The PBS documentary show Frontline has been so good lately that I look forward to it all week. Good films, but terribly saddening. Last week, in A Company of Soldiers, Frontline rode with Dog Company, the Army’s 1-B Cav Regiment, stationed in Baghdad. The film depicted a military situation that, for all the bravery and humanity of the soldiers, is dangerous, traumatic, and by all appearances largely futile. This week was The Soldier’s Heart, about the debilitating mental effects of combat trauma on returning soldiers. Taken together, the two films add up to a devastating portrait of Iraq’s affect on the soldiers. (This disturbing 60 Minutes report suggests that literally thousands of other casualties don’t even make Pentagon lists because they didn’t happen as a result of enemy fire, but that’s yet another story.) Frontline offers many of its original interviews in their unexpurgated form online, as well as the entire program available on the web after a few days have passed.
