Quotes from the Film

STEVE PINK'S JOURNAL

Every once in awhile as we're driving down the road or creeping along a patrol, I have a reoccurring epiphany--this is happening and will have a lasting impact on me for the rest of my life. A debate we had earlier in the day over the consistency and texture of a severed limb was not some far off grotesque assumption. It was a genuine argument between the guy who swears it resembles hamburger, ground up but uncooked and the guy who believes it looks more like a raw pot roast. There is no argument, however, that human intestines are pink pork sausage links, if of course you imagine a butcher's block as the background instead of the screaming then soon quietly moaning casualty.

SANA BAZZI (ZACK'S MOTHER)

I love my son's name. "Zaher" means blooming. When the flower blooming in the spring, so...He's 25, 26 years old and I still believe like he's like a little baby in my eyes.

We live civil war 20 years. I hate war. One time Militia shoot from the street at my house and the Army shoot back from my bathroom window. Zaher was a very, very little boy, and we stuck in the bathroom, four of us, and my kids just so scared. I never thought he was going to be Army man. He felt the Army give him discipline and make him man, more than raised by woman. I feel the Army's his family. I begged him not to be in National Guard. He didn't even listen. Life no sense for me anymore, because I have my shop, I have my car, I have my house, here I am, I came, I want to save these kids and I bring my kid to be in the worst place in the whole world.

LINDSAY COLETTI (PINK'S GIRLFRIEND)

In the beginning he was like, write something dirty. I couldn't write something dirty. Me and my girlfriend got like a Hustler magazine or something, and I went through the magazine and put a picture of my face over every girl's body. So I was like, you want dirty?! You've got it!

Steve just liked to laugh, just have a good time. He doesn't really like to let people in. He thinks his feelings are his problem, and he doesn't want to burden anyone else. Steve's way of getting emotions out is his writing. I don't think he really told me exactly how he felt about me until he was over there.

RANDI MORIARTY (MIKE'S WIFE)

When Mike first went over there, we just told Mathew he was going to go and beat up the bad guys. And then at day-care one day a little girl there said; "You know, people get killed over there..." It just completely freaked him out, like; "Is daddy gonna die?" And you know it was really, really hard for him. But I'm afraid. I'm afraid for Mike. You hear the horror stories of people from Vietnam that come back. He likes to play macho sometimes like it hasn't really affected him, but I know that it has. He has seen so much.

IN IRAQ
THE APRIL UPRISING

STEVE PINK'S JOURNAL

Today was the first day I shook a man's hand that wasn't attached to his arm. I was the first one there and immediately clamped Reggie's brachial artery. I looked down and he had his hand dangling from the exposed bone that used to be his elbow, like a child's safety clipped mitten dangling from their winter coat.

If I play the odds one of us will die before the tour is over. It's something that I don't like to think about.

TAJI CAR BOMBING

STEVE PINK'S JOURNAL

I remember giving three IV's, bandaging several wounded. Soldiers sitting in the corner of a sandbag wall shaking, screaming. Medics who were terrified and couldn't perform. I later heard that Iraqi casualties were not to be treated in Taji. They can work on the post for pennies but can't die there. They've got to die outside. If one of those incompetent medical officers told me to stop treatment I would have slit his throat right there.

We made the news today. I feel exploited and proud at the same time...I have lost all faith in the media, a hapless joke I would much rather laugh at than become a part of. I should really thank God for saving my lucky ass. I'll do that. Then I'm gonna jerk off because these pages still smell like Lindz and there won't be any time for jerking off tomorrow. Another mission at 0600.

THE TRANSFER OF POWER

MIKE MORIARTY & KEVIN SHANGRAW

MM: Iraq as a sovereign nation. What is your take on the whole thing?

KS: Well, I think it's a fantastic opportunity for the Iraqis to establish a, a new history in the country and be able to ah . . . be a free and democratic society, which in turn should stabilize the whole Middle East and create a freer and more stable earth as we know it.

MM: Tell me how you really feel.

KS: Then after that happens maybe we can buy everybody in the world a puppy.

NIGHT ENGAGEMENT (AFTER TRANSFER OF POWER)

MIKE MORIARTY

MM: Come on motherfucker! Keep going brother! You want to play?

Bowen: I think those are IP's, Mike.

MM: They're shooting at me. I don't give a fuck if they're the pope.

(The Humvee drives away).

Baril: We know you like the Army. We're tired, we're so cynical right now, man.

MM: You know I supported the mission and I support a lot of things, but I'm starting to say to myself: 'What the fuck? Shit or get off the pot!' If the problem is not going away then kick it up a notch! And I don't give a fuck if that means nuking this fucking country! Meanwhile there are fucking innocent fucking U.S. soldiers getting killed.

ON INSURGENTS

ZACK BAZZI

People say they're evil and they hate our way of life and they don't see that we are trying to liberate them. Well, if Canada invaded tomorrow and they said, you know; 'We're here to liberate you guys from Bush because we think Bush is bad for you. . . .' There's gonna definitely be some people who take to those mountains and do some serious guerilla fighting. The insurgents got their principles and we got ours. You gotta respect that. . . .

On a practical level, when I'm on the road, it's my guys versus them. The hell with the immorality of it, I want one thing and one thing only--combat.

