[Too inflammatory for the official history of leaflet drops in Iraqi Freedom.]

This leaflet has also been pulled from Central Command's official account of Iraqi Freedom. It's an entertaining cartoon for those with even a slightly black or bleak sense of humor.

Think, for a moment, if it was dropped on you. Would you believe if you were a soldier that you wouldn't be bombed if you just didn't use the radio during the war? Yeah, right. Ha-ha, what cut-ups those Central Command psychological operations dudes were.

Like all the leaflets in the exposition, this one was also dropped in an Arabic version. And upon first look you may think, as I did, that taxpayer dollars are funding an astonishing lack of talent with Adobe Photoshop. Why, this leaflet looks like someone cut and pasted word balloons and graphics from a 1991 computer game about Desert Storm to make the scenes. And I have that game! It was called "A-10!"

But this is not really the case.

A veteran of the war effort reliably informs us that the pictures, artwork -- if you will, was purposely underproduced by our psy-ops men. The shabby look was there to make the leaflets more convincing to Iraqis who know nothing of digital imaging and state-of-the-art production technique. That's the inside story, and they're sticking to it.

This uncovers an interesting case of cognitive dissonance. If the Iraqis were so unsophisticated, how on earth would they have been able to have had WMDs in 2003?

Ask the media. Ask our leaders. Ask the CIA. Ask the Iraq Survey Group. Don't ask me.

Continue to Page 5.

Questions? George Smith, Ph.D.