BAGHDAD BOB AND THE DEATH OF PROPAGANDA
The Wild Whoppers of Iraq's Weird and Wacky Minister of Information
by Lin Anderson
"Who are you going to believe," goes the old joke. "Me, or your own eyes and ears?"
That could well provide a decent and fitting epitaph for Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraq's Minister of Information, although we harbor hope that he lives many years beyond the war. We sort of admire his hard-headed stubbornness to admit defeat -- indeed, not to accept anything other than sweet, sweet victory, 24 hours a day. He's one of a kind, the sort of fellow you'd expect to find in a Monty Python sketch, or a Peter Sellers movie.
No question the Minister's finest hour came late Sunday here in the States, early Monday Baghdad time. At a hastily-called outdoor press conference in Baghdad, punctuated by the unmistakable sounds of gunfire and those darned inopportune glimpses of U.S. tanks, the man some have affectionately nicknamed "Baghdad Bob" stubbornly stood his ground, denying the very existence of all that rather deadly-serious reality surrounding him.
To use another apt movie analogy, al-Sahhaf was the Iraqi version of martinet Greg Marmalard in the frat party classic Animal House, frantically screaming "All is wellllllll!" while being trampled by a mob.
To U.S. claims that Coalition forces had taken the ministry itself, the minister adamantly declared, "Absolutely that's not true. I can tell you that because I am here at the Ministry of Information."
Well, yes, but apparently outside in the parking lot. The very smoky parking lot.
The minister continued spinning his fanciful tale of Iraqi triumph in the literal face of abject failure, compiling a group of cockeyed statements which merit forever a hallowed place in the Museum of Propaganda.
"They said they have entered Baghdad in 65 tanks, into the centre of the city, and I am telling you this is not true," al-Sahhaf said, as U.S. tanks sat just a few hundred yards away.
"This is part of their sick game. We have slaughtered three-quarters of them so far," al-Sahhaf also claimed. "There is no presence of the American columns in Baghdad at all. Their columns are slaughtered and they have been fed a sour taste, a poison, by the brave forces of Saddam Hussein!"
At this point, it is well to remember, statues of Saddam Hussein were being blown up by gleeful Baghdad-based U.S. troops, some of whom also were hilariously unfurling their college flag on the lawn of the presidential palace.
But al-Sahhaf's greatest moment was yet to come, as he described the terror being wrought on coalition forces, a terror so, er, terrible that U.S. soldiers were ending their own lives in droves, rather than submit to it:
"They are beginning to commit suicide at the walls of Baghdad!" the minister declared. "And I encourage them to increase the rate of suicide. Their columns are being killed in the hundreds at the walls of Baghdad! We have fed them hell and death!
"Washington and London have thrown their soldiers into the fire," he continued. They are war criminals. They will bury their soldiers in hell, sent there by the hands of the Iraqis!"
As head-shakingly funny as this press conference was, it also served to point out in the most absurdly-convincing way possible the complete folly of old-fashioned propaganda itself, in a world where information zings at the speed of light. The explosion of mass media, particularly the Internet, has its many drawbacks. But one of its many plusses is its ability to almost instantaneously put the lie to such obvious nonsense. We may never be told "the whole truth" by governments -- particularly totalitarian governments -- but at least we have the makings of history's most effective "truth squad" to help us separate the actual from the bogus.
Ironically, al-Sahhaf did manage to tell the absolute truth, at least once, when he opined that, "The battle was fierce and God has victored his soldiers."
Very true as far as it goes -- assuming "Baghdad Bob" was referring to our guys.
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