Last modified: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 10:40 AM EST Speaking for Al-Jazeera By RICK FOSTER / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF NORTON -- One minute a U.S. Marine, the next a journalist for Al-Jazeera television. That's the unlikely story of former Marine Capt. Josh Rushing, who at one point functioned as a spokesman for Gen. Tommy Franks. Later he gained unwitting celebrity after he became one of the focal points of an independent documentary about the Arabic news channel. The resident of Washington, D.C., was muzzled by the Marines and eventually joined Al-Jazeera's new English language network after leaving the service. Rushing spoke Tuesday night before a large number of Wheaton College students at the college's Science Center. Rushing, 33, joined the Marines at 17 and later won a commission. On the eve of the Iraq war, he was a Marine public affairs officer working for the joint U.S. Military Central Command in Doha, Qatar, where he was assigned as liaison for the Al-Jazeera television network. During the time Rushing spent escorting the network's reporters, an independent documentary crew filmed him, along with the Arab reporters going about their jobs. The resulting film, `` Control Room,'' showed Rushing as an untypically sensitive Marine awakened over time to the deadly realities of war. While he played a relatively minor role in the filming, Rushing said about an hour's worth of his interview footage was spread throughout the documentary, which tells the story of the U.S. invasion of Iraq from the Arab journalists' perspective. `` I had been back (in the United States) about eight months, when I got a call on my voice mail from someone who had been in the Marines who said they `saw my movie' and thanked me,'' he said. Confused, Rushing said he Googled his own name on the Internet and found himself prominently mentioned in connection with the movie -- and also that he was the subject of numerous comments and blogs on the Web. At the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, `` Control Room'' broke all records and has become a talisman among activists and critics of U.S. involvement in Iraq. While Rushing has been called an `` Arab sympathizer'' and has had his life threatened via e-mail, the former Marine officer said he went into the war believing that `` we were liberating Iraq.'' He says he never turned his back on U.S. policy during his Marine Corps service, although he said he was sickened by the carnage he witnessed among Iraqis and U.S. troops. `` I found that I was affected by the massive loss of life there,'' Rushing said. `` That doesn't make the war right or wrong, but war is hell.'' Rushing said he got the assignment as military liaison to Al-Jazeera mainly because he was the junior officer. No one else wanted the job. The Texas native said he argued many times for the military to pay more attention to Al-Jazeera as an avenue to influence Islamic and Arab hearts and minds. But Rushing said the U.S. military, from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down, had written off the network as `` al-Qaida TV.'' Contrary to its critics, Rushing says Al-Jazeera has never shown beheadings of hostages and has televised only the same type of images of Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist figures distributed via other networks. Al-Jazeera, whose 24-hour English language network is due to debut in late spring, is funded by the Qatar government in basically the same way the British government supports the BBC, Rushing said. Rushing said he was invited to try out for an on-air job at Al-Jazeera after resigning from the Marines. He said he was torn by the offer, but remembered his warning to military superiors that failing to make a better effort to reach Arabs through the television network was forfeiting a valuable chance to inform public opinion there. `` I had to ask myself, did I really believe what I had been saying?'' he said. Rushing resolved to give it a try. Al-Jazeera has yet to land a place on an American cable network, although the news organization expects to reach an initial 40 million homes around the world. Rushing's office is located in Washington, where he lives with his wife, Paige, and son, Luke. RICK FOSTER can be reached at 508-236-0428 or at rfoster@thesunchronicle.com.