Hour by hour, Iraq TV broadcast the fierce propaganda of the Iraqi leadership. On the air, President Saddam Hussein exhorted Iraqis that when they meet advancing allied troops they should "cut their throats and even their fingers."
The government controlled station had operated with only intermittent outages through the first six days of the war -- until early yesterday when coalition aircraft struck it with cruise missiles.
The signal from Iraqi Satellite TV, which broadcasts 24 hours a day outside Iraq, went off the air around 4:30am, according to monitors in Britain. Iraq's domestic television service does not normally broadcast at that time, so it remained unclear if that signal was knocked out.
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. Through Tuesday, US leaders were often asked why allied troops -- with their precision weaponry -- didn't simply knock Iraqi television off the air for good.
The answers had been vague.
During the daily military briefing Tuesday in Qatar, a reporter asked Air Force Major General 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," he said.
Besides, Renuart added, he didn't think such propaganda hurts the allied cause.
Threatened death and mayhem were not the most disturbing words coming over the Iraqi airwaves. The halting responses of captured Americans, their faces etched in fear, also were broadcast.
Ultimately, after being picked up by Qatar-based satellite network al-Jazeera and bounced around the world, those images made their way onto US television -- and into the homes of prisoners' families.
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 Young Jr and David Williams appeared on camera but didn't speak. They looked confused, turning their heads and looking in different directions.
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 were hoping for, and why they hadn't rushed to target 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."
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