Shock and Awe in Babylon

Continued from page 1

By Richard Muller

April 2, 2002

The world waited while facial recognition programs analyzed the images, a silly waste of time, done for those who misunderstand the limitations of computers. The goal of facial recognition software is to try to approach the fantastic human ability at pattern recognition, which works in ways we don't fully understand. No computer can match your (or my) ability to recognize faces. Look at the two images of Saddam, and decide. You have just outdone every program ever written. Computers have a virtue only when given huge numbers of jobs; people get bored, and computers don't. That's their only advantage.

The Saddam broadcasts contained no compelling evidence that they weren't pre-existing tapes, in fact, just the opposite. He praised a division that had already surrendered, and he talked about Basra as if it had been taken, rather than just surrounded. My guess: this was a tape prepared in case he had to sneak out of Baghdad while giving the illusion he still was there. Don't expect more tapes with Saddam addressing the camera. I suspect he is injured or dead, and these were the last contingency tapes they had.
 
3. Oil well fires. At the end of Gulf War I, Saddam malevolently blew up the oil wells of Kuwait and set the gushing oil on fire. Based on prior experience, it was thought that it would take a decade to extinguish the blazes. Even worse was the pollution of spilled oil; the United Nations teams actually reset some fires to burn it off. The firefighting was opened to competition, and this resulted in a surge of technological innovation. For the first time, both sea water and liquid nitrogen were used to cool the fires. MIG-21 turbine engines mounted on Soviet T-62 tanks directed high pressure air and water at the wells. In an environmental miracle, the last of the 732 wells was extinguished and capped by November 1991.

We assumed that Saddam had also learned from our success. Next time, we believed, he would blow the well below the ground, making them more difficult to cap. In 1991, Saddam had not extensively mined the regions around the wells; he wouldn't make that mistake again. We expected the worst.

But it didn't happen. Only nine wells were set on fire in the south, and seven of those have already been extinguished. Many of the wells were found with explosives attached but not fired. Why were so few ignited?

Several possibilities: One, effective action by Special Operations forces, getting to wells before the Iraqis knew what was happening. Two, the suddenness of the U.S. land invasion backed up Special Ops before the Iraqis could regroup. Three, effective pamphlets telling the Iraqis not to destroy their own wealth.

Don't underestimate the importance of the pamphlets. If they were important, and we will know someday, it will illustrate a key and underappreciated aspect of U.S. Special Operations psychological warfare. Their doctrine demands truth. It is the key to effective propaganda. Don't lie; build trust. This strange new approach (not totally accepted by the government, or other parts of the military) is based on the observation that in most conflicts, truth will benefit the United States. This was such a case. Don't destroy the wealth of the Iraqi people. It rang true.