In 2003, filmmaker and reporter Stephen Marshall travels to war-torn Iraq to investigate a spreading insurgency that is creating an increasingly unstable situation for U.S. military troops. Focusing on the story of an ex-Shiite guerrilla returning to his homeland for the first time in over a decade, Marshall uncovers a lost optimism for a truly liberated Iraq, and the roots of an ideological split that is as divisive for Americans as it for Iraqis at the center of the conflict.