"Four years ago Josh Rushing helped sell the Iraq war to the American public as a Marine spokesperson when the U.S. invaded Iraq. He’s since retired from the Marines and has started working at an unlikely outlet – the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera International"
He is a former Marine Press Liason for Hollywood, former CENTCOM spokesperson, and now an Al Jazeera International employee. His insight into his thought process during his work in the USMC is interesting. A few excerpts that stood out to me:
JOSH RUSHING: The night they showed the POWs and the dead soldiers -- Al Jazeera showed them -- it was powerful, because America doesn’t show those kind of images. In most of the news, America won’t show really gory images. And this showed American soldiers in uniform strewn about a floor, a cold tile floor, and it was revolting. It was absolutely revolting. It made me sick in my stomach.
And then what hit me was, the night before, there had been some kind of bombing in Basra, and Al Jazeera had shown images of the people, and they were equally, if not more, horrifying -- the images were. And I remember having seen it in the Al Jazeera offices and thought to myself, “Wow, that’s gross. That’s bad,” and then going away and probably eating dinner or something. And, you know, it didn’t affect me as much. So the impact that had on me, me realizing that I just saw people on the other side, and those people in the Al Jazeera office must have felt the way I was feeling that night, and it upset me on a profound level that I wasn’t as bothered as much the night before. It makes me hate war, but it doesn’t make me believe that we’re in a world that can live without war yet.
(speaking on his thoughts as he watched these images)
JOSH RUSHING: It’s just hard to watch some of that footage. And I think it’s kind of interesting, because now I understand the process I was going through. And I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t recognize it at that time. But it’s a universal thing that we all do. We all feel most empathetic for those who appear most like us and the least sympathetic for those who appear the least like us. And I think going into the war, the Arabs and the Iraqis were clearly the "them." They were least like me. But the longer I was there and the more time I spent with them, the more I realized we had in common than in difference. And in doing that without quite realizing it intentionally, I was gaining a real sense of empathy for them, realizing we had so much more together than we did apart. And that’s why I realized that their dead should hurt me as much as our dead.
(about how he wound up working for Al-Jazeera)
And what I realized was, I was the only person in the world, the only person in the world, who had been inside the Pentagon, the Bush administration and Al Jazeera studios, and I had a unique vantage point. And what I saw was that Al Jazeera wasn’t what America thought it was. I saw what it actually was. And I also saw why it was so important to America's own strategic interest, much less to the world getting along a little better....
(on his feelings at his friend's funeral)
Right in the middle of that, I get a call from an old friend who says that one of our best friends from high school had just died in Iraq. His Little Bird helicopter had been shot down in a battle south of Baghdad. And so, I left and I went home for his funeral. And at his funeral, he had two young kids. One was five. One was about eighteen months -- or I guess three and eighteen months. And one was named Luke, just like my son’s named Luke. All my old high school friends were there. And Jake, the youngest one, had a pacifier that was red, white and blue, and it matched the coffin, that they laid over Matt’s coffin. I mean, he had the flag that they laid over Matt’s coffin.
And it just occurred to me that Matt had died fighting for an idea of America that was starting to resemble the state of America less and less. It wasn’t -- he didn’t die for an America where federal agents went around following reporters who were doing stories about Small Town America. He didn’t die for an America that’s run by the kind of fear and xenophobia that was starting to shape our country. And it was really pretty sad and frustrating.
(on fellow reporter/Gitmo Detainee Sami al-Hajj)
AMY GOODMAN: And Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera reporter who has been at Guantanamo for close to five years, we only recently heard from him, because of a quote that got out where he said, “Release Alan Johnston,” the BBC reporter who’s in Gaza in captivity, saying, “No reporter should be kidnapped.”
JOSH RUSHING: Yeah, absolutely. Sami, we believe, suffered the fate that a lot of people suffered in Afghanistan in the early days, where the US government was offering $5,000 from anyone from the Taliban and $10,000 from anyone from al-Qaeda. So a lot of the people -- if anyone wasn’t from that area, locals went and told the US officials, “Hey, that guy’s al-Qaeda.” They go and pick up this person, pay the guy $10,000, and now those people have gone through Bagram Air Force Base and are stuck in Gitmo forever. Of course, Sami wasn’t from that area. He was there covering a story on behalf of Al Jazeera, and a local sold him away to the US government. It’s unbelievable.
