In Mosul, Iraq, from January 2004 to January 2005, Captain Angela Bowman was the executive/operations officer for the 139th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, a 20-soldier split-state Illinois and Wisconsin National Guard unit headquartered in Springfield, Illinois. During her deployment, she helped support the strategic communications objectives of the Task Force Olympia (TFO) commander, Brigadier General Carter Ham, through information dissemination to both internal and external audiences. Bowman drafted press releases following significant activities including attacks, deaths of soldiers, school openings, and the initiation and completion of construction projects, and often acted as official spokesperson as part of her dual-hatted service as deputy public affairs officer (PAO) for TFO as well. She trained Iraqi government, military and police personnel on speaking with the media and helped develop a media-training program that educated would-be Iraqi journalists. In addition, she was responsible for deploying teams of video and print soldier-journalists across the TFO area of operations to cover stories on soldiers in the field - an "internal embed program." As Bowman observed, "The way a PA communications strategy is employed or not employed, and how successful or unsuccessful it is, is almost 100 percent reliant on the task force or brigade or division commander, because if that commander is not supportive of PA, you are going nowhere fast. It's just not going to happen. If you have a commander who understands that information operations and PA are an absolute critical piece of the battle" - as Brigadier General Ham did - "and that you are truly a combat multiplier if used correctly, then the world becomes open to you."

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