spoke with one mind. Every day, ideas would float back and forth between governments and leaders. From these, we'd take four or five points for all to use.
'It was magic to watch all of this unfold. Following agreement on the points by the leaders, and their dissemination through the Ambassador and the CINC, we would watch them come back through the media over the course of a week.'
Very few people outside of military circles are aware of PSYOP campaigns. And even the military…
'You have to be satisfied with accomplishment, because you sure as hell don't get any recognition,' Devlin concludes.
By the time the war got under way, Colonel Layton Dunbar had taken over as the 4th Psychological Group's commander. The unit's efforts varied:
In December, stickers began appearing on buildings in Kuwait City encouraging resistance to Saddam — a PSYOP project. two days after the first bombs fell in the air war, PSYOP troops — predominantly members of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard — launched the Voice of the Gulf, a radio program broadcast on both AM and FM bands from three ground stations and an airborne EC-130. Subtle PSYOP appeals played in rotation with music and news programs.
B-52s can carry a very large load of bombs, and when the load hits, it wastes a lot of territory and makes lots of noise. In other words, B-52s are not only strategic and tactical weapons, they are psychological weapons. Ground troops who have seen what they can do are not eager to repeat the experience — or be subjected to it.
Six Iraqi military units were targeted for treatment that combined PSYOP leaflets with B-52 strikes. The operations unfurled over several days. On day one, leaflets were dropped on the unit, warning that it would come under B-52 attack at a specific time. The soldiers were urged to flee. At the specified moment, the B-52s would arrive with their loads of bombs. Afterward, a fresh round of leaflets would arrive, reminding them of the strike and warning that a new one would soon follow. Neighboring units nearby would receive their own warnings. Mass defections often followed. Or as Carl Stiner put it, 'They ran like hell.'
The Air Force was at first reluctant to sign on to this approach (who warns the people they're going to bomb?), but they eventually became big boosters. These operations conveyed a sense of overwhelming superior force, while filling the enemy with dread.
You don't have to kill the enemy to win a war. It's enough that the enemy does not choose to fight.
Later, the Air Force adopted a PSYOP campaign that targeted SAM sites, warning them that they would be bombed if they turned on their radars. 'It kept bad guys from shooting at Air Force aircraft,' Normand comments. 'So they turned out to be among our strongest proponents.'
One feature of PSYOP leaflets was the positive portrayal of Iraqi soldiers. As a unit historian pointed out later: 'I Ie was always portrayed as a decent, brave fellow who had been misled by his leaders, but who would be received by the coalition forces with the dignity he deserved.' Coalition soldiers were depicted in unthreatening ways.
This portrayal was not accidental. PSYOP planners market-tested their products. Among other things, they discovered that Iraqi soldiers responded better to simple leaflets with primitive illustrations and poor-quality paper; slicker efforts were too Western. They also discovered the kinds of content that worked and the kinds that didn't.
'We had some Iraqi POWs who had surrendered,' said Normand. 'We laughed and joked with them and found out that the thing they miss the most over there was bananas. Over and over, for some reason, that kept coming up.'
So PSYOP leaflets began to feature a fruit bowl with bananas.
The subtle touches took time; a single leaflet could involve as many as seventy-five people and a week and a half to develop. The leaflets were then dropped by a variety of aircraft, including B-52s, F-16s, F/A-18s, and MC- 13 °Combat Talons. The 8th SOS dropped approximately 19 million leaflets from MC-130s alone.
PSYOP troops also used specially prepared balloons, relying on carefully charted weather patterns to target specific areas with leaflet drops, and they paid smugglers in Jordan and off the Kuwaiti coast to distribute leaflets in Iraq.
A PSYOP survey of many of the 86,743 Iraqis prisoners found that 98 percent had seen a leaflet; 80 percent said they had been influenced by it; and 70 percent claimed it had helped them decide to give up. Radio messages were found to have reached 58 percent of the men; 46 percent had found these messages persuasive; and 34 percent said they had helped convince them to surrender. Loudspeaker broadcasts reached fewer, and affected fewer still: thirty-four percent had heard them; 18 percent had found them persuasive; and 16 percent claimed the messages had helped convince them to give up. These numbers, have to be considered with skepticism, since they were supplied by prisoners of war probably eager to please their captors, but even so, the vast number of Iraqi defections indicate the PSYOP campaign helped demoralize a large part of the Iraqi army.
Demoralizing the enemy was not, in fact, the main PSYOP goal.
'PSYOP basically has two functions,' Colonel Normand comments. 'To persuade and to inform. Persuasion is important. But supplying information is most of what we did. A lot of times, it's questionable whether you arc going to get an enemy soldier to surrender. So your main task may not necessarily be to persuade him, but to let him know what he has to do. If the situation reaches a point where you can't go on, then here are the things you need to do to save yourself.'
Accordingly, the PSYOP warriors gave soldiers in Kuwait and Iraq very clear maps to allied lines, where they could go to surrender or wait to be repatriated.
Supplying maps to the enemy, and warning units that arc about to be attacked, seems an odd military tactic. Even more, an odd SOF tactic. These are
No wonder so many Iraqis deserted as the war progressed.
Psyop units also worked with ground troops near the front, in campaigns designed either to confuse the enemy or to trick him into revealing his position.
In one celebrated example, a Marine unit's Light Armored Vehicles, or LAVs, were tape-recorded. The PSYOP team then used loudspeakers to convince an Iraqi unit that LAVs were maneuvering near the border. When the Iraqis began firing at them, Marine air and artillery zeroed in on the enemy positions.
Sixty-six loudspeaker-equipped teams accompanied advancing armies during the ground war to encourage surrender and direct enemy prisoners of war. The teams helped herd and control the large number of EPs (enemy prisoners) taken by coalition forces.
Some nine hundred PSYOP soldiers took part in various facets of the campaign; most were highly educated and many were language specialists. The 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) included nearly fifty Ph.D.s. Normand had a B.A. in political science and two master's degrees, one in international affairs and the other in strategic planning. Devlin earned a B.S. in history education, and two master's degrees in national security affairs and international relations. Both were trained and experienced U.S. Army foreign area officers (FAOs), army strategists, and joint service officers (JSOs).
Interestingly, clinical psychologists play a very small role in PSYOPs. They're too narrow. 'Their focus is on an individual's thinking processes, but they don't go beyond that into the effects of that thinking. They don't consider what that thinking causes to happen in a society and in a culture, explained Normand.
THE WAR AGAINST SCUDS
Saddam had his own psychological weapons, as well. After the air war began, Saddam struck back with
