News on Iraq too negative, Utahn says

Just two weeks ago, Utahn James Mayfield was conducting a focus group in Basra, Iraq, trying to determine how people there felt about the U.S. plan to end the occupation of their country next year as an Iraqi government takes control.

However, the work being done by Mayfield — a University of Utah emeritus professor recruited by the United States to introduce south-central Iraq to democracy — was interrupted when news reached the Basra streets that Saddam Hussein, the ousted Iraqi president, had been captured by American troops near Tikrit in the north.

"Suddenly, we heard machine guns firing and explosions all around," Mayfield, home for a brief visit during the holidays, told the Deseret Morning News. "We thought, 'Good heavens, what is happening here?' We immediately stopped what we were doing and went outside."

In Basra, Mayfield "found people just dancing and streaming into the streets, and shouting with great joy. Everybody was thrilled."

That's the image of Iraq and its people Mayfield wishes more Americans shared.

Instead, he said, too many news stories from Iraq focus on the insurgents aligned with Saddam, even though they represent only a small portion of that country's population and most of their activities are confined to Baghdad or the former dictator's hometown of Tikrit.

"Everybody talks about rebellion in Iraq," Mayfield said, an assertion he finds frustrating. "There is not a rebellion in Iraq among 80 percent of the people."

He said the media reports he's seen over the seven months he's already spent in Iraq on assignment for the U.S. Agency for International Development "do not in any way represent the interests and the desires of the vast majority of Iraqis."

American sacrifices

A political scientist by training and an expert on local governments in the Mideast, Mayfield said the death of American troops at the hands of Iraqi insurgents is "a tragic cost we have to pay."

He said the situation is similar to the sacrifices made by American soldiers in World War II to defeat evil in Germany and Japan.

"For some reason, we don't seem to have that same resolve now. We're anxious to get out," Mayfield said. "We don't seem to have the national willpower to ensure that Iraqi people have the same kind of benefits that the German people, the Japanese people, now have."