As a filmmaker I have always entrusted the lens of a camera to illuminate both the stuff of my imagination and that of this world that otherwise would not be visible. This summer, I was tasked by Move America Forward – the largest pro-troop 501(c)3 in the country, which hosted the recent Troopathon that raised $541,711 for care packages for the troops – to travel to Iraq and capture a glimpse of the situation that may have ended up on the cutting room floors of the mainstream media.

My traveling companions were Matt Sanchez, a Move America Forward volunteer and producer of Fox News’ The Strategy Room; Mary Pearson, photographer; and Debbie Lee, the founder of America’s Mighty Warriors, a Gold Star mom whose son, Marc Allen Lee, was the first Navy-SEAL killed in Iraq during a fight in Ramadi on August 2, 2006.

Marc Lee

In his last letter home, Marc had written:

What I do over here is only a small percent of what keeps our country great. I think the truth to our greatness is each other. Purity, morals and kindness, passed down to each generation through example. So to all my family and friends, do me a favor and pass on the kindness, the love, the precious gift of human life to each other so that when your children come into contact with a great conflict that we are now faced with here in Iraq, that they are people of humanity, of pure motives, of compassion.

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