Despite bombs and missiles, Iraqi TV continues to broadcast propaganda

Hour by hour, Iraq TV broadcasts the fierce propaganda of Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. "Slit their throats," is the greeting Iraqi citizens should give advancing allied troops, the leaders advise on the air.

Despite bombs, missiles and thousands of ground troops rumbling toward Baghdad, the government-controlled station operates with only intermittent outages.

American military officials have long promised a war that would take great care to avoid civilian casualties and infrastructures such as power and communications grids. Increasingly, however, U.S. leaders are being asked why allied troops -- with their precision weaponry -- don't simply knock Iraqi television off the air for good.

The answers have been vague, although one senior Pentagon official smiled and quipped, "stay tuned," when asked Tuesday if Iraqi television would be targeted.

During the daily military briefing Tuesday at the coalition's $1.5 million desert press center in Qatar, a reporter asked Air Force Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart: "Why haven't you attacked those facilities and taken them out?"

"I'm not going to talk about what we target and when," Renuart replied. Besides, he added, he doesn't think such propaganda hurts the allied cause.

Threatened death and mayhem are not the most disturbing words coming over the Iraqi airwaves. The halting responses of captured Americans, their faces etched in fear, are also broadcast. And ultimately, after being picked up by Qatar-based satellite network Al-Jazeera and bounced around the world, they have made their way onto U.S. television.

And into the homes of prisoners' families, who can only watch helplessly.

On Monday, Iraqi television showed farmers stomping on the helmets of two downed Apache helicopter pilots in central Iraq.

"A small number of peasants shot down two Apaches," Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf said. "Perhaps we will show pictures of the pilots."

They did. Chief Warrant Officers Ronald D. Young Jr., 26, of Lithia Springs, Ga., and David S. Williams, 30, of Orlando, Fla. appeared on camera but didn't speak. They looked confused, turning their heads and looking in different directions.

"He looked stubborn, mad," said Young's mother, Kaye, standing outside her Atlanta home Monday night. "He probably was frightened though." At first, the mother said, she was hysterical. "Now I'm numb."

The Air Force's Renuart said the propaganda isn't damaging to allied forces. "I don't believe it affects us in a negative way," he said Tuesday. "I think people around the world understand that it is, in fact ... not necessarily reality."

Which may be exactly what coalition leaders are hoping for, and why they haven't yet targeted the television station, say wartime propaganda experts.

"They're trying to allow Iraq TV and the Iraq government to hang themselves," said Garth Jowett, a University of Houston communications expert and co-author of "Propaganda and Persuasion."

On Tuesday night, the Iraqi information minister appeared again, in uniform. "Hit the enemy, hit them, hit them at times and in places he does not expect," he said. "Fight them, hit them in new ways. These days are the days of your great victory."

Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz held a news conference Tuesday at a Baghdad hotel, broadcast by Iraqi television as well as by other outlets including CNN. Saddam's leadership is in "good shape," Aziz said, and the president is in "full control" of the army and the country.

He did not mention allied reports that the coalition had taken more than 3,000 Iraqi prisoners of war and that a reported 500 Iraqi soldiers have been killed in the past two days.

Iraq has used its television station to try to prove that Saddam is alive and well. Aziz has used it to disprove rumors he had defected.

In the United States, the footage of captured Americans "makes war personal," Jowett said. "The effect that it has in this country is to simply stiffen the resolve here."

In the Arab world, he said "it's simply preaching to the choir."