The vividly contrasting images of American soldiers Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England, one portrayed as a heroic victim and the other as depraved villain, symbolize the souring of US opinion of the Iraq war, experts say.  

Between the time Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital in April 2003 and England was revealed posing in pictures of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib this spring, public opinion has traveled a parallel path from hopeful to skeptical over the American role in Iraq, they say.

"You couldn't pick a better example to illustrate what a difference a year makes," said Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at New York's Syracuse University.

Images of the two women -- both petite, youthful and from hard-scrabble Southern backgrounds -- tell larger stories about the events in Iraq, he said.

"The Jessica Lynch story wasn't just about Jessica Lynch. It was about a whole attitude and a whole sense of optimism. Then Lynndie England carries a much more ominous and arch sort of thing," said Thompson. "If a novelist were writing this, they couldn't have done much better than these as metaphors."

As the images have degenerated from the US government-touted tale of Lynch's rescue to gruesome scenes of sexual humiliation, recent polls indicate just how far the American public's backing of the war has declined.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed 57 percent of respondents are angry about the situation in Iraq, up by 27 percent from March 2003. Those describing themselves as hopeful dropped to 62 percent from 80 percent and those using the term "proud" fell to 41 percent from 53 percent.

"How the war has been going is being portrayed particularly by those two women," said Jack Lule, professor of journalism at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. "As we've come to question the war and question what it means for our own values ... we have an image of a woman who raises those very questions.

"It's amazing how much symbolism is packed into those photos," he said.

What images the media choose to portray the story relies heavily on those polls, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Washington's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

"Which image they select is usually influenced by their sense of public attitudes, so polls tend to have a very substantial impact on framing the way journalists think," Rosenstiel said.

An unflattering picture of a candidate may get no coverage if he is ahead but be widespread if he is losing, he said. Thus, he said, declining support for the war is reflected in what we see.

"You see things in an event that you might not have seen before, when you thought the president could do no wrong," he said. "It's almost human nature."

In practice, images of Lynch and England get greater "play" when conditions are right, said Holly Stuart Hughes, editor of Photo District News, a trade magazine for photographers.

So, when Saddam Hussein's statue was being pulled down, editors wanted pictures of liberation rather than images of wounded and dead civilians, she said.

But with the situation more difficult, "photo editors and their bosses are asking for pictures of how hard it is to maintain the peace," she said.

The images don't merely illustrate but intensify opinion, said Lule, noting that opposition to the Vietnam war grew as memorable pictures were seared on the public psyche. Few can forget the picture of a running naked girl burned by napalm or the shooting of a Vietcong man by a Saigon police chief.

"These pictures are surfacing because people are questioning the war," Lule said of the prison abuse. "I don't think the media ever gets too far ahead of public opinion."

And the lasting image, with all its political implications, said Hughes, is likely to be that of Lynndie's cocky smirk, with a cigarette in her mouth and her booted foot resting on the body of a naked prisoner.

"The photographs with the most political impact are not the set-up photo ops. It's always in the unexpected moment," she said. "Jessica Lynch was kind of manufactured for the press, and its impact has completely faded in light of these uncontrolled, unpredicted photos."

(China Daily via agencies, May 28, 2004)