Preview
Full disclosure: A reporter’s
journey toward truth
A documentary on embedded journalism in Iraq.
U sually, I begin my explanation
of why and how I made my
documentary, Full Disclosure,
with my first trip to Iraq as an embedded
journalist in 2004. Occasionally, when I
have an especially enthusiastic audience,
I start earlier, in 2002, when I left my job
as a CNN correspondent. But beginning so
far back feels like indulging in nostalgia.
Given the dire situation in Iraq today, the
generally superficial and timid coverage
in the corporate media, and the apparent
lack attention and concern among North
Americans – and many Europeans – this
is no time for nostalgia. So I will start in
the present.
There are an estimated two million
Iraqi refugees, the majority of them living
in Syria and Jordan. “Iraqi authorities
estimate that an additional 2.7 million
people have been internally displaced,
most of them since the US-led invasion of
2003,” says the United Nations Assistance
Mission for Iraq. These numbers have not
changed significantly in years.
The UN’s Inter-Agency Information
and Analysis Unit reports that Iraq’s
food prices doubled between 2004 and
2008. That is a greater increase than the
shockingly high global rate, seventy-
three percent. The rise in food prices
“has contributed to the increase in the
Iraqi poverty rate,” IAU says. “Only half
the Iraqi population have access to safe
water regularly... Fifty percent of Iraq’s
untreated wastewater is discharged into
rivers and canals... The current number
of available school buildings is 15,815,
of which fifty percent require major
rehabilitation efforts... Almost one-third
of the 1,809 public health centres are
reported to have deteriorated due to lack
of maintenance, lack of supplies, reduced
or unskilled health workers.”
On the political front, Iraqis
themselves are working toward creating
a post-occupation system of governance,
32 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009
By Brian Palmer
sometimes in concert, often at cross-
purposes along sectarian lines. Violence
has decreased – though sporadic and
horrific bombings happen periodically
– but the tension, discord, mistrust, and
anger that caused it remain.
The United States has roughly 128,000
troops in Iraq. There are more than
126,000 civilian contract employees
working for US agencies. More than 13,000
of these are private security contractors –
mercenaries in plain English.
“Let me say this as plainly as I can: By
August 31, 2010, our combat mission in
Iraq will end,” US President Barack Obama
told the world in February. Attached to
this promise was a little bit of not-so-
fine print: 50,000 troops will remain for
at least another year. Moreover, such
a drawdown may cause the US to rely
more heavily on mercenary forces –
some of whom have been implicated in
Iraqi women speak to US Marine lieutenant: Photo
by Brian Palmer.
Independent World report
various crimes and abuses during the US
occupation – to protect its interests and
personnel. The remaining US troops and
mercenaries will undoubtedly be called
on to provide protection for the next
phase of the US invasion.
According to the Financial
Times, senior officials from the Bush
administration who played a role in the
occupation are now leading a commercial
charge into Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, former
US ambassador to Iraq, has formed a
company to advise corporations planning
to do business in Iraq. Jay Garner, the
former US army general who served as the
first US pro consul in Iraq, is an adviser to
Vast Exploration, a Canadian oil company
doing business in Kurdistan.
This is the situation in November
2009, nearly seven years after the US
invaded Iraq. Our attention has migrated
to Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2004,
Iraq, not Afghanistan, was the war, the
one that garnered public attention.
I wanted to cover it. I thought
reporting from Iraq would be difficult,
possibly dangerous, but that it would
be relatively straightforward – observe,
document, publish.
My reasons for going were mixed. I
did not believe the Bush administration’s
case for war. News coverage by the
mainstream media, including my
former employer CNN, was little more
than cheerleading for the invasion and
occupation. I could do better job, I told
myself. Also, I felt responsible to witness
and report on actions taken by my
government, ostensibly in my name. But,
I had other reasons that I did not mention
aloud. Ever.
Ego. While covering the US military as a
photojournalist in the 1990s, I discovered
that I had a surprisingly large reservoir of
repressed machismo inside me. As much
as I mistrusted state power and was often
critical of US’ use of military force, I was
US Marine patrol through Musayyib: Photo by Brian Palmer.

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US Marine on watch atop roof of Musayyib police station: Photo by Brian Palmer.

