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U.S. Army Psychological Operations units can be one of the most powerful weapons in the U.S. military arsenal. In both times of war and peace, "psyops" soldiers are charged with deploying messages – overt or subtle, strikingly truthful or less-than-complete – aimed at winning the cooperation of enemy armies and civilians in targeted areas. In Iraq, the United States waged a determined campaign to persuade Iraqi military commanders that they were staring down an unbeatable force. The splashy military buildup was certainly fundamental to this psych-out, while leaflets and radio broadcasts designed by psyops specialists explained the purpose of the push to remove Saddam Hussein and warned Iraqis of the risks in following their leader's orders.
Psyops operations can be as well-researched and highly crafted as a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. However Dan Goure, a weapons expert at the Lexington Institute think tank, notes that this military power of persuasion can be a tricky tool to wield, one lacking the battle damage assessments available to commanders in the field or the research surveys commissioned by Madison Avenue. Goure says that fortunately, most of the psyops messages simply call for inaction – "Don't tamper with weapons sites," "Don't repair military fiber optic cables" – rather than action, and the ease of compliance adds to their effectiveness. In Iraq, the desired outcome required action in one sense: the people had to turn their backs on Saddam. When thousands of Iraqis did just that during the 1991 Gulf War, many of them were carrying leaflets created and dropped by psyops soldiers.
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Pictured: A soldier picks up a newspaper published by the 4th Psychological Operations Group to build rapport with the Afghan people, Nov. 6, 2002. The eight-page newspaper was written, translated into three languages and laid out at Fort Bragg, then printed by a contract printer in Afghanistan.
Credits: CBS News, Associated Press, Global Security.org, United States Marine Corps, fas.org/Air Intelligence Agency, U.S. Army Personnel Command |
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