"Gunner Palace" is also a measure of how media and technology have changed the picture of war -- even strategically. "There were times when we reviewed footage that Mike took while on patrol with us, to analyze stuff out there for when we would go back to certain places," says Robert Beatty, 33, an active-duty sergeant with the gunners. Beatty spoke by phone from Giessen, Germany, where he's training a new deployment of soldiers for their mission in Iraq.

"Mike was real cool about the whole thing, though I'm not sure he necessarily knew we were doing it or how dangerous a certain mission had been. We would get back and ask, 'Can we see that patrol you just filmed? Hey, could you pause it right there? What's the number on that house?' So we used some of his technology to our advantage. We sometimes did that with reporters, too."

The documentary also looks unflinchingly at the daunting odds against training Iraqis for their own new security force to stabilize and protect the country. "I know for a fact that many of the people we were training were not professionals," Beatty says. "There's a small selection of jobs the Iraqis can get, and this was one of the easier ones. Some of the guys would say that they were just there for the money. You can't blame them for that, because they're just trying to support their families, but by the same token, their patriotism was in question. I felt like a lot of them would do whatever they could for the highest bidder."

None of the soldiers in the film appear to question the rationale for the war or the ongoing mission -- but some wonder whether Americans, both then and now, have really cared to tune in to the long, difficult battle.

"I think a lot of people in America don't have a good sense of what's really going on out there, and a lot of what you see on the news really doesn't describe it too well," says Spc. Stuart Wilf, one of the most animated guys in "Gunner Palace." Wilf, whose tour of duty is over, says that he and his fellow soldiers are proud of their service, including personally helping out a number of Iraqis they came to know. But he also had a lot of mixed feelings when he left Iraq.

"I didn't really see a whole lot of point to the stuff we did," Wilf says. "Most the time we were just trying to get each other out of there. I really didn't want to leave feeling that we didn't accomplish anything, that we did it all for nothing, because people who were close to us died out there. But I watch the news today and it seems like the 'same shit, smaller shovel' going on. I don't really see where it's going to lead."

Several Iraq veterans not affiliated with the film or the soldiers in it, but who attended pre-release screenings last month, praised its authenticity. "It's very clear when you watch this movie that this is soldiers telling their own story and being upfront about how they really feel," says Capt. Ray Kimball, who served as a helicopter pilot during the initial invasion from Kuwait to Baghdad in March 2003, and who is now a member of the nonpartisan veterans advocacy group Operation Truth.

Although the film shows relatively little violence, none of it particularly graphic, Kimball says it is "brutally honest" about how civilians can get caught up in war unfairly and how soldiers cope with the pressure. The latter results in a stream of scatological language, which originally earned the film an R-rating. But the filmmakers appealed the rating on the grounds that teenagers targeted for recruitment by the military shouldn't be kept from seeing a realistic picture of the war for which they're signing up. They won the appeal and the film received a PG-13 just a week before its March 4 release.

"I didn't think 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was particularly accurate because it only showed those guys getting all amped up before they go out on combat missions," says Iraq vet Capt. Bill Taylor. A Black Hawk helicopter pilot who operated around Mosul from November 2003 through 2004, Taylor says he has "a hard time" with people who make snap judgments of soldiers in the middle of combat. "If these guys are going on a combat mission, and listening to Metallica helps get them through it, so be it. It's a mistake to go for the sound bite and show these guys as if they're just a bunch of cold-blooded killers. Everybody has their own way of coping, and I think 'Gunner Palace' does a better job of capturing the whole picture."

"Gunner Palace" opens in U.S. theaters against a backdrop in Iraq very different from when the movie was made. More than a year later, after waves of uprisings, terrorist suicide attacks and a relatively successful national Iraqi election, the insurgency still appears to be going strong. Beatty, who is preparing to be deployed from Germany back to Iraq again soon, takes pride in his job as a professional U.S. soldier -- but he acknowledges the even more dangerous Iraq of today and the psychological pressures he will face when he returns.

"Your mortality is questioned daily," he says. "You find yourself looking at your group of guys and wondering, Who's gonna get it today? In Iraq, you can do everything right and you'll still be dead. This could be your last day. Hell, your last minute."

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