An Army guy in Iraq e-mails:

I am already a big fan of Fox News. You can now make me a Fox Fan For Life (F3L). As of Saturday, we’ll get to watch the US soccer team play Italy in the World Cup thanks to the intervention of Rupert Murdoch.

He’s talking about this via Stars and Stripes:

Thanks to a last-minute agreement, American Forces Network viewers overseas will get to see some World Cup soccer matches.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose media company owns Fox News, negotiated a deal with the World Cup TV rights holders to piggyback AFN onto a deal he has with one of his many properties, according to Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Greg Hicks.

FIFA World Cup 2006 Germany has allowed AFN limited distribution permission to allow coverage of remaining Team USA matches, the semifinals and the championship, Hicks said.

The agreement, Hicks said, will permit AFN to telecast Team USA’s match against Italy on Saturday at 9 p.m. local time in Kaiserslautern. The team wraps up Group E play against Ghana on June 22 at 4 p.m. local time in Nuremburg. Game times are two hours later in Iraq, and 2 hours later in Afghanistan.

As first reported in Stars and Stripes, Armed Forces Radio & Television Service was denied permission late last month by Infront Sports and Media, the international broadcast rights holder, to air the monthlong World Cup on AFN TV.

AFN, seen in 177 countries and on Navy ships worldwide, generally receives its sports programming for free. The major sports leagues in the U.S. allow AFN to broadcast virtually all American sporting events at no cost because they love the troops, said Capt. Jeff Clark, a spokesman for AFN in Heidelberg.

Infront Sports and Media is a Swiss company.

“You can’t appeal to their patriotic side if they’re not American,” Clark said.

Infront spokesman Jorg Polzer told the New York Times that other nations’ military networks paid “reasonable”� sums to air the World Cup.

The Times reported that Murdoch was to make a payment to Infront for an AFN World Cup TV agreement part of a deal he already has with one of his News Corp. properties, Sky Italia.

Clark indicated that the games would likely be shown on the AFN-Sports channel, which is available through cable or satellite.

“Rupert Murdoch is very patriotic and has a great passion for the men and women who are serving this country,” said Gary Ginsberg, executive vice-president for corporate affairs for News Corp., based in New York.

“It’s very easy for us to bring a bit of joy to them…”it was a pretty easy decision, he said.

World Cup fans in Iraq applauded Murdoch’s efforts to bring the tournament to them.

“That was pretty cool,” Airman 1st Class Richard Gonzales, an AFN broadcaster based in Baghdad’s Green Zone, said of Murdoch’s intervention.

Yes, it was.

StrategyPage has more. NYTimes coverage here.