Aug. 12, 2006, 1:10AM

Iraq videos on Web offer soldier's-eye view of war
Troops, civilians show the world action-packed clips on popular YouTube site
By MICHAEL HEDGES
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — As the video clip picks up momentum, driven by a heavy-metal soundtrack, U.S. Marines pour a hailstorm of bullets and grenades into a housing complex while ducking return fire.

When an Iraqi house explodes from a shell impact, the Marines erupt in a howl that mixes excitement, hatred, fear and joy.

Welcome to YouTube, an Internet site on which American soldiers, Muslims, anti-war Westerners and others display a video version of the Iraq war unfiltered by conventional journalistic values and framework.

"YouTube and other viral media elements will revolutionize the way people understand war," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former U.S. Army officer in Iraq who runs the Iraq Afghanistan Veterans Association.

"The American people are getting a filtered version of what is happening in Iraq from the mainstream media, the Pentagon and the White House," Rieckhoff said.

"What is coming from soldiers themselves is allowing people to see at least a slice of the battlefield without those filters," he said. "This is a way for a soldier to say, 'Hey, this is what I am seeing here.' "

Plus enhancements, of course, such as the macho music and computer-added titles that give several of the videos the feel of brutish homegrown entertainment.

Combat set to music
At YouTube — which has become the leading repository for amateur video postings since its inception late last year — the online world can see an eclectic collection that spans the universe of opinions about the war.

There are combat footage, videos that appear to show American soldiers being attacked by insurgents, clips of soldier homecomings, silly or surreal anti-war cartoons, tributes to the U.S. military and shots that appear to show atrocities committed against civilians.

More than 8,200 video clips with the word Iraq in the title were posted on YouTube one day last week. The most popular offerings each had been viewed by more than 85,000 people.

The largest audiences tend to view ones that strike a viewer as a pure injection of adrenaline — combat scenes played over head-banger music that ratchets the pulse rate.

An unidentified video contributor who uses the code name NKavalir captured that rush in two videos that are vivid portrayals of American troops in combat.

Apparently filmed with a hand-held camera, the videos show Marines directly engaged in firefights; funneling a deafening fusillade of machine gun fire into Iraq targets; throwing grenades into windows and smashing through barricaded compounds with heavy armored vehicles.

Explosions from artillery and tank rounds punctuate the clip, which, ironically, uses an anti-violence song by the alternative-rock group System of a Down as a soundtrack. The Marines can be seen storming an Iraqi compound while the song wails, "Pushing little children with their fully automatics, they like to push the weak around ... "

Edited to make point
The video maker did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

But others had plenty of comments about the work. Opponents of the war in Iraq from numerous countries castigated the video as obscene glorification of war.

Others complimented the video for its intensity, and applauded the Marines for their service.

Some clips are taken from the mainstream media, then altered to fit a poster's point of view.

An example is a two-minute video someone cut from a 2003 PBS documentary. The clip shows two young American soldiers in the early days of the Iraq war forcing an Iraqi looting suspect out of his car, then shooting the car full of holes and smashing it flat with a tank.

In the original documentary the episode was presented as part of a lengthy documentary that sought journalistic balance and depth. Reduced to a couple of minutes, it is a visual punch in the gut worthy of any anti-war propagandist.

Gauging the veracity of video clips can be a challenge. Someone recently posted a video that appeared to show some American security contractors in Iraq dealing roughly with Iraqi males. But is the whole thing a fabrication? After all, the poster's other videos include purported UFO crashes.

Troops' cameras fill void
YouTube is not the only way war imagery is being shared.

Islamic insurgents have Web sites. There have been documentary films, like the recent so-called War Tapes, made from the video shot by soldiers. Combat troops send video clips to bloggers or friends that then migrate across cyberworld like a virus. Some sites carry content much more graphic and grisly than YouTube, such as images of Americans apparently being killed in combat.

Christopher Hanson, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland and former war reporter, noted that as far back as the Philippine Insurrection more than 100 years ago, many Americans got their most clear sense of what was happening on foreign military deployments from letters home from soldiers — not the so-called mainstream media.

"In recent times, it has become so dangerous (for journalists) to go out and report independently from Iraq that soldiers are able to play the role of eyes on the war when the press sometimes can't," he said. "Anything you can get from Iraq is good for people to have."

Web site sets its own rules
YouTube was started in 2005 by three men in San Mateo, Calif. By mid-July, the company announced that 100 million clips were viewed on the site and that 65,000 new videos were added every day.

Contributors must register with the company, but are anonymous to viewers unless choosing to respond to an e-mail. The company said it bans pornographic, libelous or defamatory material, along with material that is racist. The site is largely self-policing.

"Our community understands the rules and effectively polices the site for inappropriate material," a company statement said.

But there have been controversies over posted videos.

In June, the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned a four-minute video initially posted anonymously on YouTube by U.S. Marine Cpl. Joshua Belile called Hadji Girl.

In the form of a music video, it tells of a fictitious encounter between a Marine who meets an Iraqi girl and her family. The meeting degenerates rapidly into homicide.

The video was yanked from the site, Belile apologized and the Marines are investigating whether he should be punished.

The U.S. military in Iraq does not require service members to submit material before it is posted on the Web. It does prohibit the distribution of classified information, names of casualties before next of kin are notified, and details of ongoing investigations, according to a memorandum from Multi-National Corps Iraq headquarters.

Rieckhoff, author of an acclaimed book about his tour in Iraq called Chasing Ghosts, said the use of video cameras by soldiers is becoming commonplace.

"It became a leadership challenge for me," he said. "I wanted my guys seeing things down the barrel of a gun, not the viewfinder of a camera. But there was a carnal need for guys to capture and share this stuff — not to be alone with it."

michael.hedges@chron.com

Ellie