WASHINGTON, 30 March 2003 — US President George W. Bush is waging battle against Iraq with dark, sometimes macabre, words — “murderous,” “brutal,” “cruel” — to shape public opinion about the war at home and abroad.
The president has been demonizing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for months, but recently he has used particularly graphic language to denounce the Iraqi regime. The more explicit the message, apparently, the more shock value it has.
At Camp David this week, Bush told this story: “We had reports the other day of a dissident who had his tongue cut out and was tied to the stake in the town square. He bled to death. That’s how Saddam Hussein retains power.” That same day, on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters the same story about the bleeding man in the square. Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld elaborated on the claim.
A US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday “there have been credible reports” about the Iraqi dissident whose tongue was slashed.
“No doubt his intelligence agencies send him graphic anecdote after graphic anecdote, so he has plenty of material,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
In a recent radio address, Bush’s message included this: “We know from human rights groups that dissidents in Iraq are tortured, imprisoned and sometimes just disappear; their hands, feet and tongues are cut off; their eyes are gouged out; and female relatives are raped in their presence.”
The president has incriminated Saddam’s family as well: “His sons are brutal, brutal people,” Bush told a news conference at Camp David that was telecast around the world. “I’m not surprised to know that regular army forces are trying to desert, but get blown away by fellow Iraqi citizens.”
In peacetime, the appropriateness of telling gory stories might be questioned. But in times of war, world leaders are given more latitude, said communications specialist Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Bush wants to revivify the notion that Saddam is evil,” she said. “That is particularly critical when the country is taking casualties.” She thinks the graphic sections of Bush’s speeches are aimed at the American people, to rally the nation during wartime. But it also serves to give Bush cover when the war is over, she said.
The administration has stated three objectives for taking military action: Protecting America from terrorists, preventing Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction and liberating Iraqis from a repressive regime.
“You want to have grounds to stand on if some of your grounds erode,” she said. “If ultimately this war comes to conclusion with no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the argument that will stand will be that this was a person who tortures his own people.”
Sometimes stories about atrocities, however, prove false.
A decade ago, Americans preparing for their first war against Iraq were shocked when a Kuwaiti girl, testifying before Congress, said she saw Iraqi soldiers occupying her country take infants off of their respirators and let them die.
The story quickly became part of the first President Bush’s campaign to win public support for the war. “Babies pulled from incubators and scattered like firewood across the floor,” he said.
Only after the war did the story fall apart and the witness’ true identity — the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States — become known.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on Friday said Bush has been talking for months about atrocities the United States believes Iraq has committed. Bush isn’t doing it to justify the war to the American people, he said.