Baghdad ER - An HBO Documentary Film

I appreciated Clownfish's review, and his comment about how if more people saw "Baghdad ER" there would be "less enthusiasm for war." As it is, the usual glorification of war produces a great deal of enthusiasm, as James Hillman points out in his book  A Terrible Love of War . West Point professor Lt. Col. Dave Grossman describes how we are trained to kill in his book  Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence .The other reviewers all made good points about the merits of this film. I heard the directors interviewed on NPR, and they mentioned the trauma they were feeling being witnesses to all of that suffering. The only shortcoming of this film is that we don't get much of a feel for the suffering of ordinary Iraqis, which is absolutely massive. Estimates vary, but hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died - many due to the millions of rounds of bullets our troops and private mercenaries have fired. One study noted that many Iraqis died from A-10 Warthog and Apache helicopter attacks, while many others have died in the ensuing chaos of this illegal invasion and occupation. We can barely begin to imagine how many Iraqis have been horribly injured, or what the scenes are like inside the actual emergency rooms of Baghdad, Falluja, Tikrit, Ramadi and many other towns. Just today, I heard that the Iraqi health system is near collapse. One of the first things the US Air Force bombed during "shock and awe" was the Ministry of Health. Meanwhile, many Iraqi doctors are among the 2 million Iraqis who have fled the country for their lives. Of those emigres to Jordan and Syria, it's estimated that 50,000 women and girls have been prostituting themselves to survive.PTSD rates for Iraqi children are astronomical.The list of death and misery goes on and on, as does the list of ways people can defy the militarists who serve the interests of transnational corporations - not America. Yes! "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." -Dwight Eisenhower Why We Fight [Region 99 ]

My name is unimportant, and the name of my medics are unimportant too. Me and the NCOIC of the E.R. featured in this documentary are responsible for the actions taken by medics in this film. People talk a lot about doctors and nurses. In the military, medics are the ones who make things happen. There are no nurses or doctors patrolling downtown Baghdad with an infantry platoon. Those medics out there reacted and took care of their fellow soldiers. Seeing that they needed additional medical care they sent them to us. The 86th CSH.I'm not the political type and I don't care what people say out there. I just do my job and I think I do it well. I was tasked to train my medics in traumatic emergency medicine, ensure that they knew their job and that the E.R. ran smoothly. We worked around the clock, two 12 hours shifts, no days off, trying to save every Soldier's life. Not only our Soldiers but anybody injured. I called my guys the silent and unseen angels. Why? A lot of the Soldiers who came through our doors never saw us or knew who we were. Simply because we treated them, then they went to the O.R. and then they were shipped to Germany. Baghdad E.R. shows what we did for our Soldiers.I'm proud of the soldiers I worked with and the hard work and sacrifices they went through during that year long deployment in Iraq. Not to brag about ourselves but we had the best trauma team worlwide. After our deployment ended we learned that the survivability was close to 95%. Unfortunately now I work in a clinic and I'm not allowed to go back to Iraq where I know I can be more efficient and would be able to take care of our wounded.But this film is the best HBO can portray of what we did.I dedicate this film to all those who we treated and their families. God Bless.

This documentary does an excellent job showing what happens at the combat support hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone. However, it completely ignores all echelons of care that a wounded soldier receives before arriving at the CSH. The film makes no mention of medical personnel who are on the ground with the soldiers when situations like a roadside bomb or IED detonation occurs. It also ignores the fact that many of the casualties coming into the CSH have already received a good deal of stabilizing treatment at smaller aid stations of forward support hospitals. Don't get me wrong, I will be the first to admit that those physicians and physician assistants at the CSH indeed save lives, but their job would be impossible without the courageous work of far forward medical personnel, such as combat line medics. Line medics put their own lives on the line to be the first responders. They preserve and sustain a casualty's life by providing stabilizing treatment on the scene of an attack so that the casualty can have a fighting chance to survive an air or ground evacuation to the CSH. This documentary gives the false impression that this hospital is the first line of care a casualty will see and soldiers are pulled directly off the 'fighting lines' to this hospital when that, in fact, is not the case.

Bravo Zulu (Well Done)This film covers a group of people that are often overlooked or unwanted until they are needed. It shows the work they do so well to bring our people home intact as possible. It shows what happens after the battles and follows a group of injured soldiers, the care they recieve, and the people they impact.Thank you HBO.

IEDの爆発に巻き込まれ、次々に運ばれてくる負傷者。懸命に命を救おうと努力する医師と看護スタッフ。同じ場所で行われている「殺し合い」と「救命」という矛盾を感じながらも、ひたむきに命を救う事に専念する病院スタッフをありのままに描いた良質のドキュメンタリー。リージョンコードが１なので注意が必要です。