"Coalition air power enforces no-fly zones to protect Iraqi people."

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

These leaflets, and the ones dropped on Afghanistan, look so damn shabby.

I mean, jeeze, why not hire top-notch designers to do these?

Why not do something imaginative, like making Collectors' Series leaflets with coupons on back ("Good for free halvah snack at US Military Government commissary!") ("Free immunization for your home family . . . coming soon at your local US Military Government dispensary!") or that can be fitted together to form a big picture . . . say, of Saddam doing something peculiar with a billy goat.

The rough design was carefully planned to plant fear in the hearts of the Iraqis.

Perhaps we will see a flood of design spoof campaigns, a la Ready.gov or "I fucked Gisele Bundschen/Ken Courtney/Saddam Hussein."

Top notch designers do not work for the US Military's PsyOps
branch, and due to 'black' ops they cannot hire outsiders.

Fun link from the military institute of heraldry (TIOH):

https://www.perscom.army.mil/tagd/tioh/PsyOps/PsychologicalOperations.htm

Well, Eli, I knew someone who was drafted (well, actually, recalled to active duty, after having been drafted for Korea) into a psyops unit during the Cuban missile crisis. He said his unit was full of all sorts of artists, advertising "creatives", and actors. But I suspect people like that might not join the volunteer army these days.

Yeah, these look utterly bad in comparison to the propaganda posters of WWII, or for civil defense during the Cold War. Even the drop leaflets from Gulf I, crudely printed in four-color, and maybe not even that, and typically drawn with wordless ideogram cartoons, usually with two or four panels, came off as way better done than the current staple. Also, lot of them, like this Information Radio leaflet and the reverse side of this "Do not risk your life..." look very hard to read, and I'm pretty sure some ink will fade, run or bleed to where it's unreadable.

I almost winced at the badly drawn Saddam caricature. I mean, there must be some poli-ed cartoonist out there who would have loved to do this sort of thing.

"He said his unit was full of all sorts of artists, advertising 'creatives', and actors. But I suspect people like that might not join the volunteer army these days."

Any reason they need to be in the army?

If things played out differently after 9/11, the main weapons in the War on Terrorism could have been cultural. Imagine a Meme Warfare Department, staffed with the folks jleader mentions. Plus unemployed dot-commers and fellow travelers.

Alas, the Administration is a bunch of intolerant ideologues dreadfully allergic to even small amounts of freakishness.

Didn't I read somewhere that Cordwainer Smith was a Pysops man back in the Korean war?

Yup! And Sun-Yat Sen's (sp?) god son.

He figured out a way for Chinese troops to surrender without losing face. Wrote up leaflets pointing out that if you shouted certain positive words (don't have a book handy, something like "honor", "beauty," "justice") in a certain order, they'd amount, in English, to "I surrender."

We talk about all and nothing. *wink*

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