Radio Sawa or impaired broadcast?

The New York Times piece on the Iraqi documents brought this bit of analysis to my attention:

On his blog last week, Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama, quoted a document reporting a supposed scheme to put anthrax into American leaflets dropped in Iraq and declared: "Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!"

The Times reporter notes that "the anthrax document that intrigued Mr. Robison, the Alabama blogger, does not seem to prove much. It is a message from the Quds Army, a regional militia created by Mr. Hussein, to Iraqi military intelligence that passes on reports picked up by troops, possibly from the radio, since the information is labeled "open source" and "impaired broadcast."   

All true.  But I noticed something else.  The English translation does indeed say "impaired broadcast," but the Arabic original says "itha'a sawa."

 

Which could mean "impaired broadcast", I suppose, but also sounds an awful lot like... Radio Sawa.  Which is, of course, the name of the American government run Arabic language radio station which began broadcasting in 2002.  Which could, hilariously enough, mean that the al-Quds Division document was actually reporting propaganda picked up from an American radio station.  Which an enthusiastic conservative blogger then, in turn, embraced as evidence.   In a word, blowback!

That might or might not be the case, but sure would be a heck of a story if it were - which, frankly, is pretty likely the strongest conclusion any of us bloggers are ever going to be able to draw from scrutinizing these documents. 

UPDATE:  Bingo!   AA regular upyernoz brought the Radio Sawa thing over to Robison's blog;  Robison's translator agreed; Robison acknowledged that he was probably wrong;  and then another of his commenters found a quote from Richard Myers during the war which makes a strong circumstantial case that this was, in fact, a report based on what was heard on Sawa as part of an American psychological warfare.   Well done, upyernoz and others! 

Comments

[Bill]

Interesting.

But not as interesting as this, Prof Lynch:

http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060315-080500-5360r

Strange how you post everything else that quotes you, but you somehow overlooked this one!

[lamont cranston]

Bill, you idiotic troll, that was discussed in detail here:

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/03/s_for_snydetta_1.html

lc

[the aardvark]

Yeah, I don't think it would have been possible to have discussed, and dissected, Snyder's article more than I did.

[upyernoz]

isn't the funniest thing the very fact that "radio sawa" can mean "impaired broadcast"?

doesn't that pretty much say it all?

[lilbitthunder]

excerpt

U.S. military planners assume that Iraq's Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard that protects President Saddam Hussein will fight. But based on the waves of regular Iraqi soldiers who surrendered during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, they hope to induce as many as possible to do the same again.
"The leaflets, the broadcasts, are to try to get; if there is a conflict; to keep the worst case from happening," Gen. Myers said.
"Apparently they're having some effect," he added, "because we understand the Iraqi regime tells the populace that these leaflets are coated with chemicals and are actually out there picking them up with chemical suits on and gloves."

acually, the document is not reporting propaganda from the US, but that Iraqi propaganda had been exposed, the "rumor" is one they started to keep people from reading the leaflets we wanted them to read, that does make sense