-Caveat Lector- http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer? pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid= 1035778986150&call_pageid=968332188854 Mar. 11, 2003. 11:36 AM CP FILE PHOTO Sacha Trudeau, in Montreal last month to announce fellowships for research on public policy issues, says he wants to tell the story ? not be the story ? of life in Baghdad on the eve of war. http://www.thestar.com/images/thestar/img/030311_trudeau_sacha_ 200.jpg?GXHC_gx_session_id_=68d504b7377a29b5
Sacha Trudeau slips quietly into Baghdad Filmmaker wants to 'bear witness' MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU BAGHDAD?Sacha Trudeau slipped quietly into the capital of Iraq yesterday, utterly alone and calmly determined to bear witness to a war he can't stop. Digital camera in hand, Trudeau intends to disappear into the atmosphere of impending doom and chronicle what he fears will be the global mistake of a lifetime. "I am here to storytell, in the largest sense," said the 29-year-old independent filmmaker and son of late prime minister Pierre Trudeau. "I can't stop this war. ``But I felt, almost for spiritual reasons, that I had to be here. And to stay here to the end, to bear witness. "Whatever happens next may set back the world so far we will suffer the consequences for the rest of our lives." Trudeau's journey is one of personal conviction. But it is also so low-key as to be virtually beneath the radar. Not a soul knows he is here. He is tucked inside a small hotel far from the pack of international journalists. He wants to tell the story, not be the story. He spoke only with great reluctance yesterday and is likely to say little more on the matter until it's over. Lying low is now mandatory in Baghdad, a city rife with rumours that foreigners will soon be asked to leave. Many among the estimated 600 journalists in Baghdad are under editors' orders to evacuate the city before expected U.S.-led air strikes. But even among those committed to staying, few if any are prepared to say so unequivocally. The spectre of explosive sectarian violence on the heels of a fallen regime is a scenario that wins their gravest respect. Trudeau, who majored in philosophy, not journalism, concedes the situation gives him pause. After the tragic death in 1998 of his younger brother Micha in a British Columbia avalanche, he knows well the familial pain of a life lost too soon. But he said his mother, Margaret, who has anguished over his safety during past filmmaking journeys to Kosovo and Papua New Guinea, supports his decision to come to Baghdad. "The last thing I want to do is cause that kind of hurt. I'm putting together multiple decision-trees for multiple contingencies to be here as safely as possible," he said. "I just feel there will be lessons here to last us a lifetime." Trudeau's preparations include extensive briefings from Canadian military affairs analyst Scott Taylor, who has been to Iraq 11 times as a journalist and, separately, as an international observer. Taylor's prognosis, based on three trips since November, is that Baghdad is unlikely to see widespread civilian deaths during air strikes because the American-led attack will be entirely precision- guided. Iraqi troops at the northern and southern fronts, however, face obliteration, he warned in an earlier briefing for the Star. Though technically armed combatants, the frontline soldiers are all underfed conscripts, many of who would likely shed the uniforms they were forced into and flee if stationed in Baghdad. "Military strategy says you put the least reliable troops at the front, with the Republican Guard further back," said Taylor, who observed Iraqi infantry positions during a daring trek last month from Baghdad to Iraqi Kurdistan. "These guys are starving. Just sitting there in the open desert without camouflage. They have stationary artillery cannons that can't reach the bombers, which will be flying at 15,000 feet (4,500 metres). "There is nowhere to run, there is nowhere to hide, nobody to surrender to and they are not there by choice," he said. "In my opinion, that makes them civilians. And tens of thousands will die." Trudeau said Taylor's analysis helped galvanize the decision to witness the war himself. He declined to say where the results of his journey will be shown. 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