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Leaving Iraqi TV alone was a mistake
Posted by Steven Wu on Wednesday, March 26 @ 19:52:11 EST News
In 1991, the US immediately knocked out Iraq's television broadcast capabilities. This time around, we didn't. To see why we didn't, and how it has hurt the war effort, read this New York Times article.

I thought that the US military knew from the beginning the power of controlling information. After all, one of the first things that the military did was drop pamphlets all over Iraq. So it's indeed curious that they left a tool of such known potency in the hands of the enemy.

 
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Re: Leaving Iraqi TV alone was a mistake (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, March 27 @ 02:18:06 EST
Not willing to register with the NYT, so I don't know what they said, but ...

The military got some useful information from leaving the broadcasters alone, for example, evidence concerning Saddam's status after the attemt to eliminate the core of Iraqi leadership.

The US military has some very sophisticated approaches to media management and I assume that leaving Iraqi TV alone served a tactical purpose and this was not a random oversight. You don't believe they just forgot about it, do you?


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TV is manned by non-combatants and is civlian infrastrcutre (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, March 27 @ 15:26:51 EST
No mention is made of the fact that the Geneva conventions frown heavily on targeting non-combatants or civilian infrastructure in war.

Perhaps readers more knowledgeable on this aspect of law would care to speculate on why that did not feature in the reasons for leaving the TV stations in place...?


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Re: Leaving Iraqi TV alone was a mistake (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, March 28 @ 04:35:15 EST
The question presupposes that the upper echelons of the U.S. military actually want this war to end quickly. Good faith should not be assumed.


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