WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- To millions of Western viewers, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is the comic relief in the Iraqi tragedy. He is the porter in "Macbeth"; the grave digger in "Hamlet." His comments provide a backdrop of gallows humor as the Saddam Hussein regime unravels before a disbelieving world public on television.

Al-Sahhaf's version of developments has added a touch of the bizarre to the battle for Baghdad. Some examples from Sunday's U.S. incursion into the center of the city:

With U.S. heavy armor grouped around Saddam Hussein's main palace, and the crump of artillery reverberating through the city, he insisted that there was "no presence of the American villains in the city," because their advance has been defeated.

As U.S. military C-130 transporters thundered down the runway of Baghdad airport Sunday, al-Sahhaf was still saying that the airport was not in American hands. He also said large numbers of U.S. troops had been "poisoned" as they attempted to approach Baghdad.

At one point -- surrounded by Arab and Western journalists -- he again denied that there were U.S. troops in the streets. Someone asked him what all the firing in the streets was about. Those are our soldiers chasing the Americans out of town, he replied.

In the Arab world, however, al-Sahhaf's daily TV appearances carried on Arab channels and often without the reality check of CNN or another Western channel have made him a star. In an extremely unpopular war, he tells Arabs from the Atlantic to the Gulf what they want to hear.
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But al-Sahhaf is not imparting information, he is engaged in psychological warfare. He is playing on a particular Arab trait of clinging to fantasy in the face of stark reality.

To some degree, people everywhere believe what they want to believe: But in the Arab world this trait is embedded in culture; it is often life itself.

On Monday, Arabs were stunned by the early morning images of American soldiers and tanks apparently wandering freely through the streets of Baghdad. But the appearance of al-Sahhaf vigorously denying the evidence of their very eyes cheered them up. Tanks? What tanks? U.S. soldiers were "committing suicide against the walls of Baghdad," etc., etc.
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Al-Sahhaf's early accounts of ongoing battles in the first two weeks of the conflict turned out to contain more than a grain of truth as the U.S. and coalition forces took casualties and suffered some setbacks, though he has never discussed Iraqi military casualties -- only civilian victims.

But as the coalition has moved into Baghdad, his statements have become increasingly surreal to Westerners. To the wider Arab world what he says is less important than the fact that his appearances mean the Iraqi government has not been toppled. But while al-Sahhaf promises resistance and defeat of coalition forces in Baghdad, a rapid process of corrosion is leading inexorably to an Iraqi defeat. The Arabs will miss him.

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