By Tony Lang
Cincinnati Enquirer

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday if the test of a huge new 21,500-pound bomb was a "psy-ops" message for Iraq.

"There is a psychological component to all aspects of warfare," Rumsfeld said. "The goal is not to have a war. The goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight."

Then, in a typical understatement, he said of the devastating, conventional bomb, "This is not small."

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) has been nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs," to tweak Saddam Hussein who vowed in the first Gulf war he would unleash the Mother of All Battles. A few well-placed MOABs could demoralize even seasoned Iraqi troops.

Rumsfeld could have added there's also a psychological component to pre-war diplomacy, building coalitions or countering terrorists. Terrorism is psychological warfare. Just as 9/11 made us all soldiers in the war on terrorism, it also put us on the front lines of a psychological war.

Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are about as unlike as two power-hungry killers can be, but they have shared some common assumptions about us: That the United States is a paper tiger, that Americans are wimps who can't endure casualties or prolonged war, that U.N. nations will overlook any treachery to avoid war, that industrial nations will sell the rope that can be used to hang them.

There's good evidence to suggest bin Laden never expected the United States would rout him out of Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein even now may still calculate he has better than a 50-50 chance of dodging an allied attack, thanks to France and other conflicted Security Council members. Democracies, with their messy debates and belief in the sanctity of life, are lousy at psychological warfare.

The Mother of All Disincentives for bin Laden or Saddam would be a world united against them, but the United Nations may already have blown that round of this psych war.