Diving Into falluja
To Hell and Back with Documentary-Maker Mark Manning
by Nick welsh
03/24/05 "Santa Barbara Independent" - - Deep sea diver turned documentary filmmaker Mark Manning asked if I had six minutes to spare — a strange request, considering we’d already spent two hours talking about Manning’s recent trip to Falluja, the heart of Iraq’s bloody Sunni triangle. Six minutes more was nothing, so Manning queued up a short video of footage he’s shot in Iraq and hit play. Accompanied by the Tom Waits lament “Day After Tomorrow,” the screen filled with images of bombed-out buildings, dead animals, uniformed men with guns, twisted metal, heaps of rubble, and everywhere children — a Greek chorus of flat-eyed Fallujan kids, bearing not so much silent witness as unspoken accusation. Manning said it was the searing looks from the kids that disturbed him most. More than once, recounted Manning, he had to look away — and this after traveling thousands of miles and risking his life to look at the war in Iraq through their eyes.
Disregarding howls of protest from concerned friends and family members, Manning set out January 10 on a three-week journey that took him from sunny Santa Barbara to the burned-out remains of the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, where four American civilian contractors were dragged from their cars in March 2004 and killed on the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. The assembled crowd then burned their bodies and hacked them to pieces, hoisting their blackened body parts into the air for the world to see. “I wanted to talk to the hardest, worst-case guys,” Manning explained.
“That’s why I went to Falluja.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandbagged at Home
For the past two years, Manning has been making a documentary, American Voices, crisscrossing the United States and asking hundreds of Americans if they could explain why, exactly, the U.S. is at war with Iraq. He was profoundly disheartened, he said, by the lack of facts and accurate information out there. Very few of the people he interviewed could back up their opinions with facts. Even worse, he realized, neither could he. That’s when he decided he had to see what life was like on the receiving end of Operation Enduring Freedom. “As an American citizen,” said Manning, “I felt personally responsible for what happened to the people of Falluja. We live in a democracy. In our democracy, my government is conducting a military operation over there in my name. To me, it doesn’t get more direct than that.”
Manning is perhaps the only American citizen, outside the employ of a major news agency, to have embedded himself in Falluja for the sake of information. It’s not the sort of thing most people — crazy or not — would contemplate, but as one friend noted, Manning “is crazy brave.” One longtime diver buddy said, “Mark’s always had big ideas and big balls, but to go to Falluja, unarmed? That’s crazy.” Manning’s own assessment of his Falluja mission amounted to a shrug: “I don’t know what you know about diving for the oil industry, but sometimes it gets a little hairy down there.”
Life in Iraq, by contrast, is always hairy. Manning spent most of his time in Falluja holing up first in a vacant house formerly occupied by American snipers, then on a farm outside town with Fallujan refugees. Manning traveled to Baghdad during the country’s historic election, then spent five days in Jordan. He credits both his ability to get around the region — and his daily survival — to Zarqa, a remarkable Iraqi woman who served as Manning’s guide through the war-torn country. (For her protection, Zarqa is not her real name.) Manning was shot at three times, detained twice, nearly kidnapped once, and said he had guns pulled on him so many times he lost count. He grew a beard, dressed in a kafia, and learned to live life as an Iraqi. “You learn that when you wake up in the morning, you don’t know if you’ll live long enough to see the sun set,” he said. “I came to peace with that.” Manning decided not to carry a weapon, instead relying on Zarqa and his stated mission of relief work to see him through.
By delivering medical supplies to Iraqi refugees, Manning said he was able to conduct dozens of interviews — videotaped clandestinely — amassing some 25 hours worth of tape. Speaking with Iraqi citizens - men, women and children - who’d witnessed firsthand the fury of war, Manning asked: “What do you want to tell the American people? How can there be peace between our countries? What has your life been like since the war began?”
Their answers, Manning said, were nearly always the same: Peace was possible, the Iraqis told him, but time was running out. American citizens, said the Iraqis, need to wake up to what their government is doing. Manning was told grisly accounts of Iraqi mothers killed in front of their sons, brothers in front of sisters, all at the hands of American soldiers. He also heard allegations of wholesale rape of civilians, by both American and Iraqi troops. Manning said he heard numerous reports of the second siege of Falluja that described American forces deploying — in violation of international treaties — napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and “bunker-busting” shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.
