Body of War: Phil Donahue & Iraq Vet Tomas Young

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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/body_of_soldier.html Twenty-two year-old Tomas Young called his Army recruiter on September 13, 2001. He wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Instead, his unit was sent to Iraq in March 2004. Less than a week after arriving, Young suffered a shot to the collarbone that left him paralyzed from the chest down. While Young was recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC, he met former talk-show host Phil Donahue. I didnt know then that I was going to make a movie, Donahue said last night at a Reel Progress screening of the film. But upon hearing Youngs story, he wanted to show the human costs of war to a larger audience. Donahue had never made a movie, so he partnered with documentary filmmaker Ellen Spiro. The resulting film, Body of War, follows Young from his 2005 wedding, through his daily struggles with physical disability, to his involvement in Iraq Veterans Against the War, all set against the backdrop of the 2002 congressional debate over whether to authorize the president to use military force in Iraq. The past year has seen a glut of films about the Iraq conflict, but none so pointedly from the perspective of a returned soldier. THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS www.AMERICANPROGRESS.org