"They are sick in their minds. They say they brought 65 tanks into center of city. I say to you this talk is not true. This is part of their sick mind"
About this Quote
Reality is collapsing on live television, and al-Sahaf tries to hold it together with pure insistence. The line works because it is less a rebuttal than a counter-spell: repeat "sick mind" often enough and maybe the audience will treat the evidence in front of them as hallucination. In 2003, as Baghdad fell and foreign broadcasts reported U.S. armor rolling through the city, Iraq's information minister performed a kind of last-ditch narrative sovereignty. If you can still control the story, you can still pretend you control the state.
The specific intent is blunt: deny battlefield facts, delegitimize the messenger, and project psychological instability onto the opponent. Calling them "sick in their minds" is not just insult; it's an attempt to relocate the debate from verifiable claims (tanks, streets, positions) to an uncheckable diagnosis. It's strategic: you cannot out-argue satellite footage, but you can accuse it of being propaganda born of pathology.
The subtext is more revealing than the words. The phrase "I say to you" stages intimacy and authority, as if the speaker is the lone sane adult in a room of rumor. The repetition hints at panic, a man forced to keep talking because silence would concede the truth. It's also meant for multiple audiences at once: Iraqi listeners who need permission to doubt terrifying news, party insiders watching for loyalty, and international media the regime still hopes to shame into uncertainty.
What makes it memorable is the mismatch between tone and circumstance: confidence deployed at the exact moment confidence is least credible. That dissonance turns official denial into accidental satire, a propaganda tactic that exposes its own desperation.
The specific intent is blunt: deny battlefield facts, delegitimize the messenger, and project psychological instability onto the opponent. Calling them "sick in their minds" is not just insult; it's an attempt to relocate the debate from verifiable claims (tanks, streets, positions) to an uncheckable diagnosis. It's strategic: you cannot out-argue satellite footage, but you can accuse it of being propaganda born of pathology.
The subtext is more revealing than the words. The phrase "I say to you" stages intimacy and authority, as if the speaker is the lone sane adult in a room of rumor. The repetition hints at panic, a man forced to keep talking because silence would concede the truth. It's also meant for multiple audiences at once: Iraqi listeners who need permission to doubt terrifying news, party insiders watching for loyalty, and international media the regime still hopes to shame into uncertainty.
What makes it memorable is the mismatch between tone and circumstance: confidence deployed at the exact moment confidence is least credible. That dissonance turns official denial into accidental satire, a propaganda tactic that exposes its own desperation.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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