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http://www.guardian.co.uk/parents/story/0,3605,960131,00.html

No, not the Barney song!

US interrogators are using the purple dinosaur's theme to break Iraqi prisoners. Michael Hann knows only too well what they are in for

Wednesday May 21, 2003
The Guardian

They are simple words, plain in meaning and warm in tone: "I love you. You love me. We're best friends like friends should be. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won't you say you love me too?" They are also the words with which US military interrogators are planning to break the will of Iraqi prisoners.
Sound unlikely? Not to parents, who will have recognised the above verse as the opening lines of Barney's favourite song, Barney being a large, purple dinosaur who has the capability - along with what his US home, the Public Broadcasting Service, calls his "ethnically diverse cast of child playmates" - to drive the most iron-willed adult to despair and desperation.

"Trust me, it works," one US soldier told Newsweek of the use of what Barney-haters term the "I wuv you" song. "In training, they forced me to listen to it for 45 minutes. I never want to go through that again."
It's hard to find scientific evidence to back up the US military's faith in the misery-inducing power of the purple dinosaur's greatest hit. It's not hard, however, to find anecdotal evidence. From one Barney-bashing website: "Once anyone over the age of two hears Barney begin belting out that miserable anthem of his - 'I wuv you, you wuv me' - the human dies. It's just that simple." One presumes, then, that the military interrogators are all parents who knew the effects the song would have, but who were themselves inured by prolonged exposure. Either that, or one hopes that the hapless GIs will be issued with personal stereos playing something soothing such as ZZ Top.

For Barney has become a hate figure in the US. He's hated by those adults who watch the show. And he's hated by those adults who don't watch the show. That's why a group of teenagers beat up a man in a Barney suit in a Texas shopping mall. That's why there's a website for the Jihad to Destroy Barney the purple dinosaur (www.jihad.net,) which describes itself thus: "The Jihad is a heterogeneous organisation of people on the internet dedicated to the defamation, humiliation, eradication, killing and removal of Barney the Purple Dinosaur of the television show Barney and Friends from the airwaves and from every human's life."

Which is why the Americans are inflicting him on their prisoners. Believe me, if Barney had been walking the earth when the Geneva conventions were drawn up, there would be laws against this sort of thing.

Fortunately, as a parent, you learn to develop your mental sinews to resist such tortures. In fact, the hardened among us know that what the former Fedayeen and Republican Guard are going through now is nothing. So they're being played the Barney song. At what time? Middle of the day? Meaningless. Only when you've been dragged from sleep before dawn, day after day for months on end, to enter Barney's dayglo world ... only then do you know the full horror of the psychological warfare that is life with a pre-school child.

And how are the Americans playing back the recording of the song? Are the prisoners left alone in a room while music is piped in? That will bring short-term results, but anyone who has heard "I Love You" more than a couple of hundred times learns to block it out.

But no one has the power to resist those dreaded opening bars when a small child demands you participate. My not-quite-three-year-old, for example, insists that whichever parent is present gets up and dances around the room with her, hugging and kissing where the song demands it. Participation - as with Incy Wincy Spider, The Wheels on the Bus and countless other classics - is what turns a song from a melody to a misery. Just imagine how effective this could be on those flinty Ba'athist henchmen.

So pity the poor prisoners, but we parents are made of sterner stuff. Still, I suspect that the coalition forces have not yet made full use of their potential psy-ops armoury. You had better believe that no one will be able to keep Saddam Hussein's whereabouts secret once the British interrogators deploy their secret weapon: a battered audio tape of the theme to Merlin the Magical Puppy.