Really sorry for the long post, but linked articles are rarely read.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? … /20/152255
What say you?
He is a former Marine Press Liason for Hollywood, former CENTCOM spokesperson, and now an Al Jazeera International employee. His insight into his thought process during his work in the USMC is interesting. A few excerpts that stood out to me:
JOSH RUSHING: The night they showed the POWs and the dead soldiers -- Al Jazeera showed them -- it was powerful, because America doesn’t show those kind of images. In most of the news, America won’t show really gory images. And this showed American soldiers in uniform strewn about a floor, a cold tile floor, and it was revolting. It was absolutely revolting. It made me sick in my stomach.
And then what hit me was, the night before, there had been some kind of bombing in Basra, and Al Jazeera had shown images of the people, and they were equally, if not more, horrifying -- the images were. And I remember having seen it in the Al Jazeera offices and thought to myself, “Wow, that’s gross. That’s bad,” and then going away and probably eating dinner or something. And, you know, it didn’t affect me as much. So the impact that had on me, me realizing that I just saw people on the other side, and those people in the Al Jazeera office must have felt the way I was feeling that night, and it upset me on a profound level that I wasn’t as bothered as much the night before. It makes me hate war, but it doesn’t make me believe that we’re in a world that can live without war yet.
(speaking on his thoughts as he watched these images)
JOSH RUSHING: It’s just hard to watch some of that footage. And I think it’s kind of interesting, because now I understand the process I was going through. And I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t recognize it at that time. But it’s a universal thing that we all do. We all feel most empathetic for those who appear most like us and the least sympathetic for those who appear the least like us. And I think going into the war, the Arabs and the Iraqis were clearly the "them." They were least like me. But the longer I was there and the more time I spent with them, the more I realized we had in common than in difference. And in doing that without quite realizing it intentionally, I was gaining a real sense of empathy for them, realizing we had so much more together than we did apart. And that’s why I realized that their dead should hurt me as much as our dead.
(about how he wound up working for Al-Jazeera)
And what I realized was, I was the only person in the world, the only person in the world, who had been inside the Pentagon, the Bush administration and Al Jazeera studios, and I had a unique vantage point. And what I saw was that Al Jazeera wasn’t what America thought it was. I saw what it actually was. And I also saw why it was so important to America's own strategic interest, much less to the world getting along a little better....
(on his feelings at his friend's funeral)
Right in the middle of that, I get a call from an old friend who says that one of our best friends from high school had just died in Iraq. His Little Bird helicopter had been shot down in a battle south of Baghdad. And so, I left and I went home for his funeral. And at his funeral, he had two young kids. One was five. One was about eighteen months -- or I guess three and eighteen months. And one was named Luke, just like my son’s named Luke. All my old high school friends were there. And Jake, the youngest one, had a pacifier that was red, white and blue, and it matched the coffin, that they laid over Matt’s coffin. I mean, he had the flag that they laid over Matt’s coffin.
And it just occurred to me that Matt had died fighting for an idea of America that was starting to resemble the state of America less and less. It wasn’t -- he didn’t die for an America where federal agents went around following reporters who were doing stories about Small Town America. He didn’t die for an America that’s run by the kind of fear and xenophobia that was starting to shape our country. And it was really pretty sad and frustrating.
(on fellow reporter/Gitmo Detainee Sami al-Hajj)
AMY GOODMAN: And Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera reporter who has been at Guantanamo for close to five years, we only recently heard from him, because of a quote that got out where he said, “Release Alan Johnston,” the BBC reporter who’s in Gaza in captivity, saying, “No reporter should be kidnapped.”
JOSH RUSHING: Yeah, absolutely. Sami, we believe, suffered the fate that a lot of people suffered in Afghanistan in the early days, where the US government was offering $5,000 from anyone from the Taliban and $10,000 from anyone from al-Qaeda. So a lot of the people -- if anyone wasn’t from that area, locals went and told the US officials, “Hey, that guy’s al-Qaeda.” They go and pick up this person, pay the guy $10,000, and now those people have gone through Bagram Air Force Base and are stuck in Gitmo forever. Of course, Sami wasn’t from that area. He was there covering a story on behalf of Al Jazeera, and a local sold him away to the US government. It’s unbelievable.
Really sorry for the long post, but linked articles are rarely read.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? … /20/152255
What say you?
Last edited by KEN-JENNINGS (2007-06-20 13:18:00)