Stone called Russell’s film,“ the highest form of freedom of expression I’ve seen in a long, long time.” Centered around the war in Iraq, the film was deemed by Warner Bros. to be too “political” to be released with the DVD reissue of Russell’s 1999 Gulf War film Three Kings. Soldier’s Pay juxtaposes criticism of the war with statements from Iraqis who acted in Kings and knew Saddam Hussein’s regime first-hand.

FTA, which bluntly addressed the policies behind U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, was distributed for a week before being withdrawn due to pressure from the Nixon White House. According to Parker, before the film was pulled they were able to show it near military bases because the military was afraid to say, “No, you can’t.” Once the film was pulled, it couldn’t be distributed independently because no one who owned it had the financial means to do so.

Russell noted the fundamental difference between FTA and Soldier’s Pay was that the former was made about a war that had already been going on for a long time whereas Soldier’s Pay was made at the very beginning of a war. As a result, Russell said that Soldier’s Pay reflects a great deal of ambivalence in the minds of the soldiers and people like himself.

Fonda felt that Soldier’s Pay was pulled from distributed due to fears Americans have gained over time since the ending of the Vietnam War. “Americans internalized a belief that we could’ve won the war if it hadn’t been for the anti-war movement and the so-called liberal media. When we went into the first Gulf war it was like, ‘Oh, if you’re against this war you’re going to be a traitor like those people of the ‘60s and ‘70s.’ People got scared. They didn’t know what the truth was. With the invasion of Iraq, it was like, ‘You’re either with us or against us. If you speak out against the war, you’re with the terrorists.’”