or Back to Baghdad. Long article, if you have the stomach for it...
Sean Penn went to Iraq a year ago not as an actor, but as a father, a husband and an American.
That statement smells like old bluefish...
He made the visit, from Dec. 13 to 15, 2002, to shill for Saddam Hussein learn about the American-Iraqi conflict from the people who werenât thrown into the shredders were living through it. A year later, the week before Saddam Hussein was found in a sewer captured, Penn returned to Iraq to find out how life had changed after the American invasion. What follows is his account of what he saw.
This is Sean speaking...Doc Birnbaum filled the last of three receptacles with my blood (he was concerned about my looming cholesterol problem and had graciously made a house call), then slid the needle out of my vein as my phone rang.
I see you have experience in that area, Sean.
I answered as the doc pressed a cotton ball onto the puncture in the crook of my arm. It was Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Global Exchange, a San Francisco human rights organization. I had put out the word that I wanted to return to Iraq to write a piece for The Chronicle, having been granted a press credential by its editor, Phil Bronstein. Medea called to tell me that she would be taking a delegation of parents of servicepeople, both killed in action and on active duty, for a weeklong "mission of peace" to Iraq -- a trip unprecedented in the history of U.S. military activity. They would be departing Saturday, Nov. 29 (our phone conversation took place on Thanksgiving Day), embarking from various U.S. airports with a rendezvous point at the "Meditation Room" at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. Our conversation ended as the doctor placed a Band-Aid over the cotton ball, wished me a happy Thanksgiving and left with my blood.
I, me, my... Itâs all about you, isnât it? I thought this was supposed to be a follow-up on Iraq?
Ever since the bombing of the U.N. building in Baghdad in August, I had felt increasingly tugged toward Iraq. As I had made my cautionary opinions known prior to our military engagement, in a self-financed letter to the president in the Washington Post (Oct. 18, 2002),($50K - Ed.) and then reiterated those thoughts after our invasion of Iraq in a self-financed ad in the New York Times (May 30, 2003),
So much for the crushing of dissent.
I felt a responsibility to change or reaffirm my position in light of the fact I was wrong the context of the new situation for our U.S. soldiers, and Iraqi civilians as well. The call from Medea fixed my decision to go.
"That, and I donât have any movies currently in the dock!"
Gaining the support of my family would be tricky. My reputation within our home is one of impulsiveness, hubris and an overall bloated sense of my own survival instincts.
And thatâs different from your public persona in what way?
Of course, this is entirely unfounded, but weâll leave that for another day.
Right...
My wife and 12-year-old daughter are different people in the sense that my wife will occasionally kiss me on the lips, and my daughter, occasionally on the cheek. With this one exception, theyâre exactly the same person.
Uh, no, theyâre not...
| "Mr. Jackson! Mr. Penn on line two!" |
And when I told them, "Iâm thinking about going back to Iraq," they rolled their eyes and said, "Uh-huh." I interpreted that to mean "Youâre an idiot" or that they just didnât want to invest in my explanation. So much for guidance.
One manâs idiocy is another manâs bravery, I suppose.
But my 10-year-old son said rather quickly, "Could you get killed?" I immediately and idiotically responded with, "I could get killed crossing the street -- or struck by lightning -- and SARS, what about SARS?"
| "I could roast to death in an episode of global warming!" |
What follows is barely restrained criticism of our military and our efforts to free the Iraqi people from thirty years of fascist repression. Vanity, thy name is Sean Penn. 
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