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 stilclass="underline" 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 shadow warriors. But in fact the goal is also a traditional one for the SOF: to affect people's hearts and minds. Successful PSYOP operations share another SOF principle as welclass="underline" Think creatively. For example, PSYOP planners recognized that the goal of a particular bombing raid is to make the targeted unit ineffective, as opposed to simply killing as many men as possible — which meant that a good propaganda campaign could actually accomplish much more than bombing alone. The leaflets helped make the allies seem overwhelmingly powerful.
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 "Scud" missiles.
Scuds were not an effective tactical weapon. They were obsolete and inaccurate. The original Scud design had been introduced in 1957, but even then it looked back more than it looked forward: It was a near-descendant of the Nazi V-2s that had terrorized London in the latter part of World War II. A modern military commander actually had little to fear.
Stock versions of the Soviet SS-1 mobile missiles (as they were officially designated) could send a 1,000-kg warhead of conventional high explosives just under 300 kilometers. The Iraqis had increased their range by welding additional fuel sections to some of the rockets. Two lraqi variants used during the war had ranges of just over 400 and 550 miles. Achieving this, however, came at a considerable price. Payloads had to be reduced, and worse, shoddy welding often meant that the missiles ruptured as they flew, decreasing their already poor accuracy. This defect actually made it harder for antimissile systems, like Patriot MIM-104 missiles, to target them effectively.
There was considerable concern that the Scuds might carry nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads. While Iraq had chemical — and probably biological — weapons, there was debate over whether they could be used on the missiles, and though the Iraqis had a program to develop nuclear weapons, they were years away from a working warhead in 1991.
In the end, no chemical, nuclear, or biological agents were launched on Scuds during the war.
Because the Scuds were not seen as a serious tactical threat to American forces, they were mostly ignored by the early Air Force war plan (except to knock out known Scud sites during the first moments of the war). But the Air Force made a serious error in estimating their strategic importance: Like the German V-2s, they had a potent psychological effect.
Saddam's targeting during his first salvo of the war, January 18, made his strategy obvious. Eight Scuds were launched toward Israel that night; the most serious strike injured a dozen people. The injuries were light — mostly cuts and bruises from shattered windows. In all, about sixty people in Tel Aviv and Haifa were hurt. But Saddam's goal wasn't so much to kill Jews as to provoke Israel into a military response. Israeli action, he believed (probably correctly), would drive the Arab nations arrayed against him from the allied coalition.
A switch from support to opposition by the leading Arab nations would have subjected American forces to innumerable difficulties, encouraged terrorist attacks, and greatly complicated logistics.