The Magnificent Liar
Some of the most hilarious footage to come out of this war is from the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf’s, press conferences. The man is a magnificently impressive liar, with talent that Bill Clinton can only dream of. Here are some of the techniques he uses:
1. Al-Sahhaf is a master of spinning inconvenient facts. When coalition forces take an objective, they’re always “nailed down there” and “surrounded,” as though the Iraqis intentionally gave up the objective.
2. When the facts are too inconvenient to spin, Al-Sahhaf simply makes up new ones. For instance, on Thursday, he claimed that the Americans weren’t even within 100 miles of Baghdad.
3. When caught in a lie, Al-Sahhaf covers up with even more brazen lies. When asked how American artillery fire could be heard in Baghdad if they were more than 100 miles from Baghdad, he said something about “sound bombs” being used to create the impression of artillery fire.
4. In his Arabic language answers, al-Sahhaf is much more creative at making up facts, often going off into cuckoo land. For example, he’s said that coalition aircraft are using “vibrations” to destroy important mosques without bombing them.
Al-Sahhaf’s propaganda is dutifully reported by al Jazeera, which gives him as much credence as it does CENTCOM. For instance, check out this story, which claims that it’s still unclear who controls Baghdad airport, based largely on the information minister’s claims.
You can watch snippets of the information minister’s “news conferences” on US TV. Al Jazeera, of course, carries them in full.
If you want to hear the “information” direct from the horse’s mouth, you can watch Iraqi TV. Iraqi TV has a domestic component and a satellite component intended for worldwide viewing. The domestic component is sporadically available at best, knocked off as it is by repeated coalition airstrikes. The satellite component is more usually available. As I’ve posted before, you can even watch it online. The Dutch web site DSL-TV has a web cast that you can watch. It’s provided as a service in the Netherlands only; so, if you want to watch, you’ll have to fool the web site into thinking you’re from the Netherlands. Not that I’m recommending you do this, but it’s quite easy: First select a proxy server based in the Netherlands from StayInvisible.com. Then, in Internet Explorer, go to Tools->Internet Options->Connections->LAN Settings. Type in the proxy server you want to use. Then go to the DSL-TV web site and you can watch Iraqi TV, assuming it’s broadcasting.
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