This episode certainly speaks for itself, but there’s one thing I should note. If you found the first episode a little intense, you might want to steer clear of this one, as it makes the first one look like “The Brady Bunch.” Sample comment from someone who called me about a week after watching it: “I’ve been disturbed all week.” You will be taking one giant leap further into the heart of darkness. Shortly into the next episode, you will be firmly at its center.

And then I’ll have something to say.

**STRONG CONTENT WARNING**

If you’re new to all this, just click here for all the background, including the series prologue and Episode One, “Return To Ramadi.”

You can also see episodes from my time in the Triangle of Death, prior to Ramadi, as referenced in the series prologue, here.

Series Prologue:

Episode 1: “Return To Ramadi”:

I was interviewing Michael Yon on my Blog Talk Radio show, “The Jihadi Killer Hour,” and we were discussing the fact that in many ways, Ramadi was the truest analogy of Afghanistan. The Iraq war hinged entirely on whether or not Ramadi could be won, as Al Qaeda needed it to control the rest of their recently established de-facto state, the Al Anbar province of Iraq. The shorthand is that we were told Ramadi, and therefor Al Anbar, and therefore Iraq, was lost, and it was time to get the hell out of what was almost literally the new Dodge, the wild west of western Iraq. Well, due to our tenacity and solid counter-insurgency plan, we won the hearts and minds of the citizens of Ramadi, and we won the war. But not before the Democrat political establishment killed many young Americans by encouraging the enemy to keep fighting by endlessly dangling the tantalizing promise of a forced media and Congress-driven surrender. There’s not much lower humanity than a person who will cost his country a war, (and in this case, the lives of those who have died in the fight that he has worsened and prolonged), for the sake of any personal gain, be it political, financial, whatever. There are people in Washington, D.C. who are guilty of treason, plain and simple. The court and laws of common sense certainly find this to be true – - I’ll leave it to the lawyers to jerk themselves off about the standards required to meet the actual legal definition. If you’re working for a defeat of your country, you’re a traitor. More on all of this, later.

The story of this project, the mainstream media whores and propagandists who tried to respectively fuck and talk it to death, is epic. I’ve decided not to go into it, despite the fact that just prior to writing this sentence I was well into an intricately constructed retelling of it all, using it as the essential element of a detailed analysis of all the larger issues it begged questions of, dove-tailed with, and stood as a microcosm of.

But fuck that, you don’t have all day and I’d rather not color what is about to unfold in the weeks ahead as the episodes of this series are presented here. ( I may serialize that longer piece in future posts). You’ll be seeing about 3-4 episodes a month, on an essentially weekly schedule.   I’ve got shrapnel embedded in a scarred body that endures the fading sight and hearing of war-damaged eyes and ears, so Big Hollywood is of the opinion that I’ve earned the right to roll these out how and when I want.  I’m grateful for that, and it is very useful creatively, so don’t expect a schedule any more rigid than “about weekly.” You can always click on my page to see whatever you might have missed due to the irregular schedule.  Each episode is very different in style, content and tone, and all work together to weave a final big picture.  This project started out as just a man alone with a camera he didn’t know how to use, and that’s almost entirely how it ended; it’s rough and unprofessional, because it’s just one of the world’s biggest home movies. I’ve designed it to be didactic by experience instead of  by lecture, so there are reasons why you’ll be dealing with limited information.  Primarily it’s because I didn’t know much more at the time events were happening than you will as you watch them unfold. We’re in this together.  Don’t be frustrated by feeling like you want more information, everything important that you want to know and are frustrated because you don’t, will come in moments or hours.

Here’s some short-hand background:  I was a William-Morris talent agent, a 17-year veteran with Steven Soderbergh as my flagship client.  I wasn’t restless, I wasn’t having a mid-life crisis, nor did I go for any other cheap reason that the Left would have you believe in order to prevent you from finding any decent, substantive or, God forbid, patriotic or moral reason to film what I did. I went because my country was engaged in both a shooting and information war, and if I could do it, I faced a moral imperative to serve my country in those wars, in the best available way that I could.  At the time, I was too old to enlist, so I joined the fray in the next most appropriate manner. In both the series and the story behind it, there are great heights of human achievement, the most stinging moments of human pain, the lowest depths of human failure and human evil, and loss of life of family and friends.  I went to war and kept my life, but lost my family, in a bizarre reversal of the usual dark process.  Someone recently told me that I have never come home.  And like so many of us who journey into war, I have found that this person was inadvertently correct.  Because I did come home, but home was no longer there.  It really never is, if only because the home we left was in part a no-longer effective illusion, and because our vision of the natures of both the world and the men who populate it, so stripped to their essential truths by conditions that are governed by nothing more than the forces of cunning and power, has been made much clearer, and so different, that home by perception is most certainly not, and never again will be, the place that we left. We will be entirely present, we will flourish, and we will start a new home with the people we left in the old one, but no one ever returns home from war.

