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Before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in March 2003, Iraqis' primary news source was state-run broadcasting. The government had banned satellite dishes, so Iraqis were largely deaf to the dozens of satellite channels saturating the Middle East.

After Saddam's ouster in March 2003, the U.S. military lifted the ban. Dishes began sprouting from rooftops, and televisions hummed with Western and Arabic newscasts. Naturally, the biggest story was the United States' invasion and its future plans - real and rumored.

Freedom of information may be a democratic cornerstone, but the U.S. government has long believed that skeptical Middle Eastern media outlets obstruct its policy goals. So the military planned to circumvent them. It commandeered the state broadcasting system, renamed it the Iraqi Media Network, and dispatched Iraqi journalists to report, under American management, on the occupation. But the state apparatus functioned on land-based antennae. Satellite broadcasting, after all, had been prohibited. As a result, the U.S. occupiers' mission was reported largely by outsiders, while American officials tried to reach Iraqis over rabbit ears.

"What this means," says Charles Krohn, who headed public affairs for the U.S. Army in Iraq, "is that we essentially forfeit the contest for 'hearts and minds' to the competition."

The Bush administration didn't launch a government-produced satellite broadcast to Iraq until early 2004. It did beam radio programming, through a station called Radio Sawa. But the station airs more popular music than news and measures its impact by audience size relative to competing stations, not whether listeners' opinions about America are changed by what they hear, a government audit has found.

In the December 2004 issue of Government Executive, Shane Harris explores how the information war in Iraq influences opinion about U.S. policies. To read the full story, click here.