Nightline 9/22: Home movies from Iraq (Koppel hosts)

[Bozita]

 
Nightline Daily E-Mail
September 22, 2004


TONIGHT'S FOCUS: Home movies, only this time they were taken by a soldier in a military intelligence unit in Iraq. They show the mundane and the dangerous, and a view of interrogations that we haven't seen before.

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This is a broadcast we had planned to bring to you a few weeks ago but an awful lot of breaking news intervened. I'm going to butcher this quote, but it goes something like this: war is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. That pretty well sums it up. There are hours, sometimes days, where nothing happens. Living conditions usually aren't great, whether the soldiers are out in the field or in a town or city. And then, when something does happen, the adrenaline pumps, and things get pretty serious. Tonight and, news permitting, tomorrow night too, you're going to see what really are snapshots of a tour of duty in Iraq. There is news from Iraq every day of course, but these shows take you a level deeper.

A soldier from a military intelligence unit shot more than 200 hours of tape during the 13 months he was in Iraq. He starts taping when his National Guard unit gets the word and begins their training to go over, one of the first lessons being fairly graphic first aid instruction. He shot his unit's living conditions, their reactions when firing broke out, and being in intelligence, he filmed their work, interrogating Iraqi prisoners. His unit's job was to question suspects and decide if they should be released, or sent onto Abu Ghraib or other prisons. Now, there is nothing like the abuses seen in those infamous photos, but he did shoot interrogations that range from the calmest of conversations to more heated confrontations.

Tonight and tomorrow, he will be Ted's guest on Nightline. We'll show short clips of what he shot. It's tough to pull just a few minutes out of all of those hours of tape, but we tried to find elements that are representative of the whole. And he and Ted will talk about his tapes, and his experiences. We hope that these broadcasts will give you all yet another glimpse into what is going on over in Iraq. If you're not over there, it's just about impossible to share that experience, but I hope you'll join us these next two nights to share small glimpses of his tour of duty.

Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff
Nightline Offices
ABC News Washington Bureau

[Bozita]

1. 5 minute warning

[AlCzervik]

2. thanks for the heads up, westcoast here

i will be sure to stay up for it.

[truth2power]

3. My initial response is

there's something creepy about that soldier (Weichert).

edit > added soldier name.

[jumpstart33]

6. Like "Stepford" creepy? Is he a man or a machine.

I know, he is a "girlie" machine.

[jumpstart33]

4. Does this guy Weichert make anybody else want to puke?

This is about as much bullshit that I have seen on Nightline in all its years on TV.

[Ms. Clio]

5. Yeah, a total dick

"We had to tie them up and make them kneel on stone floors for hours to protect ourselves."

[truth2power]

8. Yes. I get the feeling he's really into

making people suffer.

That scene where they were putting bags over the detainees heads and the bags had pig faces (certainly an insult to a Muslim) and other humiliating drawings. Then the troops ridiculed the prisoners.

When Ted made some negative comment about the treatment, Weikert(?) said, that of course it was unacceptable and that's why "after the cameras were turned off I told my men to replace the bags with one's without the drawings." (paraphrasing here)

This is just sick. So they had their fun, then after the cameras were turned off he got around to chastizing his men. Uh huh.....

[Ms. Clio]

7. Another whitewash

Where are the real tapes, the ones of the rape, the sodomy, the torture, the murder?

Tomorrow, WMDs.

What BS.

[Cocoa]

9. that guy was a propaganda agent

and the fact that Nightline presented him a just a soldier with a camera is a huge scandal, infinitely worse than Dan Rather.