Even as massive airstrikes pummeled downtown Baghdad Friday, formally ushering in what the Pentagon termed its “shock and awe” campaign, many analysts argued that the enduring legacy of this war may not be the use of bombs but the implementation of psychological warfare - or psyops - to quickly convince both Saddam Hussein’s lieutenants and his army that resistance was futile.
INSTEAD OF delivering the quick and devastating blow promised by the Pentagon in the days leading up to the actual conflict, the war began with a series of careful escalations, laced with feints and deception, all intended to obviate the need for protracted airstrikes and ground combat.
“This is kinetic psyops,” said Gen. Michael Short, who commanded the air campaign during Kosovo campaign. “It’s all designed to break Saddam’s will.”
Rumors of Saddam’s death and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz’s defection, leaks about high-level surrender talks with Republican Guard units, 17 million leaflets dumped over Iraqi lines that warned Iraqi soldiers of certain death if they fight all fed into a broad psychological warfare campaign.
“The confusion of Iraqi forces is growing,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said following Friday’s bombing, adding that Iraq’s deteriorating position was causing its military to “change its behavior.”
U.S. officials have carefully cultivated this confusion, understandably reluctant to knock down any rumor that might sow confusion inside Saddam’s inner circle, and thus advance the aim of regime change.
“I think that the rumor mill, like the overt coverage the military is letting out, is very much being used to put the Iraqi regime on edge,” says William Arkin, an NBC News analyst and authority on information warfare. “Just look at what the Iraqi News Agency and Iraqi officials are saying. It is extraordinary that they confirmed that one of Saddam’s homes was hit in the air raid, and that his wife and daughters were safe. When’s the last time you remember the Iraqi News Agency even mentioning that Saddam has a wife and three daughters?”
Perhaps the most obvious instance of efforts to sow psychological doubt throughout the Iraqi leadership was Rumsfeld’s opening remarks at his Tuesday briefing, during which he appeared to be speaking directly to officers of the Iraqi military.
“You will have a place in a free Iraq if you do the right thing,” Rumsfeld said. “But if you follow Saddam Hussein’s orders, you will share his fate. And the choice is yours.”
Rumsfeld went on to note that the United States was engaged in conversations “with officials of the [Iraqi] military at various levels — the regular army, the Special Republican, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard — who are increasingly aware that it’s going to happen: He’s going to be gone.”
GETTING IRAQ’S ATTENTION
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the retired commander of the first Gulf War coalition, says the war so far clearly has been planned to maximize the psychological advantage that flows from overwhelming military power. He described the first airstrikes as efforts to “get Iraq’s attention.”
More intensive airstrikes beginning Friday, he said, would be another phase in the same effort.
“Now that we’ve got your attention, here’s what you’re up against,” the general said.
Indeed, even the television images of U.S. and British mechanized troops charging into Iraq — toting with them dozens of international news correspondents — serve the large war aim. Officials at U.S. Central Command in Qatar, from where Gen. Tommy Franks is running the war, understand that the images of this massive, unopposed advance through Iraq are playing a role in the thinking of every Iraqi division and company commander. White House and CENTCOM officials told NBC News that lack of formal briefings so far can be taken as an indication that the administration is quite content with what the news media’s coverage is doing for their war message.
“The lack of briefings is no mistake, and in fact is causing some friction with the Brits,” says one military officer, who asked to remain anonymous. “The plan is working, and the sense here is, why fix something that is not broken.”
PHASE TWO
Beyond the highly visible efforts to shatter the confidence of the Iraqi military and leadership, a more secretive and deliberate effort is underway to marry psyops with action on the ground. These operations, officials said, are carefully planned and calibrated to shock, if not awe, Iraqi forces into realizing their defensive efforts are futile.
Neither Pentagon officials nor U.S. military officers would discuss such efforts, and few outside the highest levels of the U.S. and CENTCOM command structure would even know about them.
Such joint psyops/special ops mission are run by Special Technical Operations cells, or “STOs.” These cells are responsible for coordinating traditional warfare with newer modes of combat — from information warfare to espionage, psychological warfare, sabotage and other special weapons. An STO cell now exists in each major combat command, including CENTCOM, coordinated by a high-level panel of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A typical mission might involve U.S. warplanes targeting a business or facility that — while of little military value — is of high emotional value to Saddam or his family. Another variation might include covert operations to snatch relatives, to destroy a getaway aircraft, or to heist large caches of Saddam’s wealth.
“We don’t see what the STO and covert forces are doing,” Arkin said. “What we can see on the surface, though, is that clearly this is a very accelerated psyops campaign, and that psyops has become an integrated part of the war plan.”
NEW CREDIBILITY
If this is true, it marks a departure. Traditionally, regular military officers have dismissed psyops as a distraction — “amateur hour,” as one officer involved in the first Gulf War put it. Much as regular army officers were suspicious of elite special operation units, they saw any devotion of resources to psychological warfare as little more than a waste of time.
Further, psyops units carry none of the glamour associated with elite SEAL and Green Beret units. Indeed, if anything, psyops is associated in the public mind with the largely unsuccessful effort to “win hearts and minds” in Vietnam.
This began to change during the 1999 Kosovo war. There, U.S. psyops warriors ran a series of feints and harassment missions designed to shake the resolve of the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic.
As most U.S. and NATO air units concentrated on hitting military targets throughout Serbia and its Kosovo province, a select few missions targeted “leadership” facilities to drive home the point that the Milosevic family — and the corrupt family business — would not be spared.
Still, the mission did not, in the end, undermine the Milosevic regime. Leaflets designed to convince Serb units to surrender turned out to be laughably translated, and by the end of the war, Gen. Wesley Clark, the campaign’s overall commander, dismissed them as “a joke.”
No one is laughing now. Saddam may still hold his ground, and the Republican Guard may still choose to fight. But it is clear that the psyops campaign is woven into the very fabric of this war.
MSNBC.com’s Michael Moran is senior producer of special projects.