A tough night of TV

After Jean went to lay down with John for the night, I finished my 'night of difficult TV watching'. Stuff that is tough to watch but helps to give context to events and their impacts on people like you and me.

First up was "A Company of Soldiers" a Frontline report in which a film team was embedded with 1 Battalion 8th Calvary, Delta 'Dog' Company, 8th platoon 'the misfits'.

No matter what your view is of the war in Iraq, you need to watch this in order to understand the situation that our troops face every day on the ground.

Next was "Dirty War" Produced by the BBC and shown first on HBO, the film was then released to PBS in an edited format where I DVR'ed it. The film shows four sides to a radiological attack on London: a first responder from the fire department who's team had just lost two members in a readiness drill, officers at Scotland Yard working before the attack and after the attack, the terrorist as the plan and carry out the attack, and then the first responders wife who is in the blast area.

It's a difficult film to watch in its realism. Yet the film did miss on a few areas as point out by a round table discussion with experts in different areas. They noted that their was a near lack of panic among the survivors. That the terrorist went to the trouble of importing the radiation when they could have gotten it in the target country. And that the police were able to stop the 2nd bomb from being used.

Chilling for me was a question posed by the moderator. Your a parent of a small child and a radioactive or biological attack has just happened near your child's school. Protocol is that you stay out of the area of contamination and those in the area of contamination must stay in it until they are decontaminated. What do you do?