34 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 Independent World report

Iraqi men detained at US base in Iskandariyah: Photo by Brian Palmer.
attracted viscerally to the brotherhood of
the armed forces – the sense of purpose,
duty, and honour. Moreover, my dad had
served in the army. As much as he said
he hated his experience – he was a black
man serving in the 1950s, when racial
discrimination defined the US society –
he still proudly told tales of his service.
And I remembered them.
Vanity. I was on the verge of forty-
years old and I had never covered a
real war. This is a rite of passage for
serious journalists, at least according to
conventional wisdom. I simply could not
stay on the sidelines.
As a political progressive – and as a
black American who identifies strongly
with the ordinary people who wind up
on the business end of the war machine,
not the decision makers – I found
these feelings odd, embarrassing, but
nonetheless powerful. With these and
my other more noble impulses, I went to
war.
I decided to embed with the US military
for cold, hard reasons: I spoke no Arabic;
I did not have enough money to pay for
translators, transport, and protection;
and I had no major news organisation
supporting me. I shot photos on a
freelance basis for Sipa Press and wrote
dispatches for the website pixelpress.org
I reasoned that my identity –
progressive, minority, student of history,
mature in comparison to twenty-
something US Marines – would allow me
to maintain critical, professional distance
from the men I lived with and covered.
It did not work out that way.
Fundamentally, to embed with the
military means becoming a member of a
unit, a kind of nonfunctioning, dependent
addition to a squad or platoon, to be sure,
but still a part of it. One lives, eats, and
sleeps with the troops, men – and in this
case the unit was all men, because women
are not allowed to serve in direct combat
roles – who keep one alive.
Over the weeks I was with the unit,
First Battalion/Second Marine Regiment,
I felt myself becoming closer to the men,
in spite of myself. There were times when
I did not ask hard questions I should
have, that I put my camera down when
I should have shot. Later, I recognised
it as a subconscious desire to protect
Independent World report
the young men I was with. Proximity
and dependence breed affinity. That is
the genius of the Pentagon’s embedding
system.
After coming home from Iraq, I
realised I had fallen short of the goal I set
for myself: to tell clear and uncensored
stories of what I witnessed. No one
censored me, but there were times I
censored myself. I served no one by doing
this, certainly not the Iraqis I met while
on Marine patrols; not the Marines, who
were put in harm’s way to kill and be
killed under a veil of half-truths and lies;
and not myself.
It was easy to see the Marines as
unique individuals, nice guys with wives
and kids back home in the States. But I
needed to remember that each time they
ventured into the streets of Iraqi cities,
into the living rooms and kitchens of
Iraqi families, they served as powerful,
sometimes deadly, instruments of the US
government.
So I went back twice more, in 2005 and
2006, to try to get it right, to tell a fuller,
less mediated story. Full Disclosure is the
result of that process.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 35
Marine Lance Corporal on routine foot patrol in Musayyib: Photo by Brian Palmer.
The documentary consists largely of
vérité footage and interviews I shot in
Iraq. It offers a view of the US occupation
of Iraq from my vantage point, first in
Babil province, and then in Anbar, Iraq,
from 2004 to 2006. In 2007 and 2008 in
the US, I follow one Marine I patrolled
with in Iraq, Staff Sergeant David Marino.
Over the course of several interviews, he
reveals the damage two Iraq tours did to
him, while also confronting the damage
he inflicted in Iraq.
Full Disclosure is not a war movie that
emphasises bang-bang. Life in Iraq during
the times I visited was cyclical, with long
periods of tedium punctuated by blasts
of terror. The terror was dramatic and
terribly significant, but the tedium was
just as important.
I concentrate on the seemingly
ordinary stretches of time during which
US troops – young men trained to fight
and destroy and who speak no Arabic –
move among Iraqi civilians, conducting
house searches, running routine foot
patrols, pulling checkpoint duty, and
escorting civil-affairs missions.
36 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009
They did not know the culture or consequences of our actions in Iraq. And
history of Iraq. They were not equipped we have not yet bothered to examine
to do the things that Iraqis needed most: how the record of our policies and
mediation, negotiation, construction – practices in Iraq might affect future civil-
in a word, healing. They often operated military endeavours in countries such
without the support of experienced as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond.
advisers, and frequently without capable I want Full Disclosure to serve as such an
translators. And yet our political leaders examination – and as a cautionary tale for
ordered them to undertake a bewildering future US military enterprises. �
array of tasks, among them finding an
enemy they could not see and winning
the hearts and minds of the rest of the
population. This put a heavy burden on
US troops. But the greatest burden was –
and still is – borne by Iraqis.
Full Disclosure does not end in Iraq. It
follows Staff Sergeant Marino at home
as he battles Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. It
also includes essential information about Brian Palmer – photographer, writer,
incidents shown on screen gleaned from teacher and filmmaker based in New
official US military documents obtained York – has written for Mother Jones,
through the Freedom of Information Act. Newsweek, New York Times Magazine
More than six years after the invasion,
and other publications. Full disclosure is
as the Obama administration speaks of
a drawdown of the US combat presence, his first documentary film. For more, see:
we as a nation have not addressed the bxpnyc.com
Independent World report