In Iraq in 2003, anything went. Reporters traded jokes with Midwestern soldiers buying milkshakes in Baghdad and drove to Fallujah on a whim to see if it really did have the country's best kabob. Trip planning consisted of pulling out a map, finding a big town you'd never visited, and making sure you had enough gas.
But those days didn't last long. Car bombs, kidnappings, and assassinations were increasing all the time. Then came March 30, when four American security contractors were killed in Fallujah, prompting a retaliatory assault on that city. The optimism of those early days began to bleed away. Friends who hated Saddam Hussein now grumbled about the US, the Sunni Arab insurgency grew in strength, Shiite militias tooled up to oppose them, and Islamist political leaders came to the fore.
The three documentaries that follow capture the transition from hope to confusion and disillusion that all the war's protagonists experienced in those days.