Bombing is latest salvo in psychological war

The torrent of bombs and missiles that fell on Baghdad after dark on Friday was merely the latest salvo in the psychological war against Iraq.

For months now the Bush administration has been urging the Iraqi leadership and commanders to rise up against their leader. Thus far, however, without success.

As long ago as September, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, suggested that today's unpleasantness could be avoided with a single bullet, or one-way tickets out of the country for Saddam Hussein and his chief henchmen.

The Bush administration knew that President Saddam – far too given to fantasies of his place in history – would not accept voluntary exile. But the White House reckoned senior Iraqi military figures might either lay down their arms or betray or assassinate their leader.

As war approached, psychological pressure increased. Leaflets were dropped urging surrender. Barely a day passed without President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, or Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, calling on President Saddam's commanders not to risk their lives in a lost cause, but to give themselves the chance to live in the brave new Iraq of tomorrow. Should they resist, there would be no escape. And if they torched the oil fields or used chemical or biological weapons, they would be tried as war criminals.

That strategy has been reinforced by media coverage. Pictures which TV correspondents, "embedded" with advancing US forces, have been permitted by the Pentagon to show viewers in Baghdad as well as inUS cities have conveyed the same message – of irresistible attackers, sweeping north towards the capital.

Messrs Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld may care little for what the world thinks, but they know that time is on Saddam's side, that the longer he holds out, the higher the casualties, the greater opposition to war will grow, at home as well as abroad.

Mr Bush's popularity, predictably, has surged since the war began. But that may not last – and there is matter of the 2004 election campaign, little more than a year away.

On Friday, the air campaign began. Mr Rumsfeld had to admit the psychological pressure had not worked. There were no direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad – only unspecified ones involving the US military and the CIA and individual Iraqi commanders in the Republican Guard and elsewhere.

The nature of these contacts will only be known when the war is over.