Psyops: Proposed Leaflets for Iraq

By Russ Kick at 14 January, 2009, 4:32 pm

On January 14, 2009, the US Defense Department released 247 pages of documents on the Iraq war, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. It’s labeled “Document Grouping 3 (released JAN 2009) (12 MB)” and is currently the last link on this page at the Pentagon’s FOIA site. Here’s the direct link to the PDF file. There are numerous interesting pre-war documents - many classified as Secret and Top Secret - concerning how the military proposed handling the invasion and occupation.

Pages 51 through 67 of that file reproduce leaflets, displayed below, that were proposed for dropping on Iraq as part of psychological operations. (They’re in English - had they been approved, they obviously would’ve been translated into Arabic.) Page 50 is a memo introducing these leaflets. It was written by the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, and was sent to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The memo bears two handwritten notes - one saying, “These look very interesting,” the other noting, “We have been sort of underwhelmed by the quality of the leaflets dropped over Iraq.”

For a gallery of leaflets that were dropped on Iraq, check out the Psywarrior website. None of the proposed leaflets are there, so perhaps they were never greenlighted.

All of this was original designated For Official Use Only.