US launches patriotic magazine in Iraq

Sify News ^ | June 10, 2003 | SN Staff

[Rennes Templar]

Baghdad: The US army has launched a glossy patriotic magazine to rally its 3rd Infantry Division, whose troops face hostile action in the badlands of western Iraq a full two months after Saddam Hussein's ouster.

Called the "Liberator", the 16-page in-house publication carries rousing reports from the field to win over homesick troops who might be doubting the rationale for the US presence more than six months after they first arrived in Kuwait to train for the invasion.

The 5,000-copy launch edition opens with Specialist Jacob Boyer's answer to doubting comrades.

"I found the debate raging in my own head ... I wondered why I individually and we as a nation were in Kuwait, preparing to take down a regime thousands of miles from our home shores," he writes.

But in Iraq, where he saw "emaciated people and cows so thin you can see their ribcages" and "cars that would have been in a junkyard years ago if they were in America," he grasped the good behind the war.

"Forget about weapons. Forget about national defense. I've found my reason for being here. It's the people."

Less poignant and intimate pieces recount the confiscation of illegal weapons by Iraqi police backed by US soldiers, and the delivery of supplies to local hospitals and schools.

Colour photographs illustrate most articles, often featuring beaming Iraqi civilians, among them children, as they welcome US troops, receive free biscuits or shake hands with soldiers.

A more unusual shot shows Captain Yahya Radwan, a dentist with the 561st Medical Company, treating an Iraqi civilian's decayed tooth, next to an article entitled "Task Force Neighborhood a hit with locals."

But there are no Iraqi voices in the magazine and not one word of criticism.

One of the contributors to the first edition, Corporal Todd Pruden, acknowledges that the magazine is intended to be a troop-rouser and will not publish anything that questions the occupation.

"I probably would not put negative quotes about the US presence here because somebody along the way would hack them out," said Pruden, who is soon to take over the magazine's layout.

He admits that there are only American voices in the magazine but says that is more for practical reasons than a deliberate editorial policy.

"Most of the time, we don't have an interpreter," he told AFP. "I like to get the other side as well if I can, but I can't."

A professional journalist with six years experience on a paper in Kentucky, Pruden said he felt a little uncomfortable with the Liberator's name and style.

But their boss Sergeant First Class Mayra O'Neill insisted "everybody here likes the Liberator, especially when they're quoted in an article. They keep it as a souvenir and send it home."

Similar magazines are published by the US military in Kuwait and Bosnia, but the 3rd Infantry here in Iraq is in particular need of rallying right now.

The division has already handed over its security responsibilities in Baghdad to the incoming 1st Armoured Division, but any hopes its soldiers entertained of a swift return home have been dashed by a spate of deadly attacks against US troops west of the capital.

Freed up from their day-to-day patrolling responsibilities in Baghdad, hundreds of 3rd Infantry troops have been sent to the hotspot towns of Fallujah, Ramadi and Hit to stem the violence, with the daily threat of being killed in action.

[Rennes Templar]

Freed up from their day-to-day patrolling responsibilities in Baghdad...

ie, the city is adapting to life after Saddam, something which the media ignores and focuses instead on the isolated attacks by Saddam loyalists