"Yesterday, we slaughtered them and we will continue to slaughter them"
About this Quote
A brazen boast of annihilation delivered from a Baghdad podium during the 2003 invasion, the line compresses bravado, denial, and psychological warfare into a single sentence. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqs Information Minister, became notorious for daily briefings that insisted the coalition was being repelled even as television images showed American armor entering the capital. Declaring that the enemy had been slaughtered yesterday and would continue to be slaughtered tomorrow, he attempted to stitch a narrative of unbroken victory across time, projecting inevitability and resolve.
The diction is blunt and dehumanizing, chosen to intimidate and to stiffen the spines of loyalists who depended on state media for cues. It also served the regime’s internal politics, signaling unwavering allegiance to Saddam Husseins line and deterring dissent by insisting that the state’s coercive power was unimpaired. In wartime propaganda, such hyperbole aims to seize the emotional climate: fear for the adversary, pride for supporters, and a sense that the arc of events favors the regime.
Yet the effectiveness of this rhetoric collapsed under the weight of visible facts. As the military situation deteriorated, the insistence on total victory turned into a spectacle of denial. Outside Iraq, al-Sahaf was dubbed Baghdad Bob or Comical Ali, a figure of dark humor whose pronouncements illustrated how authoritarian information systems can prize the performance of certainty over accuracy. The very word slaughter, intended to awe, instead exposed the hollowness of the message when reality contradicted it in real time.
The line endures as a case study in the limits of propaganda. Language can shape perception, but when it diverges too far from lived evidence, it provokes ridicule, not belief. In the final days of a collapsing regime, the promise to continue doing yesterday what plainly was not happening became an emblem of political theater outpaced by events.
The diction is blunt and dehumanizing, chosen to intimidate and to stiffen the spines of loyalists who depended on state media for cues. It also served the regime’s internal politics, signaling unwavering allegiance to Saddam Husseins line and deterring dissent by insisting that the state’s coercive power was unimpaired. In wartime propaganda, such hyperbole aims to seize the emotional climate: fear for the adversary, pride for supporters, and a sense that the arc of events favors the regime.
Yet the effectiveness of this rhetoric collapsed under the weight of visible facts. As the military situation deteriorated, the insistence on total victory turned into a spectacle of denial. Outside Iraq, al-Sahaf was dubbed Baghdad Bob or Comical Ali, a figure of dark humor whose pronouncements illustrated how authoritarian information systems can prize the performance of certainty over accuracy. The very word slaughter, intended to awe, instead exposed the hollowness of the message when reality contradicted it in real time.
The line endures as a case study in the limits of propaganda. Language can shape perception, but when it diverges too far from lived evidence, it provokes ridicule, not belief. In the final days of a collapsing regime, the promise to continue doing yesterday what plainly was not happening became an emblem of political theater outpaced by events.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|
More Quotes by Mohammed
Add to List
