21 DAYS TO BAGHDAD joins National Geographic’s own filmmakers Gary Scurka and Charles Poe to relive their experiences shooting in and around Baghdad during the Iraqi conflict. Working with officials insistent on denying the imminent threat posed by the U.S. aggression, Poe sets the scene in Baghdad as one by one, the city’s stalwart buildings and palaces succumb to enemy fire. Dealing with the bureaucracy by day and filming the aerial attacks by night, Poe gives a very real impression of a city—and governmental regime—in peril as coalition forces draw closer.

Stationed with India Company of the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines, Scurka gives viewers an up-close look at the U.S. military in action as he travels with them by tank from the Kuwaiti border into Baghdad. Viewers experience enemy fire first hand as India Company undergoes a tense conflict outside the Baghdad city limits. Later, after it is clear the coalition forces have effectively ended Hussein’s stronghold on the city, viewers are there to witness the soldiers’ relief as they enter Baghdad to the smiling faces and cheers of its citizenry.

One-on-one interviews with military personnel give viewers insight into the complex mix of emotions soldiers encounter when facing the enemy, helping the wounded or thinking of home. Meighan Adamouski, wife of Blackhawk pilot James Adamouski, whose helicopter was shot down by Iraqi soldiers early on in the conflict, puts a human face to the impact of the war back home as she talks of her husband’s commitment to his country and his family. For many soldiers, these seemingly disparate loyalties do not conflict with their stated missions, but make them even more steadfast in their belief that what they accomplish abroad will enable their family to lead a happier, more secure life at home.

Take a harrowing journey with author Sebastian Junger and photographer Reza deep into Afghanistan for the last interview with the assassinated resistance leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud. With never-before-seen footage, Afghanistan Revealed explores this war-torn country and the lives of its people as they struggle against the Taliban.

Exclusive, Uncensored Footage of Atrocities Gives Rare Insight Why America Had ‘Moral Obligation’ to Invade Iraq. After viewing, Americans will soon have a far better understanding of why it was the United States’ unavoidable obligation to invade Iraq.
BURIED IN THE SAND: THE DECEPTION OF AMERICA takes an unflinching look at the atrocities at Abu Ghurayb prison in Iraq and across this sand-blown country. Never-before-seen footage obtained from American military personnel, Islamic extremists and other sources put a face – the face of someone’s parent, spouse, sibling or child – on the suffering, death and betrayal suffered by an entire society.

BURIED IN THE SAND: THE DECEPTION OF AMERICA is hosted by Mark Taylor, a 25-year radio veteran and nationally known political commentator who has been a frequent guest on such prominent and influential shows as The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes and Politically Incorrect, as well as on MSNBC and CNN news broadcasts. 

While other reporters were embedded in fighting units during the Iraq War, NOVA was covering the emergency medical response, living night and day with the doctors, nurses, and medics in a frontline Combat Support Hospital (CSH). The program captures a period of the conflict in April and May of 2003 when CSH units faced a deluge of injured Iraqi soldiers and civilians who had little support from their country’s collapsed health-care system.

A 21st-century version of the Korean War-era MASH, or Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the CSH is a maze of sleek tents connecting fully equipped operating rooms with X-ray, pharmacy, laboratory, in-patient wards, and other emergency medical services. And like the characters in “M*A*S*H,” the television series, the CSH personnel are beset by constant ethical dilemmas that pit the team’s commitment to treat injured Iraqis against the messy realities of war. It’s a situation in which chance and bureaucratic policy often decide who lives and who dies. (For more on this dilemma, see Tug of War.)

NOVA was stationed with two CSH units, the 10th and 21st, from the intense prewar preparations in the United States to deployment overseas. The 21st CSH followed U.S. troops into Iraq from Kuwait and set up at an air base in Balad in the hotly contested Sunni Triangle, with a smaller section sent to Mosul farther north. Meanwhile, the 10th CSH was part of the invasion force preparing to enter Iraq through Turkey. When Turkey denied permission for the plan to proceed, the 10th ended up in the Kuwaiti desert, awaiting further orders.

Prepared for everything from chemical and biological attack to mass U.S. casualties, the 21st CSH found that its biggest challenge at the outset was taking up the slack from devastated Iraqi hospitals. The primary role of the CSH is to treat American and coalition wounded, but according to Army policy, CSH units will provide emergency care to any Iraqi who is in immediate danger of losing life, limb, or eyesight—or who has been injured by American forces.

The program follows several trauma cases that call on all the expertise of the CSH staff, which includes some of the best ER surgeons in the world. The most heartrending patients are children. One eight-year-old girl, injured when a U.S. missile blew up an Iraqi tank, suffered complications during the two weeks she was trapped at home. In a heroic attempt to save her life, the 21st CSH doctors arrange to airlift her to a hospital in Michigan—but only if they can stabilize her condition in preparation for the flight.

UNCOVERED: THE WAR IN IRAQ chronicles the Bush Administration’s determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11, 2001. The film deconstructs the administration’s case for war through interviews with U.S intelligence and defense officials, foreign service experts, and U.N. weapons inspectors—including a former CIA director, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President’s Bush’s Secretary of the Army. Their analyses and conclusions are sobering, and often disturbing, regardless of one’s political affiliations. Produced and Directed by Robert Greenwald.