Unrelenting pressure ineffective - so far

The torrent of bombs and missiles that fell on Baghdad on Saturday was the latest salvo in the psychological war against Iraq.

For months the Bush Administration has been urging the Iraqi leadership and commanders to rise up against their leader, without success.

As long ago as September, the White House suggested that today's unpleasantness could be avoided with a single bullet, or one-way tickets out of the country for Saddam Hussein and his chief henchmen.

The Bush Administration knew that Saddam would not accept voluntary exile. But the White House reckoned senior Iraqi military figures might either lay down their arms or betray or assassinate their leader.

As war approached, psychological pressure increased. Leaflets were dropped urging surrender. Barely a day passed without President George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, or Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, calling on Saddam's commanders not to risk their lives in a lost cause, but to give themselves the chance to live in the brave new Iraq of tomorrow.

Should they resist, there would be no escape. And if they torched the oil fields or used chemical or biological weapons, they would be tried as war criminals.

That strategy has been reinforced by media coverage. Pictures which TV correspondents, "embedded" with advancing US forces, have been permitted to show viewers in Baghdad as well as in US cities have conveyed the same message - of irresistible attackers, sweeping north towards the capital.

Messrs Bush, [Vice-President Dick] Cheney and Rumsfeld know that time is on Saddam's side, that the longer he holds out, the higher the casualties and the greater opposition to war will grow.

Now the air campaign has begun. Rumsfeld had to admit the psychological pressure had not worked.

There were no direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - only unspecified ones involving the US military and the CIA and individual Iraqi commanders in the Republican Guard and elsewhere.

The nature of these contacts will not be known until the war is over.

- INDEPENDENT