U.S. military police Friday thwarted a massive escape attempt by suspected insurgents and terrorists from this southern Iraq Army base that houses more than 6,000 detainees when they uncovered a 600-foot tunnel the detainees had dug under their compound.This is a very dangerous scenario. A single individual hatches a plan to break out of their cell and enter the prison sewer system, running for hundreds of feet to their freedom on the outside. They might smell like crap on the way out, but the cleansing rain on the outside purges them of their sin.
"We were very close to a very bad thing," Major Gen. William Brandenburg said Friday after troops under his command discovered the tunnel that prisoners had painstakingly dug with the help of makeshift tools.
Within hours of the discovery on the first tunnel, a second tunnel of about 300 feet was detected under an adjoining compound in the camp, which holds 6,049 detainees. The elaborate escape is reminiscent of the 1994 movie, "The Shawshank Redemption," where a prisoner burrows his way out of prison.
Only problem is that I just described Shawshank Redemption, not the plan uncovered in Iraq.
To properly analogize the Iraqi prison tunnels, one would have to go back to the classic film, The Great Escape. Or, if you like more current fare, Chicken Run.
It was in The Great Escape that hundreds of POWs conspired to tunnel out of the Nazi prison and stage a mass escape. That's precisely the kind of thing those held in the US prison camp sought to achieve. It was a plan to stage a mass escape designed to cause mayhem and violence. So, from a movie trivia standpoint, the author of the piece had likely never seen the movies at issue, or if he did, chose Shawshank for another reason, one that Jheka notes in his comments. In those comments, Jheka notes there's a moral dimension at play here too. I concur.
Shawshank involved a guy wrongly accused who spent years in prison and escaped after showing the corrupt nature of the prison system. In Iraq, the prison is holding guys including terrorists, insurgents, and those seeking to cause harm to coalition forces and civilians.
Why would the author of the story use Shawshank to describe the situation, when it doesn't even come close to describing the scenario uncovered?
3 comments:
I accept your point. It is quite possible that the author knows only of Shawshank Redemption, but even if that is the case, the author shows his shortcomings because the facts are dissimilar.
Chicken Run came out after Shawshank Redemption, and was quite well received. It includes a homage to the Great Escape, including the Cooler King scenes with Steve McQueen. I guess the author wasn't a Wallace and Gromit fan (folks who created Chicken Run did the earlier Wallace and Gromit claymations).
The Great Escape is a close fit. And it is 95% true - excepting maybe the 'Cooler King' bit.
Back in 2nd grade (1946), my reading textbook had the story in great detail! (Had real schools, then)
Thanks for making the obvious point, that the Iraqis have clearly been studying up on John Sturges. Too bad Shawshank's the only memorable prison break movie of the last couple decades.
More: http://technicolorwestern.blogspot.com/2005/03/life-imitates-steve-mcqueen.html
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