In the largest deployment from Alaska since the Vietnam War, 3700 soldiers will depart for Iraq and Afghanistan this summer.  Anchorage journalist Dahr Jamail recently returned from Iraq after two years of independent reporting on the war.  Ann Marina talked with Jamail and other Alaska residents about how news comes out of Iraq.

 Ann Marina:   Since mid-February, Dahr Jamail has been in several western cities, presenting slides and answering questions about what he encountered in Iraq.  Jamail says only a fraction of the truth is getting through from reporters embedded with the military.

Dahr Jamail: If someone is going to embed with the U.S. military you have to sign a document that says, yes, anything I'm going to write is 100% subject to censorship.  So they're certainly not going to allow you to put out soldiers who are dissenting, who are in very bad morale, which most of them are now.  Most of them I spoke with my last trip said, I don't wanna be here, I just wanna get the hell out of here in one piece, y'know - I don't believe in this mission.  But what we see in the mainstream when people embed, is soldiers fighting and doing their job and keeping their mouth shut.

Ann: It's rare to find un-embedded reporters from the U.S. in Iraq, according to Jamail.

Dahr: There’s literally only a handful of us.  But the irony is there’s many other independent reporters from other foreign countries, just not America.

Ann: In a recent study at American University, media outlets acknowledged self-censoring war reports due to concern about public reaction to graphic images. But authors Bill Moyers and Amy Goodman have written about news being filtered by the corporate media.  Since weapons manufacturing corporations such as General Electric now own most major U.S. networks, Goodman says it’s no wonder our media have become cheerleaders for war.  Last week in the Baltimore Sun, Goodman challenged the media to un-embed, and show the true face of war.

Pat Hawkins also feels the American media is sanitizing this war.

Pat Hawkins: It's out of sight, out of mind - you don't see the body bags coming back, you don't see the casualties ...

Ann: Hawkins is a Viet Nam veteran and co-host of Sound-off, a radio talk show in Kenai.

Pat: ...you don't see reports by the media going into Walter Reed Hospital, looking at these kids that have lost their arms & their legs & they're blinded.  The media has kind of cowered under the Bush administration.  And people think everything's going just great.

Ann: Dahr Jamail says it's frustrating for members of the media who cannot interview wounded soldiers.

Dahr Jamail: Journalists are not allowed in these medical hospitals.  Why is that?  'Cause when we talk about wounded soldiers, we're talking about people who're going to be on permanent disability the rest of their life.  And we're talking over 10 thousand people like this.

Ann: But Paul Fisher disagrees.  The former Alaska state senator also hosts Sound-off in Kenai.  He says it makes sense to keep reporters out of military hospitals.

Paul Fisher: And I think some of the media wants to go in-- they want to see the most gory thing they can do, instead of talk to the boys and women who are injured, who still have a positive attitude.  But they're gonna be looking for the negative.  So I say if the military say no, it's no.

Ann: Fisher says embedding journalists is a matter of security.

Paul: I, I don't have a problem with that.  I mean we're at war.  People today want to get instant everything but if it's going to help the enemy, I don't think they should be able report it until after the event has occurred.

Ann: Soldotna resident Pam Musgrove has a 20 year old son serving in Iraq.  The information coming from her son is usually different than what's on the news.

Pam Musgrove: Like the attack that happened on the mess hall at Christmas time, the age of the person that did the suicide bombing, where he was from; all that was different information than what the newspapers put out.  So I don't read the newspapers; I don't watch the news; I just wait for his phone calls, and what he tells me I believe.  There's a lot of people who don't agree on the war.  I didn't think it was any of our business to go over there.

Ann: A few weeks ago, selected journalists were given a publicity tour in Fallujah, as Pentagon officials claimed it the safest city in Iraq.  But residents there said over half of Fallujah is destroyed, and everyone living there has been finger printed and retina scanned.  They said the media tour was staged.  Dahr Jamail agrees with the residents.

Dahr: That IS a propaganda blitz.  I even had a colleague who was in there filming about halfway through January when the military brought in a CNN camera crew and literally had a staged event.  Soldiers started handing out candy to kids, and about 8 guys wearing orange jackets got out and started sweeping the streets in the background of the filming.

Ann: Dahr Jamail will present testimony in June at the World Tribunal on Iraq, in Istanbul, Turkey.  He plans to visit the Kenai Peninsula later in the summer.  In Kenai, I'm Ann Marina.

Ann Marina is a freelance journalist and radio host who lives and works in Kenai, Alaska. She can be reached at writerannak@yahoo.com.