The documentary details the lives of a platoon of Guardsmen, the self-named Bad Voodoo Platoon of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 160th Infantry. Filmmakers had unparalleled access to these guys by giving them hand-held and dash-mounted camcorders with which they've been recording for several months now their operations in Iraq.

As a journalist, the documentary succeeds in allowing the soldiers themselves tell their story. It wasn't heavy on "reporter commentary" and there wasn't any political slant one way or another injected into the film ... for the most part the grunts of Bad Voodoo told their own stories. They were candid, conversational and by the end of the hour I was left with a feeling of knowing these guys a little bit better, knowing what their mission was all about.

To advance the story, the filmmakers added a web element which as a web guy I found interesting. You see, Bad Voodoo's story aired last night but is far from over ... they don't get home until May. They're still out there running convoy operations from Kuwait to Kirkuk, and both the Frontline website and platoon's personal site is helping to advance the story to help people continue to understand what they're dealing with out there on the roads in and out of Iraq. There are blogs, extended video clips and behind-the-scenes footage which help add the context into how they created this complex documentary that gives an unfllinching view of these men. This isn't re-purposed content that was the same stuff you saw during the documentary or raw footage for the sake of being raw footage but truly additional, compelling content.

The other thing about this documentary was that it was offered up on-air last night but was simultaneously available to watch in its entirety online. Here's a 30 second promo for the documentary:

This documentary in my mind succeeded where others have failed, and not just with the war in Iraq. In other documentaries I've watched I've seen time and again the misconception that the journalist had to tell the story, interject their thoughts and ideas to help draw in the audience. Bad Voodoo's War proved that wasn't the case, that people are able to tell their own stories free of agenda, leaving the audience able to draw their own conclusions.

As a former grunt, everyone will have their own opinions and thoughts about the war or this one little slice of it. My opinion was that the documentary left me feeling drained and shaking. It made me feel claustrophobic all over again, sitting in the passenger seat of an uparmored Humvee cradling my M16 in my right hand and the radio handset in my left as we drove on some random mounted patrol through our AO.

It was intense for me as a former grunt in the same way it was successful from a journalist's point of view: You saw the soldier's eye perspective, you heard the soldier, not the journalist, tell the story, and in that it added a sense of realism. When the bad thing happens - you can watch that promo up there to see the 'bad thing' - the moments leading up to it I had a sense of dread that it wasn't going to be a milk run for the guys of the Bad Voodoo platoon. You just know something will go wrong and even when it does you feel that dread.