The New York Times vs Patrick Dollard

We first heard of Patrick Dollard via Marine Warrant Officer Michael Fay's blog Fire and Ice. Fay's description of the man:

He has found his long lost tribe, the Marines, and he's gone unapologetically native. A former Hollywood talent agent and producer, he's now living out a Hunter S. Thompsonesqute complete immersion into the Heart of Darkness I now see the light who are these incredible human beings called Marines experience. Other than a usually unshaved mug, lack of rank insignia and weapon, he is indistinguishable from the jarheads he follows everywhere with camera shouldered and jaunty cigarette dangling from his lip. But don't let this description lead you to believe that Dollard is not the genuine article or that he's going off half-cocked with nary a plan. This is an articulate film maker on a mission. There is method in his madness and hopefully in the very near future the fruits of his labor will grace our television screens.

Last year, Pat Dollard took leave from his family and ditched a lucrative career as a Hollywood agent representing the likes of Syriana producer Steven Soderbergh. Then he hit the front lines in Iraq, armed only with a camcorder and the vision to direct and produce his documentary series “Young Americans” from an unpopular pro-military/pro-war viewpoint.

On February 18, Dollard was wounded while on combat patrol with U.S. Marines in the city of Ramadi. He suffered a concussion, neck injuries, shrapnel wounds, possibly a broken leg, and severe muscle and ligament damage in the IED strike on his Humvee. Two of the young Marines with him on combat patrol were not so lucky. They were both killed in the attack.

The journalists I've met here, have, to a man, all been Democrats, and all have railed against the Bush administration and have, with much hope in their eyes, predicted failure for America in Iraq. The media simply cannot resist the temptation to test their power in the service of a domestic political agenda. The whole country is inflamed one way or another over this war. Only a drooling moron would argue that the members of the media are somehow exclusively immune to those passions.

It's all very simple. Christiane Amanpour, Cindy Sheehan, CNN, The New York Times, Michael Moore, Newsweek, CBS et. al. are now, in huge measure, directly responsible for the ongoing death toll of Americans in Iraq. Everyone here in Iraq, the Islamic world at large, and most especially the Jihadist Movement's leadership, follow the American media closely, in order to monitor the American people's headspace, primarily with regard to whether or not we will continue the fight on to the establishment of a successful democratic, capitalistic, and modernized society here, or whether we will run in self-imposed defeat.

First a gleeful explanation that Dollard's movie may never be seen:

Whether Mr. Dollard's planned documentary will ever see the light of day is far from certain. When he first went to Iraq with a camera for three months in early 2005, Mr. Soderbergh and George Clooney were involved with the project, and Mr. Dollard said he was negotiating with HBO and Mark Cuban, owner of the cable network HDNet.

Earlier this year, however, HBO found the scenes it was shown too unconventional for its use, according to a senior HBO executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid further embarrassing Mr. Dollard.

A virtually unknown filmmaker’s difficulty bringing his vision to reality is hardly news - it happens many times a day. But this one gets special attention in the New York Times, along with apparently critical details provided by an ex wife

Alicia Allain, one of Mr. Dollard's four ex-wives, said: "He'd rather deal with a fantasy than a reality. Reality is very difficult."

And perhaps most damning of all,

"From the time I knew him, he was a hard-core right-wing hawk, of the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz variety," said Jeremy Barber, a United Talent Agency agent who was once president of the production and management company Catch 23 and hired Mr. Dollard. In liberal Hollywood, Mr. Dollard proudly drove a Hummer with the license plate "US Wins."

"Liberals must begin to understand that the removal of their oppressors, often necessarily by violence, is the only hope for the protection of the world's future."