WASHINGTON,
March 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A survivor of two major
wars and numerous assassination attempts, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
is following a well-thought-out strategy to secure a propaganda victory
in the U.S.-led aggression against his country, a leading U.S. paper
quoted U.S. and Iraqi analysts as saying Tuesday, March 26.
On
the propaganda front, the Iraqi leader has scored a victory of sorts by
the very act of surviving, and appearing in control of his government,
the Washington Post reported.
The
Bush administration has suggested that his television broadcasts may
have been recorded in advance, or a double was used in Saddam's place.
But
for the time being, however, most Iraqis, even Iraqi exiles who
desperately hope for Saddam's removal from power, are operating on the
assumption that he is still alive.
"Saddam
is winning the psychological war against the U.S.," said Kato
Saadlla, Washington spokesman for the Iraqi National Front, one of the
leading exile groups.
In
his public diatribes against the United States, from the time of the
first Gulf War, Saddam has frequently spoken contemptuously about
America's low tolerance for casualties in the wake of the Vietnam War.
He
has spoken approvingly of the Sept 11 hijack attacks on the World Trade
Center and Pentagon as a means of teaching Americans a lesson by making
them "feel the pain they have inflicted on other peoples of the
world," reported the American paper.
Several
analysts said that the Iraqi decision to air television footage of
captured and killed U.S. soldiers after an ambush in the southern Iraqi
city of Nasiriyah appeared designed to influence American public
opinion, it added.
Kenneth
M. Pollack, a former CIA expert on Iraq and author of "The
Threatening Storm," which made the case for a U.S.-led invasion,
argued that the American media have been playing into Saddam's hands by
paying too much attention to the issue of U.S. casualties, which are
still relatively minor, compared with other major conflicts.
"He
must realize he is going to lose militarily," said Joseph Wilson, a
former U.S. chargé d'affaires in Baghdad and the last U.S. official to
meet with Saddam, after his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
"But
every day he succeeds in juxtaposing images of American cruise missiles
blowing up Baghdad with pictures of Iraqi farmers shooting down Apache
helicopters, he wins the battle for the hearts and minds of 250 million
Arabs."
