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Former Spc. Chris Roessner enlisted in the Army on July 11, 2001, hoping to earn some money for college.

Two years later, he was passing time during charge-of-quarters duty at the presidential palace in Tikrit, Iraq, watching a classic Vietnam War movie, when he decided that one day, he'd like to tell his own war story on screen.

"I put in Oliver Stones movie 'Platoon,' " Roessner, 33, told Army Times in a Thursday phone interview. "I was so deeply touched by that movie because it was so personal, and it wasnt a war movie in the sense of, 'Take that hill, or kill that bad guy.' It was about young men, who look young. And to watch young men go through a year of the Vietnam War in a way that was specific and was also beautiful -- I really connected with that."

Roessner, a civil affairs specialist, spent three months in Kuwait waiting for the war to get started, he said, and then a year in Iraq that saw a sea change in the War on Terror.

"We moved into the presidential palace, and we had about three months of what I called the honeymoon period where it felt like my job was basically to shake hands and kiss babies. It felt like I was more in a parade than a convoy," he said. "That lasted for, like I said, a couple months. Then, seemingly overnight, everything changed. There was a lot of insurgent activity. Im sure people were pouring over the borders from Syria and Iran. And it became pretty violent pretty quick."

Still sorting through his experiences a decade later, Roessner wrote and then signed on to executive produce "Sand Castle," which premieres Friday on Netflix.

The film follows a civil affairs squad, through the eyes of Pvt. Matt Ocre, tasked with rebuilding a destroyed water pumping station in Iraq, and the challenges of winning the locals' trust while butting heads with the pessimistic Special Forces captain trying to root out insurgents among the villagers.

The University of Southern California film school graduate talked to Army Times about his perspective from the Army's nation-building force and trying to tell more authentic stories in Hollywood.

"I'm looking desperately forwhat I call my 'Coming Home' narrative," he said. "I would really like to tell a story about a bunch of men and women re-assimiliating to life after the war."

Some answers have been edited for brevity. What is your version of Iraq? Thats actually a really great question, and it allows me to preface it with this: Everybodys Iraq experience is different, and everybodys military experience is different. And if I had a different job, the movie I wrote would be different. And if I deployed to Iraq in 07, as opposed to 03, the movie would be different.

So my experience was, I got to see Iraq in a time when we were very welcomed. At least it felt that way. And then it seemed like I spent the next year of my war trying to get back to that first three.

Is the movie autobiographical?

I would say that my allegiance is to the feeling of war. It is a fictional film, but as has been stated many times by many authors that are smarter than I, fiction can be truer than true. What I tried to do, and what I hoped I succeeded in is, is imparting on the audience the feeling of war even if I have to magnify things and change things. To me, the feeling of war is falling in love with something and having it killed in front of you, over and over again. For me, and for all the rest of the filmmakers, one of the things I said to them is, I dont think were going to make people feel like they're at war by shaking the camera and shooting it like a documentary. If you want to know what war is like, watch "Restrepo."

What fiction can do is, in a two-hour time period, leave the audience with a complex feeling that doesnt quite have a name. And thats what war is. War is the realization that people have been hurt and people have been killed and at best, youve maybe moved the giant ship a half of a degree. But thats kind of the job.

Theres a line in the trailer that starts, I'd love to say I'm here to fight for freedom Did you write that, or was that a re-write down the road?

I didnt write that line, and personally, I hate it. I do. This is the tricky part: Because Im a veteran, because I wrote a movie, people at large can make the assumption that I had control or I signed off on everything that happened.

I want to be clear that Im proud of the film in its entirety, but Id be lying if I said that everything is something that I signed off on, or agreed with or didnt fight adamantly that it come out.

So that line, I dont care for at all. But the core of the question is, did I question why I was there? And I think I certainly did and I feel like most of the people around me did. Again, not because, 'Are we doing good or are we doing bad?'

It was because, wait a minute. I thought we were going to be out of here in six months thats what we were told. Then it was nine months. Then it was a year. Then, all of the sudden Im in college and I realize, holy shit, the kids who are in Iraq now were like nine years old when I was there. Thats a pretty far leap from, You guys told us it was going to be six months.

I never thought that I was doing a bad thing. The reality of my experience is, everything that we set out to do was wholly good.

So for example, there was collateral damage at one point. This Iraqi bakery got destroyed. It wasnt our fault or anything like that, but we still took it upon ourselves to fix this bakery because we knew this local business was very important to the population and the proprietor of this bakery was well respected in this village.

