Nick Broomfield is a master film maker. Battle for Haditha is one of the best war films ever made.

Broomfield has both a law degree and a political science degree and accordingly he has the intellectual depth to undertake a difficult subject such as the Iraq War.

He uses powerful imagery, compassion and humanity to show their antitheses in a bloody and cruel insurgency where most of the victims are innocent civilians. The film shows us just how difficult an insurgency is to defeat; he demonstrates how the inurgency provokes retaliation and indiscriminate violence which is misdirected against non-combatants, when the few insurgents disappear into the chaotic side streets adjacent to a residential area of Haditha, near the vicinity where an IED device was detonated causing marine cassualties.

Films such as Haditha have made the TIFF the best festival in the world.

At the beginning of the film we join the marines as they race across the Iraqi desert with rock & roll music in the background and childish games among the marines. The insurgents in civilian clothes cross paths with the Marines at a music store shortly thereafter.

The insurgents are made up of hardcore fanatics, Iraqi veterans and ordinary civilians caught up in a storm attempting to make some money on the side but without much passion for the cause.

The Iraqi War  veteran is old and out of shape but comes back to serve the insurgency because he is unhappy at the lack of water, electricity and a decent pension; he complains he was discharged after 20 years of service with no pension and no honours; he is motivated by a love of country and longs for a peaceful and leisurely retirement where he can fish beside a river. He comes into the conflict for money to supplement his pension and because of hatred for the Americans who he blames for Iraq's problems.

The film educates us on the complexity and brutality of the Iraq war; the human suffering on both sides; and the lack of any clear and noble objectives.

A marine states at the beginning of the film that he does not know why he is fighting in Iraq. This is one of the major problems with this war and mirrors the errors of the Vietnam era.

The movie also shows the lack of good intelligence and how indiscriminate violence against civilians empowers the insurgency, undermines morale of the troops,  and plays into the hands of the hardcore fanatics, who are very similar to the Nazis and Bolsheviks (few in number but hardcore and committed to a cause). Reprisals based on rage are ineffective and counter productive. What is needed are more spies, and assasins. After all the old guy comes back for $500 U.S.It does not take a lot of money to retain them. The US military recently paid $300,000 for two screws costing .33 cents each. This shows the waste and mismanagemnt of resources and helps explain why things have not gone as well as they could have.

This film helps us review past mistakes and allows time to reflect, correct our errors and move forward.