Syrian TV Is Key Weapon In Propaganda War

The open desert along Syria's border with Iraq is the only thing that lies between many Middle Eastern men and their dream of joining the jihad against American forces just miles away.

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that one of the most powerful calls to arms is Al-Zawraa TV. It's banned in Iraq, but beamed across the region on satellite — and it's hard-core anti-American propaganda.

Al-Zawraa is run from Damascus by Mashaan al Jabouri, a former Saddam Hussein and Sunni member of Iraq's parliament. He calls it part of the Sunni resistance.

Al-Zawraa broadcasts video filmed by insurgents of American soldiers in their sights — and under attack. Why? "Because we want them to leave our country," al Jabouri says.

E-mails put in to Al-Zawra from would-be fighters who want to fight Americans — and the Sunnis' other arch-enemy, Iraq's Shiite militias.

Al-Zawraa shows them looting and taking heroin. It also mocks the Shiites' revered leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, by blackening his teeth.

"We think that Sadr is one crazy man," al Jabouri says, "A blood man, a killing man."

But al Jabouri himself is a wanted man — not only for inciting violence in Iraq, but for stealing millions of dollars earmarked for Iraqi oil pipeline security. It's a charge he denies.

So far, the Iraqi government hasn't caught up with al Jabouri, who's living comfortably, in the open, in Syria — as open as the border young jihadis cross on the way into Iraq.