‘I wanted to talk to the hardest, worst-case guys. That’s why I went to Falluja.’ — Mark Manning
Shocking stuff, but Manning’s biggest surprise came after he’d returned home to the United States. Arriving in San Francisco late on the night of February 11, Manning and Natalie Kalustian, a close friend and filmmaking partner, crashed at the Oceanside Motel on 46th Avenue. The next morning, after a stroll near Baker Beach, they returned to their car to find one of the windows smashed. Expensive camera and computer equipment lay in plain view, but only Kalustian’s purse was gone. Inside the purse, Manning said, were keys to their motel room. And when Manning and Kalustian returned to the motel, he recounted, someone had broken into their room. Even though there was jewelry and more film equipment lying about, he said, none of it was touched. In fact, said Manning, none of the suitcases had even been opened. The only thing missing, Manning said, was the big bowling-ball shaped bag containing his camera — and all his taped interviews.
At that time, Manning had not been back in the United States for more than 10 hours.
The next day, Manning said, a mysterious man contacted them to arrange a meeting, claiming he had the stolen purse. Manning and Kalustian went to a spot near 6th and Mission as instructed, where they were met by a man who appeared to be a “full-on street bum,” Manning said. After returning the purse, the man pulled Manning to one side, opened his wallet, and flashed what Manning estimated was $5,000 worth of $100 bills. According to Manning, the “bum” winked at him and said, “Look in my eyes. I have the eyes of a former sniper. You thought you had the goods on George Bush, didn’t you? You’ve been sandbagged, boy.”
Manning said he has received more phone calls and mysterious emails from the man since returning to Santa Barbara, but holds out little hope of getting the missing tapes back. He’s most worried, he said, that whoever stole his tapes might seek to make examples of the Fallujans who spoke to him. “I risked my life to get those interviews,” he said, “and I saw the level of fear in the people I talked to.”
continued
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8353.htm
Manning can be contacted via his Web site at conceptionmedia.net
ARE THESE STORIES ONE AND THE SAME; READ THAT WAY TO ME AND THIS FROM ONE OF YOUR OWN
To Hell and Back with Documentary-Maker Mark Manning
by Nick welsh
03/24/05 "Santa Barbara Independent" - - Deep sea diver turned documentary filmmaker Mark Manning asked if I had six minutes to spare — a strange request, considering we’d already spent two hours talking about Manning’s recent trip to Falluja, the heart of Iraq’s bloody Sunni triangle. Six minutes more was nothing, so Manning queued up a short video of footage he’s shot in Iraq and hit play. Accompanied by the Tom Waits lament “Day After Tomorrow,” the screen filled with images of bombed-out buildings, dead animals, uniformed men with guns, twisted metal, heaps of rubble, and everywhere children — a Greek chorus of flat-eyed Fallujan kids, bearing not so much silent witness as unspoken accusation. Manning said it was the searing looks from the kids that disturbed him most. More than once, recounted Manning, he had to look away — and this after traveling thousands of miles and risking his life to look at the war in Iraq through their eyes.
Disregarding howls of protest from concerned friends and family members, Manning set out January 10 on a three-week journey that took him from sunny Santa Barbara to the burned-out remains of the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, where four American civilian contractors were dragged from their cars in March 2004 and killed on the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. The assembled crowd then burned their bodies and hacked them to pieces, hoisting their blackened body parts into the air for the world to see. “I wanted to talk to the hardest, worst-case guys,” Manning explained.
“That’s why I went to Falluja.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandbagged at Home
For the past two years, Manning has been making a documentary, American Voices, crisscrossing the United States and asking hundreds of Americans if they could explain why, exactly, the U.S. is at war with Iraq. He was profoundly disheartened, he said, by the lack of facts and accurate information out there. Very few of the people he interviewed could back up their opinions with facts. Even worse, he realized, neither could he. That’s when he decided he had to see what life was like on the receiving end of Operation Enduring Freedom. “As an American citizen,” said Manning, “I felt personally responsible for what happened to the people of Falluja. We live in a democracy. In our democracy, my government is conducting a military operation over there in my name. To me, it doesn’t get more direct than that.”
