An Army IO Veteran Sounds the Alarm
- John Rozean
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
I’m Staff Sergeant John Rozean, U.S. Army (Retired/Disabled). I served the Corps of Engineers assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, and later retrained as a journalist — MOS 46Q30, Public Affairs — deploying to Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. Along the way, I worked in information operations. That last part is why I’m making this video.
Here’s something nobody talks about: veterans hoard what they fear losing.
Infantry soldiers and tankers — the ones who’ve been in the fight — hoard weapons, ammo, and gear. They’ve seen what happens when rounds run dry and nobody’s coming. Supply sergeants and G4 officers hoard parts, rations, and equipment because they’ve watched entire operations unravel over a missing part or a late convoy. That’s not paranoia. That’s institutional memory carved into them by hard experience.
I hoard information. I hoard the truth.
Because I spent years in information operations during a war built on a lie. I watched the government sell the Iraq War to the American public on the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — and I watched them quietly, systematically rewrite that history. More recently, I’ve watched people try to stitch Iraq into the 9/11 story in ways that never held up under scrutiny and still don’t.
I know how propaganda works. I helped build information campaigns. That’s exactly why I can’t stay quiet when I see the same machinery turning inward — against our own press, our own citizens, our own Constitution.
The First Amendment is not a partisan issue. It is the load-bearing wall of American democracy. When I see what’s happening — the pressure on CBS News, the targeting of Scott Pelley, the cultural war on journalists and late-night voices like Stephen Colbert, the government leaning on media institutions to shape narratives — I recognize the playbook. I’ve seen it used overseas. I helped run versions of it.
This is one veteran’s perspective. Not a party line. Not a talking point. A warning from someone who knows exactly what it looks like when a government decides it no longer needs a free press — because they’ve already decided they’re the only story worth telling.
Watch. Think. Question everything. Especially me.
— SSG John Rozean, U.S. Army (Retired)
I/O preper
JROspace.info | Columbia, Missouri
---
First Amendment, freedom of speech, veteran perspective, information operations, Iraq War, WMDs, propaganda, CBS News, public affairs, military journalism, 1st Cavalry Division, Operation Iraqi Freedom