ok…i’ve been rather prolific with the blog this week but i had to make a brief tiny mention of the miniseries generation kill. i received my discs from netflix last weekend but it was hard to find time to sit down and watch the series. i had only chosen it in the first place because it starred alexander skarsgård (o, he of true blood fame) and it came recommended on a few sites.
click pic to go to hbo's gen kill web page
needless to say, alexander did not disappoint nor did his supporting cast. i cannot recommend this series in strenuous enough words. it was absolutely fascinating. i have read that this series was based on a book written by rolling stone writer, evan wright.
i’m a bleeding heart liberal as my two readers could tell you. however, i married a former army ranger. i didn’t know him when he was active duty but i have asked a lot of questions over the years.
in an interview with the actual marines on whom the film characters were based, one of the marines mentions the fact that often civilians back in the US will say ‘we support the troops now bring them home’. he says, however, that this is their job. the volunteered to do a job which would potentially take them to war.
my two cents, as a civilian, are that i feel like i can support the troops and support them in the job that they’re doing but still see the war as unjust and unnecessary. afghanistan was completely necessary. we had to follow the world trade center bombings with total retaliation.
i wish, wish, wish though that we had not taken our eye off of that war. the focus was shifted to iraq on a false assertion that saddam had wmd. it was shakey at best when presented to the american people and was quickly found to be false. to this day, no wmd have ever been found. i believe bush/cheney et al drove us into this war on false pretenses and then hung our soldiers out to dry. they refused to take the advice of a seasoned veteran, gen. shinseki, and instead relied upon the opinions of men most of whom had never served in combat.
it was later proven that shinseki was correct in his assessment of somewhere in the few hundred thousand troops needed to stabilize post invasion iraq. it was too little too late and the damage well and truly done. we lost the ‘hearts and minds’ of the iraqis, made their country worse, as far as resources, than it was previous to our invasion, and damaged our status the world around. for what? for an ego trip by bush? for oil? to fill the coffers of cheney and the companies he had previously worked for? all of the above i would guess.
it was a war poorly planned yet executed to the best of the soldiers’ ability with the exception of a few but glaringly horrific events perpetrated by americans in iraq.
anyway…i’ve gone off on a liberal tangent again. pick up the dvd’s and watch this series.
a couple of snaps. btw…rudy reyes played himself in the series. wow…is all i can say after watching this guy. smokin’! (still think alex is hotter yet more real.) if you click on the images they will take you to the websites upon which i found the photos.
alexander skarsgård as brad 'iceman' colbert
rudy reyes, susanna white, eric kocher at the premiere
alexander and the real iceman - brad colbert
it was SO hard not to just choose all of the topless photos of alex….but i did it.