So we worked really hard to fix it, and felt a feeling of success when we got it done. But then, I think a few weeks later, it was bombed again because the insurgents were sending a message that, 'If you accept the help of the Americans, well make you pay.'

Thats the complexity of the feeling. We did the right thing, we earned their trust, we fixed something that was busted. But you still pay a price for that.

Thats what I mean. Its not like I felt ever at any point that, "What Im doing here is morally wrong." I dont have any of those nightmares about what I did there. But I do know that, just by the nature of being there, no matter what your intentions are, youre going to alter the course of other peoples lives.

There are some controversial plot points, like an Iraqi leader telling the soldiers they're unwelcome, and Ocre slamming his hand in a door to avoid deployment. Are those based on true events?

The first part: the Iraqi leader. It is true to form that you will speak to Iraqi leaders who are very happy to have you there, but they know that it is a very dangerous thing for them to do.

But then you also find Iraqi leaders who dont want to help you at all. People who see this as an opportunity to milk the U.S. government for some cash, and they dont want to help their people as much as you would hope. Atypical, but a true experience.

The smashing the hand in the door, thats a scene that sort of happened on set. I never wrote that scene. But I think where it came from was this idea to kind of amplify how that character felt at the beginning of the movie.

That way, by the end of the film, people have an understanding of how far hes coming since the starting point. Did it gut-check you at all that two Englishmen were cast as the leads?

It didnt, but I will say, there are a few characters in the film that I was adamant must be American. Theres a character named Chutsky, who could only be played by American. Because there is a certain American swagger and loudness, that comes with charge. And you cant invent that if youre not American. I dont give a shit if youre Laurence Olivier you cant play that kind of American if youre not American.

It didnt give me pause at all to have Henry Cavill and Nicholas Hoult, because they were super serious about the movie. And Henry Cavill, by the way his brother is in the British special forces, and when we had a conversation, he was like, "I take this stuff very seriously." And I was like, "Me too, and thats what I need."

There are only so many actors in the world, there are only so many who will get your movie green-lit, and there are only so many whose schedules will line up at the exact right time. I personally am very pleased by how those two guys, in particular, performed.

Why did you settle on the water pumping station as the core conflict?

The water pumping station evolves from the same place of trying to fix that bakery, right? Trying to do something that is important to the local community. If you make them feel safe, if they trust you, then they will help. And you feel a lot of success in that. The pumping station is invented, but its a cinematic way to take that same feeling and turn it up again. What I usually say is that, my experience in the Iraq War felt a bit Sisyphean in that, I would push a boulder up the hill alongside the other men and women that I served with, and then it would roll back down again. And then we would push it up, and it would roll back down again.

You dont get to see that a lot in war movies. Its funny the current sergeant major of the Army, who is an infantryman, was tasked with fixing a water treatment facility in Iraq when he was deployed, just because that was the most useful thing for them to be doing at the time.

Im really glad that you brought that up, because this wasnt intentional if my goal was, how can I translate my experience? You start to hit on some universal themes.

The reason why Im very proud that this movie got made, and the reason its a miracle that it got made, is that it takes a look at a war experience in a way that isnt super Hollywood-ized.

The experience of this war is very different than the Vietnam War or World War II. Its the realization that you are doing a lot of nation building and youre entrusting 20-year-old kids to help a town elect a mayor. Youre doing a lot of organizing of people and youre trying to get this different culture to understand how to organize institutions that account for their basic needs.

Im speaking from the civil affairs perspective, so Im sure people could challenge me and say otherwise. But the challenge for my time in Iraq, and the challenge for the Army as a whole remaining true to our values and remaining deeply empathetic even when youre given reason not to be, thats the real struggle for Matt.

How long will you want to help when people start dying? What I think Matt and the guys realize is, you cant throw up your hands, you cant abandon your humanity, because it is the only tool that will allow you to be successful.

The reason why Im proud overall of the movie is because it shows, number one, that the goal of the soldiers in the film is not to take the hill or shoot the bad guy. The reason those films are always made is because theyre the most entertaining and the most digestible for an audience.

To me, thats always done a disservice to what I felt war was for me. I believe that this film will sit pretty nicely in that gap between action and excitement and night raids, but also is very much concerned with the complex problem of rebuilding a village, of earning trust with a culture you dont know anything about. I think that matters.

Id rather see a 21-year-old kid rescue his buddy who just lost his arm, because thats real. That happened. Id rather see that portrayed than Captain America.

