War, Just a Click Away

By Robert MacMillan, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer, Wednesday, August 10, 2005; 9:27 AM

"Apocalypse Now" rearranged my head when I was 16 or so.
After hearing my breathless review, my father remarked that the film was as far from a realistic depiction of war as you're likely to get. I suspected at the time that he might be wrong.
Now I know it for sure.
The proof lies in the video clips posted on ifilm.com's new section, "Warzone." For those who aren't yet hooked on Web video, ifilm.com is a site where people post video of everything you can think of from movie previews to cows wearing lingerie to the famous CNN Crossfire flap between Tucker Carlson and the Daily Show's Jon Stewart.
Warzone, which debuted last week, contains video purportedly shot, edited and submitted by U.S. and other coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And to prove the "Internet as melting pot" analogy, the site includes video filmed by (but probably not submitted by) various insurgent or paramilitary groups, including the Shiite Mahdi army.
The videos on iFilm.com are not the first "home movies" to come out of a war zone, but they show you what you can do with one good recording device, cheap editing software and the Internet as a free, worldwide distribution platform.
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