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-