Other Titles • The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War • The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends (2006) • The Ground Truth
Synopses for The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends (2006)
1.
Patricia Foulkrod’s powerful documentary is another critical, eye-opening indictment of America’s occupation of Iraq. While the military has mastered the art of turning young men and women into heartless killers, it hasn’t bothered to consider what happens when these soldiers return to America. Confusion, depression, and guilt are but a few of the fluctuating emotions that torment these citizens on a daily basis. And those are just the emotional scars. For many veterans, the reminders are devastatingly physical. Like Robert Acosta, who lost his right hand in combat. Or parents Joyce and Kevin Lucey, whose son Jeffrey committed suicide after returning home and finding that he couldn’t silence his inner demons. But Foulkrod’s main objective with THE GROUND TRUTH is to expose the problem that is threatening to become an epidemic: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since this affliction is invisible and difficult to diagnose with factual objectivity, it makes it even more troublesome. Unfortunately, the American government appears to be hiding behind this excuse in order to avoid nursing this massive contingent of tortured individuals back to health. Over the course of the film, we meet many more veterans who express their disappointment with their government’s baffling lack of support, and see rare footage of recruits in boot camp, where previously calm and rational individuals are turned into ferocious, animalistic killers. No matter what side of the debate on which one stands, it’s impossible not to be affected by the stories shared within Foulkrod’s sobering documentary.
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2.
The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends is a feature documentary that looks at how our soldiers are trained to kill, and the effects of killing and combat on soldiers and their families returning from the Iraq War.
Despite the national cry to "Support Our Troops," soldiers are returning home alone and isolated - their trauma often exacerbated by an underfunded VA system. As military reports indicate, many soldiers are coming home with severe depression, drug, alcohol, and marital problems; some are taking their own life. Yet, the military and most Americans continue to react as if these soldiers are having a bad day... a day we want to assume will soon get better.
The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends provides an opportunity for a new awareness and national dialogue regarding our consciousness of killing. The film invites the American people to learn and take responsibility for the inescapable and enormous human price that is paid when we send people to kill. It asks that we deeply comprehend the physical, mental, and spiritual cost of killing in war, and to ask ourselves are we willing to pay it.
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