETE OWEN (rtd): I think that the marines were in a situation that we hadn’t prepared them for. | 18:02 |
| Owen | They felt like they were under threat and there was a lot happening very quickly so the survival instinct came out as we should expect it should come out in that situation. | 18:10 |
| MONTAGE OF THE FIVE MARINES. | [Marine chanting] | 18:23 |
| Photo. Payne. Super: |
| 18:28 |
| Payne sits on picnic table smoking | THOMPSON: Patrick Payne was one of the shooters that Bagdad night. He was just twenty-one. After a second tour of Iraq, Payne left the marines and now works for a supply company while living with his parents in Claremont just outside LA. | 18:36 |
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| Fmr LANCE CORPORAL PATRICK PAYNE: Being off in a third world country like Iraq is, you know it just kind of made me grateful to have the things that we have, you know, paved roads, like having a McDonalds on every corner - | 18:55 |
| Payne. Super: | like Starbucks. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Starbucks. They’re all over the place even though I’m not a fan of Starbucks, but they’re there and it’s just nice to have them there even if you don’t drink their coffee. | 19:07 |
| Payne working on car | THOMPSON: When internal investigation cleared Payne of any wrongdoing in the killing of the three civilians. Five years later he has no regrets. | 19:22 |
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| Fmr LANCE CORPORAL PATRICK PAYNE: I was excited and all your adrenalin’s pumping and something just kind of came up real quick. | 19:34 |
| Payne | You’re happy to have lived through it. You’re happy to you know all your training has paid off because you, you reacted the way that you were supposed to, you handled everything right and it’s just like, kind of cool. It’s almost rewarding, you know, despite the fact that innocent people ended up dying. | 19:41 |
| Abu Ghraib pictures -- vision of prison | Music | 19:56 |
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| THOMPSON: Patrick Payne was back in Iraq in 2004. That was the same year exposure of prisoner abuse and torture at Bagdad’s Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world perhaps more than any other incident in Iraq. | 20:02 |
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| Music | 20:18 |
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| THOMPSON: Payne thinks it was excusable. | 20:23 |
| Payne | Fmr LANCE CORPORAL PATRICK PAYNE: They just were just people that were bored, you know, they were stuck in a jail guarding people that were locked up in cages, or I should say cells, you know - what else did they have to do? | 20:29 |
| Abu Ghraib pictures | So they entertained themselves. THOMPSON: But don’t you think that the human rights of prisoners are important? | 20:41 |
| Payne. Super: | Fmr LANCE CORPORAL PATRICK PAYNE: They had bags on their heads right? Nobody knew who they were. But then again, you’re in a war. I mean a lot of your standard rules don’t always apply. Maybe they shouldn’t have piled them up naked like that you know? But you know to get court martialled for it? I think that’s extreme. | 20:48 |
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| THOMPSON: So do you support what happened in Abu Ghraib? | 21:10 |
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| Fmr LANCE CORPORAL PATRICK PAYNE: I don’t support it, I wouldn’t go in there and do that myself but I think -- maybe I shouldn’t say what I think. Nah, but I think the only person that should really be punished is the person with the camera because that’s just stupid to get caught. | 21:13 |
| Abu Ghraib pictures | Music | 21:34 |
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| THOMPSON: For the US military in Iraq and for America in the eyes of the world, Abu Ghraib was a PR disaster with direct and deadly consequences. | 21:37 |
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| MAJOR PHIL BRAGG: Even a prisoner, even though he is arrested, is still treated humanely. | 21:50 |
| Bragg. Super: | As a military professional it makes me sick. | 21:58 |
| Abu Ghraib pictures | Music | 22:02 |
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| CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: The second I saw them I was angry because I thought a US marine will die because of this. | 22:04 |
| Steve. Super: | I don’t like people doing dumb stuff to make more people shoot at marines, and that’s how I looked at it and I was furious. | 22:11 |
| Choppers. Night |
| 22:17 |
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| THOMPSON: Insurgent violence was eventually answered with a surge in troops. As elections loom in the United States, the success of the strategy has been limited and its future judged precarious. | 22:24 |
| Bragg family. Girls in tree | Decisions on substantial troop withdrawals will be left to George Bush’s successor. | 22:48 |
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| MAJOR PHIL BRAGG: How long that’s going to take I have no idea. | 22:54 |
| Bragg. Super: | I will say that anybody that tries to predict that, or tries to put a date on it, certainly does not understand the complex environment that’s operating over there. | 22:56 |
| Marines in Iraq | You don’t know tomorrow when things can change one way or the other. | 23:08 |
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| CAPT STEVEN THOMPSON: This country’s been ruled by tribes for thousands of years, so it’s bringing tribes and religions together to stand under one nation, | 23:17 |
| Steve. Super: | and once they start accepting each other a little more, I think we can hand it over but I still think there’s… ‘til the in-fighting goes away, I think it’s going to be hard to do. | 23:26 |
| Choppers | Music | 23:35 |
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| THOMPSON: At five years and counting, the Iraq conflict has outlasted America’s involvement in World War II. Most of the marines we revisited believe the fight in Iraq will last at least five years more. | 23:49 |
| Marine graduates have photo taken | LIEUTENANT COLONEL PETE OWEN (rtd): For the marines, for everyone who’s served in Iraq it’s going to be a life-defining experience. | 24:17 |
| Owen with family | Whether it changes you or not, it’s going to have an impact on how you view the world and how you view yourself as a person. | 24:26 |
| Owen. Super: | What you don’t see veterans doing is sitting around crying in a room feeling sorry for themselves. They’re generally proud of what they’ve done. | 24:34 |
| Gomez recruiting | 24:44 | |
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| SERGEANT JOE GOMEZ: Part of me wants to say hey let’s wrap it up a little bit, I mean it’s 2008. | 24:50 |
| Gomez and wife | On the same note I have friends who passed away in that war and I don’t want to kind of come back and nothing change at all you know? | 24:55 |
| Gomez in high school corridor | And I kind of want to make a difference when we leave, so that way we feel like we were there for a reason and we actually did help and change something. | 25:04 |
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| Music | 25:11 |
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| Reporter: Geoff Thompson Camera: Louie Eroglu & David Anderson Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen Researchers: Jill Colgan & John Shovelan Producer: Mary Ann Jolley | 25:25 |