ON TRAINING IRAQI POLICE

SSG GERALD DURGIN

I'll bet you couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a fucking barn shovel.

IN FALLUJAH

ZACK BAZZI

Soldier: Can we just build a wall around the country and leave?

ZB: A wall? Let's just leave it alone and leave. Fuck the oil man. Fuck that. It's not worth it. I'll walk everywhere in the U.S. I'll recycle everything, damn it. I'll even drive a Honda Insight. You know one of those Hybrid thingys?

Bower: Fuck that.

ZB: See, look it--you're the reason we always go to war, Bower. You and your little Ford F1000's. Redneck fuck!

Bower: I can't haul anything with a Honda Insight.

ZB: How often do you got to throw all 16 bags of fucking Budweiser cans out? Everybody wants safety right? "Oooh, my kids, I want 'em safe." So they buy more SUVs. Well then the people without SUV's say: "Holy Shit, if I get hit by an SUV, my kids are going to be crushed. So, I want safety so I'm going to buy an SUV."

Bower: Buy a Volvo if you're worried about safety.

ZB: Everybody's worried about safety.

Bower: I'm not. As long as I have a full sized truck with a frame, I'm not scared.

ZB: In fact, we're so worried about safety that's why we're here. Make sure we have safety in the U.S.

IRAQI CIVILIAN ACCIDENT

JON BARIL

As I opened my door to get out quickly, opened up the back door to get my CLS bag, the worst thing of my life, I saw, I'm like "Oh my God." The convoy trucks barreling at 50 miles an hour. They didn't even see us pull over, coming up the line, and this woman was lying directly in their path and she was unconscious.

I remember looking down and seeing crumbled cookies. Oh god. She was carrying cookies and it was spread all over the MSR. I thought of my mother.

It will be a better country in 20 years because we were there. I hope.

KEVIN SHANGRAW

I'll remember that for the rest of my life. That guy, rolling the body onto the body bag and zipping her up. The Iraqi people are who we are there to help and we just killed one of them.

POST IRAQ

RANDI MORIARTY (MIKE'S WIFE)

He so badly wants me to understand what he went through. I will never understand, just as he will never understand what I went through. Sometimes I feel like he doesn't live in reality. He so badly wants to be okay that he's just gonna believe that and everything will be fine. I took a vow with him for better for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. I don't want to get out of that. There are days that I don't like him. Absolutely there are days that I don't like him, but I still love him. I just can't imagine my life without him. I just can't.

SANA BAZZI (ZACK'S MOM)

SB: He's not emotional like me. Especially lately. He doesn't like me to be emotional, too. I think the Army has to do something with it. He was a soldier for too long and he saw a lot.

Interviewer: Do you think he'll go back to Iraq?

SB: I hope not. Just young people get killed for nothing. Nothing gonna change.

LINDSAY COLETTI (PINK'S GIRLFRIEND)

Stephen has changed a lot since he's come back from Iraq. I don't know why he says everything is fine because it's not. He can't sleep at night. He won't say it's nightmares but I know they are. He doesn't like to talk about it. I feel like he thinks if he doesn't talk about it then he'll forget about it. It's still there, and it still hurts. And I still feel it, and I wanna cry, a lot.

MIKE MORIARTY

I'm so glad I went. I hated it with a God awful passion and I will not go back. I have done my part and I feel like it's someone else's turn. My views of the war haven't changed. You've heard people say, you know, "We're over there for the oil." You know. "It's the only reason we're over there in Iraq. It's oil, it's oil, it's oil." Well listen, no. We're not there for the oil. If it were for oil, would that not be enough reason to go to Iraq? You bet your ass it would be! If you took oil away from this country tomorrow, what do you think would happen to this country? It would be, it would be devastating. So let's all stop crying about whether we had reason to go in there or not because we can fight about that forever. It's a done deal. We're in Iraq. Support what it takes to make this thing work, or shut-up!

STEVE PINK

Why the fuck are we there? We better get that oil, right? The U.S. Army is not the fucking Peace Corps. The Marines are not the Peace Corps. That's not why we're in Iraq. We're in Iraq for money and oil. Look at any other war in the history of the world and tell me it's not about money. This better be about money and if we don't get that oil and that money then all the lives that are gone right now, what is it? 1800 it's at, something around there? They're all in vain. You don't put 150,000 troops from all over the country in there and say we're there to create democracy. We're there to create money, you know? We're there to make money for us, you know. Somebody other than Dick Cheney better be getting their hands on it pretty soon.

ZACK BAZZI

Most soldiers, they want to think that they're there for a good cause, something noble. You're fighting for freedom and everything that's right. It was tough, because you have to do some not so nice things sometimes. I remember one time . . . My platoon became attached to a different military police battalion and the order was nobody is allowed on this road. There's like a hospital on one side, a lot of people live on the other. Obviously it became very apparent that I was the one who spoke their language. This guy comes up and he's like, "I got a sick baby, can I just cross the road to go to the hospital?" We're a disciplined army, so I had to say "No." But it didn't make any tactical sense. It got to the point where I stopped translating, because the squad leader would come up to me and say "Hey, well tell this guy here that he can't take a sick baby to a hospital." Well, you know what, I'm just not gonna do that.

I love being a soldier. The only bad thing about the Army is you can't pick your war.