Media : Reading Between the Lines in the Iraqi Press : Baghdad’s newspapers and state-controlled television provide hidden clues to the leadership’s logic.

Given the circumstances, it seemed a curious story to get such prominent display in the Iraqi capital’s only English-language newspaper.

The main news of the day, trumpeted in a headline just beneath the daily photograph of President Saddam Hussein, was: “Bush Seeks Friends’ Help to Cover Gulf Buildup Costs.” Nearby was an account of the Iraqi leader’s extraordinary, televised session with his Western hostages.

But amid all the crisis news, in the center of the front page, was this headline: “Moscow to Begin Rationing Cigarettes on Sept. 1.” The accompanying article explained how Iraq’s longtime Soviet ally was forced to limit sales of its meager cigarette supply.

“Aha!” exclaimed an intuitive British journalist over breakfast the moment he spotted it. “That’s it, then. Food rationing begins here on Saturday.”

Sure enough, on Sept. 1, the Iraqi government began strict rationing of virtually every known commodity, from flour and sugar to shampoo and car tires, in order to brace for the economic impact of world sanctions against Hussein’s regime for the invasion of Kuwait.

When it comes to the media in Iraq, one of the world’s most tightly controlled societies, one quickly learns to read between the lines for the hidden clues to the logic of a leadership that believes censorship is crucial to survival.

Compared with most of the developing world, the domestic propaganda machine that Hussein’s advisers have created in Iraq is notably powerful and efficient.

In the current war of nerves between Iraq and the West, that machine has taken on a particularly central role both at home and abroad, ranking the country’s Ministry of Information and Culture behind only the ministries of defense and internal security in the power and resources it possesses.

Seen from a Baghdad perspective, through the prism of the city’s newsstands and its sitting-room television sets, it seems the ministry has wielded its propaganda arm with a sophistication that would rival a Manhattan image-maker.

From the subtleties of the Soviet tobacco shortage story meant to make Iraqis feel better by noting that even a superpower sometimes has to resort to rationing, to a gripping front-page account of an unnamed, 23-year-old Australian sailor who jumped off a navy frigate joining the Western armada in the Gulf “because this is not our war,” the Baghdad Observer is a good example of how the propaganda machine works.

In an interview with The Times last week, Observer editor Naji Hadithi, who doubles as Iraq’s director general of information, said the goal of the propaganda effort is to undermine support for President Bush in America, Europe and the Arab world, while building morale and consolidating support for both Hussein and his nationalist cause at home.

“Iraq also tries to show that it means peace,” Hadithi said. “This is the most important thing. We do not want war.”

The selection of stories which led the Observer’s front pages last week illustrated various aspects of that multifaceted propaganda strategy:

“Arab-Americans Harassed, Threatened With Death.”

“Syrian Troops Kill Dozens in Violent Pro-Iraq Protests.”

“Foreign Women, Children, Free to Leave Iraq.”

“President Says Iraq Ready for Dialogue with U.S.”

“Austria Calls for Dialogue With Iraq.”

Also unusual in a developing world context, the Observer’s occasional half-column opinion pieces are not raving diatribes, nor are they dry treatises stilted with stiff political rhetoric. They are usually well-written masterpieces of propaganda, only occasionally punctuated with Iraq’s home-grown revolutionary vocabulary.

In an editorial last Thursday condemning Bush for refusing to meet with the Iraqi leader, the Observer asked rhetorically: “Isn’t dialogue one of the pillars of democracy? The Western democracies, led by the United States, are proving that they preach something but do something else.”

The piece went on in almost poetic fashion in its attempt to shift the blame for the crisis from Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait to the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

“The Americans in this region are sitting atop a volcano, whose eruption would prove far more scathing than the scorching heat of the desert’s sun,” the newspaper editorialized. “An inadvertent spark could activate the volcano and set the whole region on fire.

“This is why the logic of the warmongers does not serve world peace,” it continued. “It is not in the interest of America itself, nor is it in the interest of its allies. It is not in the interest of anybody. Iraq is not Panama or Grenada. Iraq has a war-hardened army and a war-tested people. . . . Would America tolerate another Vietnam? This is a question for the U.S. Administration to answer.”

The same, relatively understated approach has been reflected on the state-run Iraqi Television, a medium made all-powerful in a nation where the Persian Gulf oil boom left the overwhelming majority of households with at least one television set but only two government-run stations.

In place of the incendiary quotes and “sound bites” singled out by the foreign media from interviews with key government ministers or the president himself, Iraqi TV focuses on the day’s morale boosters: cool rhetoric stressing what it depicts as Iraq’s legitimate, historic claim to Kuwait; the “immorality” of America’s military presence in the Holy Land; and, always, the dignity and strength of the Iraqi people.

For several days running last week, viewers were treated to hours of footage of their soldiers on “the front,” as Iraq now refers to the Saudi-Kuwait border.

During one, hourlong segment meant to counteract reports that Iraqi troops were so thirsty they had been selling their weapons for water, a cheery correspondent sipped a cola and swapped jokes with a group of helmeted soldiers holding perpetually full glasses of water.

In late afternoons, when children come home from school, and late at night just before the Iraqis go to sleep, there was hardly a mention of the crisis. Instead, the children got Bugs Bunny, Tweetie Bird and Donald Duck, and late-night viewers were treated to the Bob Newhart Show and romantic French melodramas with Arabic subtitles.

In fact, many Western analysts living in Baghdad said that, just as the Baghdad Observer is peppered with daily clues to actual present and future events, the mood of Iraqi TV fare usually mirrors the mood of the nation’s leadership.

During the first two weeks of crisis after the invasion, a Western diplomat here described the day’s programming as, “one-third Saddam, one-third news and one-third militarization--the Popular Army marching in the streets.”

Last week, though, as the threat of an immediate shooting war with the West receded into a war of rhetoric, Iraq’s TV programmers lightened up, and even the most Draconian and topical of shows were cast in a far more relaxed hue.

Iraqi TV’s internationally telecast meeting between the president and about 20 of his Western hostages, for example, was broadcast domestically as “Guest News,” which also reinforced Iraq’s vocabulary for the hundreds of foreigners it is holding at potential military targets throughout Iraq.

Heavily edited for the home audience, the hourlong program focused almost entirely on the president’s reassuring speech to the group. It aired just three of the many questions the hostages put to him, and it devoted several minutes to President Hussein’s birthday greetings to a 6-year-old Briton, Rachel Blears.