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Copyright of Journal of Historical & Cultural Studies an Academic Magazine is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In both political speech and news media discourse, the War on Terror has been persistently metaphorically figured as a hunt for prey. In concert with this figuration, a trope of the soldier as hunter has risen to cultural prominence. This paper examines official government discourses' use of the soldier-as-hunter paradigm, military language and training practice that reflects and augments this paradigm, and media language that uncritically echoes and furthers it. The discursive intersection of government, military, and media language is suggestively reflected in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through soldier's self-representations, particularly through trophy-taking and display. These behaviours evidence the potency, coherence, and influence of the soldier-hunter trope in the ways soldiers construct and circulate images of both themselves as hunter and the enemy as prey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings up the problem of trauma connected with the battle situation on the example of soldiers who are stationed on the mission in Iraq. According to the unofficial data, every second soldier coming back from the mission suffers from the so-called post traumatic stress disorder — PTSD. Its symptoms include recurrent intrusive memories of traumatic events. Practice shows that despite the fact that well-trained soldiers go to Iraq, in some cases the conditions in which they perform the military service exceed their abilities of adaptation. Examples shown in the article imply a suggestion that the future "mission soldiers" should receive long-running training, which would enable them to adapt — to the greatest possible extent — to new conditions of life connected with the change of climatic zones and also to acquire the ability to manage in repetitive stressful situations involving the threat to their health and life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]