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Gunner Palace

Gunner Palace is Michael Tucker's documentary about a troop of U.S. soldiers staying in one of Uday Hussein's palaces. The film's web site is mostly Tucker's journal of the making of the film.

For the average soldier, any sympathy they had for the Iraqis was waning and the mood on the streets was very different than before. Fewer waves. The kids stayed their distance. I sometimes felt that the new Iraq was a shotgun wedding of two impossibly different cultures. While you could see positive changes and people did express hope, the violence was taking a toll.

I tried to maintain an objective stance. Then one night, a young Iraqi interpreter who I filmed the first time, was arrested after it was discovered that he possibly had passed intelligence on to the insurgents. If true, he was responsible for four deaths. My whole picture changed as I watched them bring him in. He went from being a positive example of The New Iraq—and a guy I had shared Marlboros with--to a glaring example of how confused everything had become. Could you trust anyone?

jon posted this at 9:48 AM
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