Life as a Spectator Sport

One of the pleasures of driving a rental car, instead of my ancient Jeep, is that I have a radio. As I drove back from Front Royal last night, I happened across the broadcast of Fresh Air on several NPR stations (the specific station depending on the nature of interference from hills, trees and bodies of water). Last night's program was an interview with ex-Marine Captain Josh Rushing, who was a communications officer with the Marine Corps in Los Angeles, and then in Iraq. I wasn't able to hear the entire program, because of periods of static or interference from stronger signals, and of course I couldn't record it, but enough of Rushing's points came through for me to hope that I'll be able to find a transcript of it.

Rushing impressed me deeply as a sober, thoughtful, sincere, patriotic, and well-spoken young man, the kind of person any communications command would be overjoyed to have on board. And it appears that he was indeed held in high esteem. After his unit arrived in Iraq, he was appointed their liaison with al-Jazeera, the Arab-language newspaper in the Middle East. At the time, he said, he was the next to lowest person on the totem pole in the command. The sum total of his knowledge of Iraq came from an "Iraq for Dummies" book he picked up just before being shipped out. Apparently, that amount of information still exceeded what most of the others in his unit knew, as he said he quickly became thought of as the resident expert on the Mid-East.

Rushing made it clear that he supported the war, at least at first. Colin Powell was something of an idol of his, he said. When Powell appeared before the UN and said we had proof of WMD's, Rushing believed him. The disillusion in his soft-spoken voice was evident when he spoke of hearing Powell admit that the intelligence supporting WMD's had been manipulated.

Rushing made two other points that I heard clearly enough to comment on. Terry Gross, the interviewer, asked whether there had been times when he thought he was being asked to "spin" the news. He didn't answer the question directly, but said instead that there had been "White House influence" on his office. The Marine colonel in charge of his unit was put under a thirties-something civilian from the White House, who was given a temporary two-star rank to enable him to outrank the colonel. Other White House staffers were installed in a nearby office, and Rushing said that their presence changed the way his unit reported the news.

The other point Rushing made that strongly impressed me was his clear understanding of the importance of al-Jazeera as a voice to the Arab world. He pulled no punches in his description of their people's tactcs, describing how one interview was conducted: He could not see or hear the person asking the questions, only the young, attractive, female translator. She had an extremely pleasant and compelling voice, he said, and he found himself smiling and nodding along with her. Then he realized that he had been manipulated into reacting in a completely inappropriate way for the kind of questions he was being asked. Later, when he saw the taped interview on tv, he discovered that the questioner was screaming angrily at him, and that he was being shown, smiling, next to the scene of a bombed out Baghdad market. The others in his unit, he said, would react to this kind of thing by cutting al-Jazeera off from contact with the news units. He felt strongly that this was a mistake, and described how one of his superiors dealt with the issue. This man told the al-Jazeera representative that the broadcast company would not be shut out of American news conferences, but would be held accountable for what it disseminated. Rushing said the al-Jazeera rep told him later that demanding that they report fairly was the right way to deal with them, that it was respected.

I mentioned that Rushing was an ex-Marine captain. He retired several weeks ago after being told that he could no longer comment on the documentary "Control Room," in which he had a part. He was instructed to participate in this documentary, which was presented to him as a student film, by his superiors. But after his comments about the film were picked up and widely quoted, he was accused of "wanting his moment in the limelight." Considering that he'd been acting under orders to assist in making the film, he said, he felt that was a signal to him that he needed to move on.

Josh Rushing struck me as an amazingly reflective, thoughtful, decent young man, so far from blowing his own horn that he said he should not have been appointed to deal with al-Jazeera. He thought the post deserved someone of higher rank with far more experience and stature, and more knowledge of the Middle East. It was an indicator of the overall lack of planning, he said, that such an important responsibility was delegated to the next lowest ranking officer in the unit.

I suspect, myself, that Rushing's maturity, his ability to deal with different kinds of people, and his obvious well-honed communications skills may have had something to do with his appointment. I hope that is the case, at any rate, and that it was not just that no one considered al-Jazeera worth dealing with.

Josh Rushing has come out of what is, in some ways, a protected atmosphere, a place where you do what you're told and someone else makes the decisions and takes responsibility for the outcomes. After agreeing to this interview with NPR, I suspect that he's about to find out just how vicious the American media can be, and how it's like to live without that safety net. But he also sounds as though he can fend very well for himself, and I hope we'll hear a lot more from him in the future.

UPDATE -- You can listen to the interview on Fresh Air. I still haven't been able to find a transcript of it, and with my slow connection, I'm not sure I'll be able to listen to the streaming audio, but anyone with a true broadband connection should have no problem with it.

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