Posted on 11/26/2005 4:19:14 PM PST by saquin
ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.
It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.
Willis attended Deuce Four’s homecoming ball this month in Seattle, Washington, where the soldiers are on leave, along with Stephen Eads, the producer of Armageddon and The Sixth Sense.
The 50-year-old actor said that he was in talks about a film of “these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom”.
Unlike many Hollywood stars Willis supports the war and recently offered a $1m (about £583,000) bounty for the capture of any of Al-Qaeda’s most wanted leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, its commander in Iraq. Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003.
“I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,” he told MSNBC, the American news channel.
He is expected to base the film on the writings of the independent blogger Michael Yon, a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics.
Yon was at the soldiers’ ball with Willis, who got to know him through his internet war reports on www.michaelyon.blogspot.com. “What he is doing is something the American media and maybe the world media isn’t doing,” the actor said, “and that’s telling the truth about what’s happening in the war in Iraq.”
Willis is likely to take on the role of the unit’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Erik Kurilla, 39, a Bruce Willis lookalike with a chest full of medals, more hair than Willis and a glamorous blonde wife.
He was injured in August after being shot three times by insurgents “in front of my eyes”, Yon recorded in his blog: “He continued to direct his men until a medic gave him morphine and the men took him away.”
Kurilla now has a titanium plate in his leg. He met Willis at the ball and said that his men were “very excited and appreciative that he was there”. ”
Deuce Four has a chequered history. For decades it was a segregated black unit commanded by a white officer. It was disbanded in 1951 but veterans felt hurt that its past was considered to be a stain on the army and it was revived in the mid-1990s.
When the battalion arrived in Mosul in November last year the city was under threat from insurgents. “We faced very heavy fighting for about three months,” Kurilla recalled. “Every patrol was making contact with enemy forces. We would hit them where they slept, where they worked and where they ate.”
Today the picture was very different, he said. “I have watched a city that was in absolute chaos turn into one that has a viable Iraqi security force, which is taking the lead in fighting the terrorists.”
Yon, 41, went to Iraq after a friend from high school, Scott Helveston, a former navy Seal, was hanged from a bridge in Falluja in an incident that shocked the world. Yon had never blogged before but was the author of Danger Close, a book about his experience as a green beret when he killed a man in a bar-room brawl. He was charged with murder and acquitted on the grounds of self-defence.
“When I landed in Baghdad I was immediately struck by how much of a war zone it was,” Yon said. “Explosions were going off constantly. It was full-on.”
His first experience of Mosul was worse: “I got attacked on my first mission. One of our vehicles got hit with a car bomb and three guys were killed.”
In May, Yon took a photograph of a soldier from the Deuce Four cradling a little Iraqi girl who had been fatally wounded by a suicide bomber. He sensed that the inhabitants of Mosul were turning against the insurgents. “People began to realise that all the insurgents ever did was break things and kill people,” he said. “It started to switch from a firefight to an intelligence war. People started to talk more to us. They would pull us over and give us tips.”
The Iraqi security forces began to take pride in their work, Yon added: “These guys were getting slaughtered but they continued to volunteer and fight. It’s very dangerous now to be a terrorist in Mosul. They’re still out there but it’s not like it was.”
Willis said it would be wrong for Americans to give up on Iraq just as progress is being made. “The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed,” he said. “I mean, doesn’t everybody want that?”
Right on!!!!
Yipee Ki Yay, mutha...
BTTT
Woo Hoo! Canteen Ping!
(((((((((((Sarge))))))))
Bruce Willis is one of the very few actors that I like. Tom Selleck is the first, with Bruce & Kurt Russell tied for second. They actually seem to have some sense about them!
The DemocRATS and their left-wing mouth pieces in the media attempt to demean them and turn them into "victims" rather than heros. There needs to be a major effort by all patriots to turn that around!
The DemocRATS can never be entrusted with America's security again.
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Brothers in arms ping |
I was just about to ping you, but you beat me.
And that's rare now a days.
BUMP
if its a good movie, people will go. the MSM trashed National Treasure, it made big $$$s.
US Army 1-24 Infantry Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Michael Kurilla chats
with "Sopranos" stars James Gandolfini and Tony Sirico in Mosul, Iraq, Nov 17, 2004. USO photo by Mike Theiler
Bruce is box office.
Good on him.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!! I was wondering when someone would make a movie about this war that shows the Americans as the good guys. I haven't gone in a movie theater in ~ twenty years now (and didn't know if I ever would again), but I may make an exception for this film. Mr. Willis should be encouraged, and he deserves to prosper. Thanks for the great news, Saquin.
THank you for the ping!
Canteen Ping for Bruce Willis and our Troops!!
Yippie Kay-Ay motherfu&%ker!
Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs...
Yehaw! Just like fuc%$#in' Saigon, huh? ..
Now I have a machine gun! Ho,ho,ho...
Let's see you take this under advisement, jerkweed...
Welcome to the party pal!!!
For the real thing:
http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/
Take your time, explore, and learn. It's great stuff. Willis is merely doing justice -- to those great men that Yon has immortalized. (And to Yon, too... I sure hope he gets a nice slice of the gate!)
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