I finally saw it tonight... it certainly did not paint us in a very good light, except for the little "exchange" with the US Special Forces types... ;D
For those that have not seen it, here are some of the points that we picked up on. Again, as per the previous poster, the authors of the film can twist things anyway they want and they seem to wanted to make us/Nato look "sloppy".
(Don't forget that this was only a 15-20 min piece, think 20/20 style segment for us old farts.)
- PRT team sets up shop in new area that has never had one before
- PRT Sgt. visits nearby village to see about 'hearts and minds', Sgt. is female however (i.e. no beard, not a man, village elders may or may not trust) but they really don't play on that much in the film.
- She offers to fix the villages water pumps (they take 12 away, look like small portable generators actually, at least modern looking pumps that you would see at any cottage etc up in Muskoka ;D)
- Spare parts requested (spark plugs mostly needed) but delivery did not arrive or was turned away, I need to re-watch that part. They seemed to indicate that the entire convoy was turned around at the base due to an explosive sniffing dog detecting something on one of the trucks but they don't explain why the entire convoy was turned around. Again the filmmaker makes the soldiers look like a group of pig headed somethings and are over reacting to the dog. However I suspect there was alot more involved with that scene that we didn't get to see.
- A scene of a Canadian Soldier (god it's hard to read ranks on Arid CadPat...especially on TV and while sitting in the back of a LAV) on the radio in the LAV calling around to try to find parts, talks about "doesn't the PRT have a supply chain?!?!" (quote not 100% accurate) to the cameraman and other callsign. Again filmmaker hints that we/Nato don't know what were doing or are not very organized.
- Good sized mechanized patrol heads for a truck stop near Khandahar, looking for spark plugs but cannot find any and are not allowed (or could not) enter the city proper to search. Makes you wish there was a Canadian Tire just outside the city...
- This is where all the shooting at vehicles takes place as it appears they blocked the major highway going by the truckstop, however you can't really tell from the film. It may have been spliced together to look that way (i.e. The filmmaker wanted you to believe that they were a bunch of arrogant fools that blocked a major highway just cause they were in the area, filemaker almost leaves you thinking that they could have moved the patrol further into the truck stop or to a nearby field to allow the highway to operate)
- A pickup truck flips over from a warning shot spilling people and cargo everywhere. Convoy does stop to help as one is wounded and must be medevac'd out, however filmmaker does another dig by indicating his cameraman is ex-British Military and a well training medic who 'helps' the Canadian medic with the wounded man. Might be reading too much into this scene but it he makes it seem like our Medic could not handle it and if the cameraman had not been there things would not have gone well.
- A second patrol goes out but gets completely mired in rain soaked mud (the Lav's didn't appear to fair well at all by what was filmed, even the ones that were not broken down). This is filmed in such a way that is almost comical (to a civilian that is...).
- US Special Forces team comes in and detains villager from the nearby village causing distrust etc in the PRT mission
- Medical clinic setup for surrounding villages to come in but they run out of meds before treating all the villagers, forcing those that travelled a long way to leave empt handed/untreated. Filmmaker hints that everyone that came to the clinic will be a target of revenge now from Timmy.
- PRT only able to repair 2 pumps, returns all of them to the village.
- PRT ordered to close camp and pull out, leaving villagers to their own means (filemaker hinted that Timmy will be back with a vengeance since they "helped" the Nato forces, think Vietnam VC Retribution Teams)
Watch it for yourself and form your own opinions but it certainly wasn't a nice positive 'CBC Style segment' that we are used to seeing. However I'd love to hear from someone that was actually there who can fill in all the blanks in the footage that leave the viewer to speculate too much.
Cheers
