[Ramona_A_Stone]

Of course, albed, you would choose to feel that the 'realistic' war films are the ones displaying against-the-odds heroism against faceless enemies and fraternal bonding with happy endings and the national anthem playing with saccharin strings as the credits roll. We already know this about you because you get your ideas about war selectively from Hollywood just like everyone else who's never been in combat, and it's quite obvious from your gung-ho-istic stance that you prefer to think of war in general as a righteous act of altruistic and ethical men out to save the world, not only from terrorists, extremists and evil warlords, but probably from dirty hippies, liberals and gays and anything else currently on your agenda for cleansing.

Stone enlisted in the Army during the peak of the Vietnam war specifically requesting combat duty, and got a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart--while Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks & Ridley Scott were, I suppose, probably busily making the world a better place by getting painful collagen treatments for their adolescent acne scars.

But of course you'll choose their second-hand glossy depictions of the glory of war over the filth, corruption, despair and nauseating futility of the reality and humanity Stone wrestles with in his films any day. Big surprise.

"A civil society that celebrates military veterans of the Second World War by major motion picture depictions of them abusing and murdering prisoners of war, as was the case in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, should not be shocked when such behavior is to some degree emulated by young inexperienced members of the National Guard."
--Lawrence Rockwood from the California State University at San Marcos, addressing Dr. Albert C. Pierce of the Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics.

Nor I suppose should we be shocked that thousands are willing to march into battle to further the business agendas of a handful of already filthy rich scum thinking they're fighting for justice and the preservation of the American way of life.

You mock Hollywood while simultaneously buying into its worst propaganda. You're constantly decrying all forms of lies but can't even hear the few voices that have to fight to tell the truth in a medium controlled by the same interests which drive us to these pointless sham crusades. How excruciatingly characteristic.