Let me toss out an idea here. I think that in Islamic cultures in general and Iraq in particular, we are NEVER going to be effective at information operations. My reason for this is sort of conceptual, psychological, and philosophical, but I'll take a stab at it.

Coming from a Western, rationalist tradition, we assume that there is some factual "truth" disconnected from personal perception and belief. It has an independent existence. No one individual may have a perfect and complete understanding of it, but there are methods which individuals and groups can use to come close to the truth--open debate and discussion, elections and polls, etc.

In other cultures, though, reality and the truth have no independent existence. They cannot be separated from the individuals who perceive them. Hence when there are alterantive stories or explanations for something, the decision on which to accept is not based on which account is the "ground truth," but which of the two individuals giving different accounts one feels the most affiliation with. Phrased differently, there is no "objective" reality, only human-linked, subjective realities.

I know that in Iraq, this greatly frustrates Americans, particularly those in the military. They are perplexed, even angered when accounts of events which they are certain are factually wrong are accepted as truth by the population. To give an example (which is made up in this case, but which, I think, replicates a common occurrence), when some civilians are killed and the American military said that insurgents did it but other Iraqis say that the American military did it, the Iraqi public does not decide which story to believe based on which one is the closest to the "objective" truth, but whether they feel the deepest affiliation with the Americans telling the story or the other Iraqis telling the story.

This all leads me to believe that we will never "win" a cross cultural "war of ideas."