Photo: Inside cover page of 'A Short Guide to Iraq'.
Click the image to download the book [4.8 MB, PDF].

I remember reading about A Short Guide to Iraq [4.8 MB, PDF]  in SPY magazine during the first Gulf War -- a guide for U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq during WWII. Here's the intr, which aside from the bit about defeating Hitler, is still applicable today:
YOU HAVE been order to Iraq (i - RAHK) as part of the world-wide offensive to beat Hitler.

You will enter Iraq both as a soldier and as an individual, because on our side a man can be both a soldier and an individual. That is our strength -- if we are smart enough to use it. It can be our weakness if we aren't. As a soldier your duties are laid out for you. As an individual, it is what you do on your own that counts -- and it may count for a lot more than you think.

American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be that simple. But then again it could.
In its 44 pages, the book provides the U.S. soldier enough cultural and background information to function as a simple goodwill ambassador in Iraq. Some of this information may be fairly obvious to the cosmopolitan modern reader, but you have to remember that this was a time before CNN, the internet, relatively inexpensive air travel and several wars that taught us all about mideast geography.
The book looks like a pretty thorough introduction to Iraqi culture and it seems as though the War Department (since renamed to the Department of Defense) was taking great pains to win hearts and minds.

(Perhaps it was an era of better-behaved U.S. soldiers, the sort of whom Joi Ito wrote about in his piece on the anniversary of the atom bombing of Hiroshima.)

The illustrations included in the book are rather amusing. Here's "Bargaining takes time", a fact that would've been unknown to many Americans back then, but now familair thanks to cheap trips to Asia and the bargaining scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian:

Photo: Illustration from 'A Short Guide to Iraq': 'Bargaining takes time'.
"How 'bout 30 dinars and I don't electrocute your balls?"

This bit of advice is obvious today, but it wasn't back then:

Photo: Illustration from 'A Short Guide to Iraq': Don't sunbathe.

As is this:

Photo: Illustration from 'A Short Guide to Iraq': No hearty back-slaps'.

My favourite tip in the "Do's and Don'ts" section:
If you should see grown men walking hand in hand, ignore it. They are not "queer".