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Monday, July 5, 2004
Cleland documentary compares Vietnam, Iraq
STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran with strong ties to Stetson University, said he agreed to "star" in a new documentary akin to "Fahrenheit 9/11" because he wants people to hear the truth about the impact of the Iraq war on the American family.
The film, which appears to be headed for a cable release rather than to the big screen, combines the story of the triple-amputee Vietnam veteran and his moving interviews with grieving families and wounded survivors of the Iraq war. The documentary is named after Cleland's autobiography, "Strong at the Broken Places."
"I was thinking how eagerly I volunteered for Vietnam, what an aggressive young trooper I was," said Cleland, who represented Georgia in the Senate until he lost re-election two years ago.
"I see these young men and women that get wounded, some of them not even citizens yet, that are looking at the same questions I was... I know they carry these wounds to their grave."
Now director of the federal Export Import Bank, Cleland is a close friend to Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry, a fellow Vietnam veteran. The 1964 graduate of Stetson and member of the university's Board of Trustees will be in Daytona Beach on Aug. 7 to speak at a local Democratic fund-raiser.
Cleland, who is campaigning with Kerry this weekend, said it's no coincidence filmmakers are using their medium to challenge the motives of the Iraq war perhaps more than any before it — including Vietnam.
"Film and politics are now more juxtaposing," he said, "because you've got real things to talk about. Real war. Real people."
In a phone interview Thursday, Cleland said he had seen Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit9/11" a day earlier.
"It's incredible," said Cleland, who believes the movie and his own documentary will have an effect on the presidential campaign.
"It's devastating to the president and this war because it shows what a sham it is."
Cleland's documentary is a rebuke of President Bush and the war in Iraq, but absent are the conspiracy theories or light-hearted footage in Moore's theatrical hit. Cleland's film is about an hour long.
In it, Cleland praises the soldiers as patriotic even while criticizing the Bush administration for sending them into harm's way. He argues that Bush failed to prove why it was critical to target Iraq as a new front in the war on terror.
One of the first scenes shows the former senator, whose legs and an arm were lost 36 years ago in a grenade explosion, visiting with Alan Lewis, now aided by artificial legs after his were destroyed when his Humvee hit a land mine. The image of the two men together underscores Cleland's thesis that there are eerie similarities between the wars — neither particularly popular nor justified, but both enormously costly.
"I just can't sit by as a Vietnam guy and watch another Vietnam happen," Cleland said.
The film's producer, former Arizona Secretary of State Richard D. Mahoney, is trying to find a buyer for his documentary. He has been negotiating with cable stations, including HBO and Showtime, and plans to distribute it to college campuses.
"We've heard so much about this war from the standpoint of people inside the Beltway playing the political game," Mahoney said. "I felt a year ago there was another story — the story of soldiers and their families who pay the sacrifice, in some cases the ultimate sacrifice."
Like "Fahrenheit," the film shows families of soldiers killed in the line of duty channeling their grief into rage toward Bush.
Jane Bright, the mother of Sgt. Evan Ashcraft of Oak Grove, Ky., killed in the war, said the military wouldn't allow her to be at the airport for the arrival of her son's flag-draped coffin.
"They don't want crying families, crying parents when their child comes off an airplane in a casket," she said. "That's part of the disassociation with the realities, the outcomes, the consequences."
Perhaps most compelling of all are Cleland's kitchen table discussions with the family of Spc. Jamaal Addison, who was from Roswell, Ga. Addison's son, Jamaal II, was born while his father was serving overseas.
"Our grandson is what keeps us going," said the soldier's father, Kevin Addison. "Having him, we feel like we still have Jamaal with us."
Staff Writer Cindi Brownfield and The Associated Press contributed to this report.