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Leaflet Drop on IraqFri, March 07, 2003Source: Ananova NewsThe US has dropped at least 10 million leaflets on Iraq, telling Saddam Hussein's troops how to improve their chances of survival if war startsThe US has dropped at least 10 million leaflets on Iraq, telling Saddam Hussein's troops how to improve their chances of survival if war starts. Among the instructions are don't mine waterways or dump oil in them and don't use weapons of mass destruction. The leaflets also advise them to desert their station "so you will live to see your children grow up". Allied planes dropped another 660,000 leaflets with half-a-dozen different messages on 11 sites in southern Iraq. "Saddam has poisoned your waterways before," said a message. "You must not aid him in doing so again." It referred to January 1991, in the first Gulf War, when Iraqi forces opened valves at Gulf oil terminals and spilled more than six million barrels, about 20 times more than was released by 1998's Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska. A month later, while in full retreat from allied forces that evicted Iraq from Kuwait, the Iraqis blew up 732 Kuwaiti wells, setting 650 of them on fire. US Defence officials said they have several more new messages that have not been delivered yet. In the weeks leading up to the 1991 war, US psychological warfare operations were directed at persuading Iraqi soldiers inside Kuwait to give up without a fight. This time the objectives of the US leafleting, radio broadcasting, emails and phone calls to Iraqi forces are more varied.
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