Manning is perhaps the only American citizen, outside the employ of a major news agency, to have embedded himself in Falluja for the sake of information. It’s not the sort of thing most people — crazy or not — would contemplate, but as one friend noted, Manning “is crazy brave.” One longtime diver buddy said, “Mark’s always had big ideas and big balls, but to go to Falluja, unarmed? That’s crazy.” Manning’s own assessment of his Falluja mission amounted to a shrug: “I don’t know what you know about diving for the oil industry, but sometimes it gets a little hairy down there.”
Life in Iraq, by contrast, is always hairy. Manning spent most of his time in Falluja holing up first in a vacant house formerly occupied by American snipers, then on a farm outside town with Fallujan refugees. Manning traveled to Baghdad during the country’s historic election, then spent five days in Jordan. He credits both his ability to get around the region — and his daily survival — to Zarqa, a remarkable Iraqi woman who served as Manning’s guide through the war-torn country. (For her protection, Zarqa is not her real name.) Manning was shot at three times, detained twice, nearly kidnapped once, and said he had guns pulled on him so many times he lost count. He grew a beard, dressed in a kafia, and learned to live life as an Iraqi. “You learn that when you wake up in the morning, you don’t know if you’ll live long enough to see the sun set,” he said. “I came to peace with that.” Manning decided not to carry a weapon, instead relying on Zarqa and his stated mission of relief work to see him through.
By delivering medical supplies to Iraqi refugees, Manning said he was able to conduct dozens of interviews — videotaped clandestinely — amassing some 25 hours worth of tape. Speaking with Iraqi citizens - men, women and children - who’d witnessed firsthand the fury of war, Manning asked: “What do you want to tell the American people? How can there be peace between our countries? What has your life been like since the war began?”
Their answers, Manning said, were nearly always the same: Peace was possible, the Iraqis told him, but time was running out. American citizens, said the Iraqis, need to wake up to what their government is doing. Manning was told grisly accounts of Iraqi mothers killed in front of their sons, brothers in front of sisters, all at the hands of American soldiers. He also heard allegations of wholesale rape of civilians, by both American and Iraqi troops. Manning said he heard numerous reports of the second siege of Falluja that described American forces deploying — in violation of international treaties — napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and “bunker-busting” shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.
‘I wanted to talk to the hardest, worst-case guys. That’s why I went to Falluja.’ — Mark Manning
Shocking stuff, but Manning’s biggest surprise came after he’d returned home to the United States. Arriving in San Francisco late on the night of February 11, Manning and Natalie Kalustian, a close friend and filmmaking partner, crashed at the Oceanside Motel on 46th Avenue. The next morning, after a stroll near Baker Beach, they returned to their car to find one of the windows smashed. Expensive camera and computer equipment lay in plain view, but only Kalustian’s purse was gone. Inside the purse, Manning said, were keys to their motel room. And when Manning and Kalustian returned to the motel, he recounted, someone had broken into their room. Even though there was jewelry and more film equipment lying about, he said, none of it was touched. In fact, said Manning, none of the suitcases had even been opened. The only thing missing, Manning said, was the big bowling-ball shaped bag containing his camera — and all his taped interviews.
At that time, Manning had not been back in the United States for more than 10 hours.
The next day, Manning said, a mysterious man contacted them to arrange a meeting, claiming he had the stolen purse. Manning and Kalustian went to a spot near 6th and Mission as instructed, where they were met by a man who appeared to be a “full-on street bum,” Manning said. After returning the purse, the man pulled Manning to one side, opened his wallet, and flashed what Manning estimated was $5,000 worth of $100 bills. According to Manning, the “bum” winked at him and said, “Look in my eyes. I have the eyes of a former sniper. You thought you had the goods on George Bush, didn’t you? You’ve been sandbagged, boy.”
Manning said he has received more phone calls and mysterious emails from the man since returning to Santa Barbara, but holds out little hope of getting the missing tapes back. He’s most worried, he said, that whoever stole his tapes might seek to make examples of the Fallujans who spoke to him. “I risked my life to get those interviews,” he said, “and I saw the level of fear in the people I talked to.”
continued
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8353.htm
Manning can be contacted via his Web site at conceptionmedia.net
ARE THESE STORIES ONE AND THE SAME; READ THAT WAY TO ME AND THIS FROM ONE OF YOUR OWN
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 6:06 AM
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