Mike Shiley traveled to Iraq during the war with a press pass he made himself and a bulletproof vest he rented, determined to film what the American networks were not showing. In this interview, he explains why he went around the embedded-journalist system built by the military and the major broadcasters, and what he found once he was filming Iraqis directly instead of relying on official briefings. The conversation centers on his argument that corporate media coverage of the war functioned less like investigative journalism and more like propaganda, shaping American fear of Arabs and manufacturing consent for the invasion rather than informing the public about it. Shiley talks through specific choices he made in the field, the risks of working without official credentials, and the gap he saw between the war as reported and the war as lived by the people caught inside it. It is a filmmaker's account of why he thought the story needed telling his way.