Presented by the Hudson Valley Programmers Group
7:15 pm | $7/$5 members
In February 2003, Lorna Tychostup, a single mother and News & Politics Editor for HUDSON VALLEY’S CHRONOGRAM magazine, knowingly risks her life, imprisonment, and a million dollar fine by traveling to Iraq under the threat of war.
On a mission to “bring back the face of the Iraqi people” to the American public, Lorna returns with images of ordinary Iraqis she hopes will sway people against the invasion. Her controversial journey is challenged in a live television broadcast as FOX News lambastes her efforts as “villainous and bordering on treason” and accuses her of aiding and abetting the enemy… on the brink of war.
Deeply affected by her time spent with Iraqis, Lorna returns to an occupied Iraq intent on uncovering the untold stories. Traveling without security in local taxis, she stays in small unprotected hotels outside the safety zones where mainstream journalists are lodged.
Returning to the US after each trip with stories she believes are not reaching American TV sets, Lorna travels around the country giving lectures, presenting her slide show and appearing on innumerable media outlets. The more she uncovers and reveals the realities of Iraqis and American soldiers, the more she is forced to question her original agenda and what she begins to see as her own naive idealism.
Lorna’s story, and those she crafts about the issues and people most directly affected by the war in and occupation of Iraq, raise larger questions about good and bad, left and right, Republican and Democrat and where America and Iraq connect at this juncture in history.