    That may have been coincidence but two earlier news articles, dated
    March 1, 1991, apparently have a common origin with the ITV news
    bulletin. The first article[4] tells us that approximately 100
    members of the US 101st Airborne Division, fluent in Arabic, talked
    the enemy into surrendering. These soldiers rode in the Apache
    helicopter gunships that were involved in the longest
    helicopter-borne assault in history. They told the Iraqi troops
    that they would be slaughtered if they didn't give up.

    "They got the point," one soldier is quoted as saying.

    This all sounds very unremarkable, except when you read the
    editor's note: "The following dispatch was subject to US military
    censorship." Now why would they want to censor such a mundane
    tactic, except out of embarrassment that the US Army fighting
    forces had fallen to the level of a cheer-leading squad?
    ... in which case they would have nixed the thing entirely.

    But upon re-reading the article, we may pick out certain key
    phrases (emphasised in italics):

    "He [the soldier interviewed] was one of dozens of Arabic speakers
    that played a key role in the allied ground attack against Iraq,
    and part of an attempt by the US Army to use finesse, intelligence
    work and tactics to complement brute strength."

    If we fill in the missing blanks with such descriptions as "the
    megaphone was used to direct psychoacoustic frequencies that
    engaged the neural networks of the enemy's brain, causing him to
    think any thought and feel any emotion that the Americans chose to
    lay on him", then it starts to make sense. And it would no longer
    seem so surprising that one soldier could talk 450 enemy soldiers
    into surrendering. The possibilities are there, and, as the next
    article[5] documents, that is exactly what happened. Iraqi troops
    gave up en masse.

    We quote: "They were surrendering in droves, almost too fast for us
    to keep up with..."; "...two Iraqi majors, both brigade commanders,
    who gave up their entire units..."; and "...one of them gave up to
    an RPV [remotely piloted vehicle). Here's this guy with his hands
    up, turning in a circle to give himself up to a model airplane with
    a camera in it."

    Irrational? Not if there was also a voice being beamed into his
    head from that little flying toy, saying, "Give up, give up!"
    Otherwise, how do we account for the editor's note at the beginning
    of the article: "The following is based on pool dispatches that
    were subject to military censorship." Without that note, we could
    smugly think that the Iraqi soldiers were cowards or crazy, but why
    censor that idea?
                                    -66-