Almost 90% of Americans believe the war in Iraq is and was a waste. The Hollywood media feeds the public wasteful, depressing, and horribly fabricated stories. When did the U.S. military become the bad-guys? We are stereotyped “Generation Kill.” I guess that is all we do. All we do is go to Iraq, hunt innocents and slaughter them. I guess that is what I did for eight months while I was there.

I guess I really didn’t save Iraqi families from being tortured by foreign jihadis. I didn’t set up the first ever Iraqi elections. Or see my brothers blown up, shot, maimed, and killed. Getting attacked from Mosques and hospitals–and you know what?  We just took it, day after day we took it and we kept going. An IED blowing up underneath me each day.  We couldn’t fight back; we were ordered not to. No matter how much vengeful, pent up aggression I felt, or how much I wanted to kill, I didn’t act on it. We have a code, Rules of Engagement. “RULES,” rules that are followed.

But according to then Senator and now President Obama, all I did was air-raid villages and kill innocent civilians.  This is a video I will never forget:

People like Pat Dollard and Micheal Yon tell the true stories.

Please watch these clips and tell me if you buy into what is portrayed. Honestly, tell me what you believe.

HBO’s rendition–was this the way it went down according to Evan Wright’s book? Or is it HBO fantasy?

Or how about this from “In the Valley of Elah.”  In the start of the movie, he fixes the flag.

<!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–> At the end of the movie, it portrays the soldiers doing horrible things (nothing good in Iraq–the entire film), it gives Tommy Lee Jones’ character the right to flip the flag at the end (the so called “international distress signal…come save our ass”).  Theme of movie—Iraq is unpatriotic and helpless. To me it means what we did over there is… unpatriotic.

And last my personal favorite, Brain De Palma’s rendition “Redacted.”  THIS SHIT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN OVER THERE.  IT IS COMPLETE fabricated bullshit. A bunch of soldiers standing around with no security. Nothing in this clip would ever happen. A wannabe gangster Sergeant talking about his three tours…? Yea right. And a PVT allowed to act that dumb? Ridiculous.

Thank you so much American media, special thanks to Hollywood. Our entire sacrifice was a complete waste. My friends died for nothing. We are exploited and lies are told. The truth is never reported. The good outweighs the bad. But you will never see it.

Click this link again.

Yours truly,

I guess this is just a bunch of lies too:

Commenters, please keep writing in your own names (and linking to your personal web sites/blogs), if you can. It has helped to keep up the quality.

The media highlight of the week was Rush Limbaugh reading and riffing on Andrew Klavan’s, “Why We Fight.” The most poignant and righteous post was clearly Charles Winecoff’s, “The Awakening of a Dumb (Gay) American.” The comments tell us everything we know about the truth about tolerance on the right. And the lie about tolerance on the left. I am extraordinarily proud to call Charles a patriot, an ally and a friend.

I am still cleaning up my britches from multiple readings of Iowahawk’s introductory post, “Movies Are Your Best Entertainment Value.” Prolific Gutfeld and Orson are the site’s Omar Sharif and Erma Bombeck.

I have to spend time with my family so I can’t thank every new contributor that came in this week, but suffice to say I am grateful and I think people are slowly getting the idea that we aren’t alone in Hollywood with our crazy non-leftist ideas.

And liberals, you will be thanking us later when our ideas get to play out in the marketplace of ideas. Trust me. It’s way too boring when everyone agrees with each other. Start giving us a little more slack, you’ll see.

Next week brings some surprises and some new names from Hollywood and the political establishment. I promise you won’t want to miss Dirk Benedict’s forthcoming piece describing his battles in the 1970s trying to keep Starbuck, his beloved Battlestar Gallactica character, a masculine rogue. He also takes on the latest feminized incarnation of the show. Dirk has a humorous and deeply analytical mind. As you will see, Dirk was fighting political correctness in Hollywood well before most of us.

And I can’t wait to see what Pat Dollard has in mind as he makes his return to Hollywood in his Big Hollywood debut.

Only had to delete one off-topic post. And sorry to readers (and the contributor) that I wasn’t as watchful as I should. We need to stay on topic.

Here are the basic guidelines:

1) Non-Hollywood voices can offer content that relates to either pop culture (film, television, music, celebrity, etc) or the intersection of pop culture and politics (e.g. Sean Penn travels to Venezuela to kiss Hugo Chavez’s ring.)

2) Hollywood voices can offer their thoughts on the above… AND talk about the political issues of the day as they see fit. If Hollywood lefties feel so free talking about their ideas, those that differ should have the opportunity to publicly express themselves — on a soapbox and in their work.

Off to take Charlie to a friend’s birthday party at the Eco-Station. Check their politicized promo. Yes, Virginia, liberals are judgmental. Until we have our kids extravaganza (Milton and Rose Friedman Nerf Land!), the left is going to be beating us using our free market ideals against us.

Yes, friends, we have our work cut out for us. Onward to week three.