You mentioned you want to write a television show or miniseries about returning from war. Do you identify at all with the pop culture, 'dysfunctional veteran' narrative?

Yeah, I hate it. This is the best conversation Ive had about this movie in the 50-some interviews Ive done. Im not bullshitting you. This is fantastic. Im so tired of that narrative, the same way I was tired of the narrative of the American soldier in popular culture. From what Ive experienced, for myself and the guys I talk to -- I do a lot of work with veterans groups. Im a member of the Pat Tillman Foundation. I do a lot of work with guys who have PTSD and they say some pretty fascinating things.

Something akin to, "When I came back from Iraq, it wasn't the bombs and the bullets and the blood the caused me the most problems. It was this feeling of trying to re-find my purpose."

If this movie doesnt speak to your war experience as a veteran, thats okay. But I hope that you write your movie or you writeyour book or you go on a speaking tour, because every veteran has a story to tell and it deserves to be heard.

I hope that if people dont see themselves in this movie, that they take a swing at it. Because I want to see their films, I want to read their books.

Were kind of at a time now where, the people who served at the start of the war are in their 30s and 40s, and thats old enough to start talking about what happened. And I think its time to start making art that relays what weve experienced.

Originally posted here:
Iraq vet talks about his Netflix movie, pulling CQ in Saddam's palace, debunking 'dysfunctional veteran' stereotype - ArmyTimes.com

SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 21, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 32 strikes consisting of 80 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterdays strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 21 strikes consisting of 28 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Abu Kamal, five strikes destroyed seven ISIS wellheads, five oil tankers and five oil processing equipment items.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, three strikes destroyed two bunkers, an ISIS wellhead and a front-end loader.

-- Near Raqqa, five strikes engaged five ISIS tactical units and destroyed six fighting positions.

-- Near Tabqah, eight strikes engaged six ISIS tactical units and destroyed two fighting positions, a command-and-control node and an ISIS staging area.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 11 strikes consisting of 52 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIS-held building and a mortar system.

-- Near Qaim, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a weapons cache, a tactical vehicle and an anti-aircraft artillery system.

-- Near Fallujah, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Mosul, six strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units, destroyed 11 rocket-propelled grenade systems, seven fighting positions, six vehicle bombs, five mortar systems, three vehicle bomb-making facilities, a weapons cache, a medium machine gun and an ISIS staging area; damaged 11 ISIS supply routes, four fighting positions; and suppressed two mortar teams and ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed four weapons caches, a vehicle bomb and a bunker.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed a front-end loader.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

See the original post here:
Counter-ISIS Strikes Target Terrorists in Syria, Iraq - Department of Defense

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Looking for Fun in Iraq? Bingo! Wall Street Journal (subscription) ERBIL, IraqIt was just after 7 o'clock on a Saturday night and Erbil's hottest game wouldn't start for almost two hours. But Saamia Hanna Youssef arrived early to beat the rough-and-tumble lines for bingo. The 35-year-old, her gold-painted nails ...

Continued here:
Looking for Fun in Iraq? Bingo! - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

As its losses mount in Iraq, will a less potent Islamic State merge with its precursor, al-Qaida?

That speculation ramped up this week after Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi told Reuters he had information from Iraqi and regional contacts that "the discussion has started now" concerning a "possible alliance" between the two militant groups.

Referring to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaida, Allawi said, "There are discussions and dialogue between messengers representing Baghdadi and representing Zawahiri."

But analysts say ideological and tactical differences and years of open animosity between leaders will need to be overcome before the groups can align.

"While dialogue is one thing, a prospective alliance is quite another," Milo Comerford, an analyst at the Centre on Religion and Geopolitics in London, wrote this week in Newsweek magazine.

'Little love lost'

"There has been little love lost between the two jihadi groups," he wrote. "A recent IS magazine described al-Qaida as 'Jews of jihad,' while Ayman al-Zawahiri has openly condemned Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi since 2015, accusing IS's leader of having an adverse effect on the jihadi cause and creating fitna [discord]."

FILE - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

IS was founded as an offshoot of al-Qaida in Iraq in 2004, in a movement spearheaded by Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As IS started gaining more influence in Iraq and Syria in 2014, it split from al-Qaida, and the two groups have since engaged in acrimonious and sometimes bloody competition over the leadership of the jihadist cause.

For years, IS has been siphoning off followers of al-Qaida.

