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Web Exclusive Nation
Al Jazeera Hires an Ex-Marine
EXCLUSIVE: Josh Rushing, star of Control Room, talks about his new job

Posted Tuesday, Sep. 27, 2005Josh Rushing, former Marine captain and an accidental star of the movie Control Room made news of his own last week when he signed on to become the American face of the controversial Arab news network Al Jazeera-International. Top U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have repeatedly complained that Al Jazeera's coverage is unfair or untrue. Yesterday, Rushing sat down with TIME for his first interview on why he took the job and what the new network will cover. The 33-year old Rushing came to fame in Control Room, a movie critical of media coverage of the Iraq war as a military public affairs officer who increasingly questions how the war was being portrayed by the Pentagon. In the movie, Rushing is articulate and passionate in defending the troops and never directly criticizes the war. And his honesty draws viewers to his side—he describes his different reactions to seeing on Al Jazeera images of Iraqi casualties one evening and dead U.S. soldiers the next. "It upset me on a profound level that I wasn't bothered as much the night before," Rushing explains at one point in the movie. "It makes me hate war. But it doesn't make me believe we can live in a world without war yet." He admits—then and now—to being troubled by the "politicization" of the military command and what he describes as U.S. TV networks being "co-opted" by the Bush Administration. One reason he wanted to leave the Marine Corps, says Rushing, is that his superior officers had forbidden him to speak to the press. He was torn between his loyalty to the Corps and his duty as a citizen. "I felt like I had a platform and something to say. I thought it would be a missed opportunity to say, take a public relations job in Houston, which I was about to do."

By SALLY B. DONNELLY