Everyone has an agenda.

Here's mine: it is one of pacifism. I do believe in peace and violence only as a means of last resort.

The makers of the film "Voices in Iraq" have one, too. Ostensibly, the idea of the documentary is admirable - distribute 150 digital cameras to ordinary Iraqi citizens, so they can film the world around them, starting in March 2004, one year after the American invasion.

What should have happened was a cinema verite examiniation of the country at large without comment, but it departs about twenty minutes in to show torture footage from Abu Gharib from Saddam Hussein's brutal reign and uses this footage to excuse the American abuses because Saddam Hussein did much worse. An abuse of authority is still an abuse and cannot be excused this way.

In fact, the documentary seems to be a rationale for defending the American invasion. It does talk about the Kurdish genocide in 1988 but then where were the American armed forces then? One person brings up the never proven connection between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. In fact, "Voices of Iraq" occasionally departs from its chosen structure to show propoganda made by the terrorists.

I had always recalled that WMD's and terrorism were the reasons for going to war in the first place but when the infrastructure of Iraq was ripped out without thought of what would happen next, this allowed for much more terrorism to happen. Thus, even with the new freedoms enjoyed by the Iraqi people, explosions can be heard in the background.