The Ground Truth (2006)

Filmmaker Patricia Foulkrod produced and directed this documentary, designed to shed light on a little examined side of war -- the soldiers who do the fighting. The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War focuses on the men and women who fought in the War in Iraq, but found themselves largely ignored in the media coverage of the conflict and in their treatment by the military bureaucracy when they came back from the front lines. In extensive interviews with veterans of the Iraq war, these men and women talk about the hardships of war, the danger of serving in a country where the people you defend often consider you the enemy, the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder, the gap between media coverage of the war and the grim realities soldiers see on the battlefield, and the often callous treatment extended to soldiers by military authorities and the Veterans Administration. The Ground Truth was planned with a March 2005 release in mind, in hopes of having the film in theaters in time for the second anniversary of the beginning of the war.