SDR – that was the segment I was referring to. That makes sense – I felt like those two stories fit with the overall theme, but just seemed very out of place in the film.

I just missed an interview with Burns the other night – I guess I felt that the overall message was that no matter what the reason, or what the news reports, or the leaders of the war say or do, the actions of the war are made up of a whole bunch of people we will never hear about – and he did this with the intent of trying to tell the story from the perspective of some of those people.

I thought he did a good job of capturing the feelings of a couple of the guys – kids signing up for “adventure” and getting sent off to do things that under normal conditions are considered wrong and in many cases suffering through things that can and did kill some people. I thought both the story from the Bataan Death march and the battle of Guadalcanal were really interesting to hear how the two guys felt when they left then how they talked about the things that happened.

I did not think that Burns was trying to make any points for or against the war in Iraq, which was good – it allowed people to watch it from a purely “interest in the history” point of view completely outside of my opinion about Iraq. I would guess many here, like me, had grandfathers or other relatives in the war and it was interesting for me to watch and learn a couple of new things about something that had a major impact on my family (my father was born 2 weeks before Pearl Harbor and my grandfather was drafted to serve as a doctor). It was a film about war and that will be enough to draw enough comparison from both sides. Critics will grab the comment or story they want and make a point for or against the war Iraq regardless of what Burns intended, so he really did not do anything with the film that I thought was trying to draw any direct comparisons.