"IS is pressuring al-Qaida's affiliates to defect," Barak Mendelsohn, an associate professor of political science at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, said at a Brookings Institution forum in January. "While it has failed so far to shift their allegiance, it has deepened cracks within the branches and persuaded small groups of al-Qaida members to change sides."

Still, there are fundamental religious differences between the two, analysts say.

FILE - This still image from video obtained Oct. 26, 2012, courtesy of the Site Intelligence Group, shows al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri speaking in a video from an undisclosed location.

"Zawahiri has criticized the very existence of IS by claiming that the selection process by which Baghdadi became caliph was not according to the Prophetic tradition," Comerford wrote. "Across a series of statements, Zawahiri has worked to undermine the religious foundation on which IS depends for its appeal within the jihadi community."

Territorial, political issues

While both groups share an extreme anti-Western Sunni jihadi ideology, there are political differences that are rooted in territorial and political structure.

IS is in favor of establishing a government with a head figure who it officially names a "caliph." It is willing to annihilate any local group that refuses to pledge allegiance to the caliphate its self-styled Islamic State.

Although the goal of al-Qaida also is to establish a caliphate, its leaders prefer to focus on targeting the United States and the West, which they see as the primary enemies of Islam, analysts say.

"It is very hard for them to bridge that difference," said Middle East expert David Pollock, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

FILE - This image taken from a militant website July 5, 2014, purports to show the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who released a message encouraging his followers to keep up the fight for the city of Mosul.

While desperation may force al-Qaida and IS to explore coordination options, Pollack said, "I think the different personalities, the different ideologies, and in fact, the survival instinct of each group works against that."

And it's unlikely IS would diminish its goals to join with al-Qaida, analysts say.

"IS could settle for consolidating its caliphate in the territories it currently controls, but its hubris and messianic zeal do not allow for such limited goals," analyst Mendelsohn said. "It is committed to pursuing military expansion alongside its state-building project. This rigid commitment to two incompatible objectives is perhaps the Islamic State's biggest weakness."

As for combining forces in other countries including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia analysts say specific conditions, and in some cases open hostilities between al-Qaida and IS, make creating alliances highly unlikely.

Local combinations

In Iraq, retreating IS followers could find small havens in al-Qaida, at least temporarily, officials say.

"It is true that al-Qaida was born in Iraq and it seems like such an alliance will make the two groups stronger if they combine at least locally," Kurdistan Regional Government spokesman Safeen Dizayee told VOA. "But al-Qaida is never able to achieve what IS achieved in Iraq in 2014. Their sun is setting here."

And if both groups settle in one Iraqi locale, it's likely the U.S-led coalition in Iraq will target them, experts say.

"If they combine, that may have the unintended effect from their standpoint of encouraging the United States, the coalition, and our local partners in these predominantly Muslim countries and societies to fight against them as one," analyst Pollack told VOA.

The rest is here:
Might IS, al-Qaida Team Up in Iraq? - Voice of America

BEIRUT A general from Iran's Revolutionary Guards assumed the post of ambassador to Iraq on Wednesday, in a sign of the key role the military force is currently playing in its neighboring country.

Iraj Masjedi previously worked as adviser to Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, according to the Tasnim news site. Soleimani is head of the Quds Force, the branch of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for operations outside of Iran.

Since Islamic State took control of swathes of Iraq in 2014, Soleimani worked with top Iraqi security officials to fight the militant Islamist group, primarily through a Shi'ite volunteer force known as Popular Mobilization Units.

"Iran wants an advanced, powerful, secure and unified Iraq," Masjedi said on Tuesday in Baghdad, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Iran has sent dozens of military advisers and fighters to Iraq and neighboring Syria, where it is supporting Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

Masjedi has more than 35 years' experience in the Guards and a deep knowledge of Iraq, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA).

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Masjedi was a commander at the Revolutionary Guards' Ramezan base in Western Iran, which was a center for Iraqi opposition groups planning and carrying out military operations against Saddam Hussein's forces on Iraqi soil, according to the Iranian judiciary's news site Mizan Online.

The heads of some of those armed groups are now senior officials in Iraq.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday accused Iran of 'alarming ongoing provocations' to destabilize countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a review of its policy toward Tehran.

CARACAS/SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela Two Venezuelan students died on Wednesday after being shot during protests against unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro, increasing turmoil in the volatile nation amid a devastating economic crisis.

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Revolutionary Guard general takes over as new Iranian ambassador in Iraq - Reuters