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COVERING THE WAR
Samir Khader
- Lt. Josh Rushing - Hassan
Ibrahim - Deema Khatib
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SAMIR KHADER,
Al-Jazeera SENIOR PRODUCER
Once a personal translator for King Jordan, the chain-smoking
Samir Khadir was hired at Al-Jazeera after working
for state-controlled Arabic channels. It's where he
found 'true journalism', "my
own feeling is that the message of Al-Jazeera is first
of all, educational. To educate the Arab masses on
something called democracy."
A passionate defender of Al-Jazeera, he had no misgivings
about broadcasting images of the carnage in Iraq during
the war. "We wanted
to show that any war has a human cost...we care for
the Iraqi people. We are Arabs like them. We are Muslims
like them."
Khader gave the order to send Al-Jazeera reporter,
Tarek Ayoub onto the roof the day a U.S. missile slammed
into the Baghdad headquarters killing him. He doesn't
feel that the attack was an accident. "The
first objective of sending these missiles on the offices
of Al-Jazeera is to tell Al-Jazeera, 'you are not
siding with us 100% against Saddam Hussein so we are
going to punish you.' We have received the message."
"The Americans played
the media element intelligently,"
says Khader as he watched the American troops enter
Ferdowsi square in Baghdad. "It
was a show. It was a media show."
He has questions about the crowd of Iraqis who pulled
down the statue of Saddam Hussein, "these
people were not Iraqis. I lived in Iraq, I was born
there. I can recognize an Iraqi accent."
Although critical of Bush’s policies, Khader
has an appreciation for American values and a desire
to move to the U.S., send his children to college
there and “exchange
the Arab nightmare for the American dream.”
He says Al-Jazeera doesn't want to alienate the Americans,
“we [Al-Jazeera]
are what they want for the region—an Arab channel
with western mentality.”
To promote Control Room, Khadar made his first trip
to the United States where he gave several media interviews.
READ AN INTERVIEW
WITH KHADER. 
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LT. JOSH
RUSHING, CENTRAL COMMAND PRESS OFFICER
A 14-year vetern of the U.S. Army Lt. Rushing worked
in Hollywood negotiating script content with big budget
studios on behalf of the U.S. military before his
assignment in Iraq.
As a public affairs officer in Doha it was his job
to present America’s military operation to the
worldwide media. Although he is close to many Al-Jazeera
journalists and respects their freedom, he questions
what he perceives as an anti-U.S. bias in their reporting.
"I've gone live on
Al-Jazeera," he tells
another reporter, "and
their questions are extremely combative."
Throughout the film Rushing struggles with war, media
bias and his own loyalty to the U.S. He acknowledges
that the images of dead Iraqi soldiers broadcast on
American TV didn't have the same impact as the dead
Americans he saw on Al-Jazeera the next evening. "It
upset me on a profound level that I wasn't bothered
as much the night before,"
he said "it makes
me hate war, but it doesn't make me believe that we
are in a world that can live without war yet."
With an open mind and a deep concern for the Arab
perception of America, Rushing engages in interviews
and fierce debates with Arab journalists like Hassan
Ibrahim. "I really
think the big thing for my generation is for these
two perspectives, the Western perspective and the
Arab perspective to understand each other...because
the two worlds are colliding at a rapid rate right
now."
After the film's theatrical release Lt. Rushing became
a minor celebrity and was interviewed by the media
about his involvement with Control Room. In response
the Marine Corps re-assigned him back to L.A. and
prohibited him from giving any more interviews. He
now has plans to leave the service by October 2004.
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HASSAN IBRAHIM,
Al-Jazeera JOURNALIST
Hassan was raised in Saudi Arabia where he was a classmate
of Osama Bin Laden. He attended university in America,
became a journalist in Sudan and went on to head the
BBC Arab News service before joining Al-Jazeera.
A passionate Arab nationalist, he is vehemently against
the war and the U.S. presence in the Middle East. He
berates the Americans for thinking they can export freedom
with bombs, "eventually you will have to find a
solution that doesn't include bombing people into submission.
Democratize or I'll shoot you. It just doesn't work
that way."
Ironically he also believes that the American people
are the only ones capable of changing their government's
actions. "I have absolute confidence in the
American constitution and the ability of the American
people. The United States is going to stop the United
States empire."
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DEEMA KHATIB,
Al-Jazeera PRODUCER,
Initally reluctant to become involved in the filming
on Control Room director Jehane Noujaim says Khatib
"felt that we weren't working on getting the 'veiled
woman behind the controls' and wanted to be part of
it."
Khatib’s job in Al-Jazeera – running the
network’s control room – gave her a front
seat as she watched American troops enter Ferdowsi square
in Baghdad. "For us,
it's really shocking how quickly the regime fell. Where
is the Republican Guard? Where's the Iraqi army? They
must be somewhere. They couldn't have vanished?"
"The whole war is like an American movie. You know
the end, you know who's the hero, you know the bad guys,
but you still watch because you want to know how its
going to happen."
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