Iraqi TV Survives U.S. Bomb Attack

March 26 -- Iraqi state-run television resumed its daily broadcasts this morning despite a dawn air attack on the main TV station in Baghdad.

Sources at the U.S. Defense Department said coalition forces hit the TV station with bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles in an early morning raid. A senior military official told ABCNEWS they had been targeting the TV station for several days.

U.S. commanders initially believed they had succeeded in knocking out Iraq's state television channel. But the channel, which does not broadcast overnight, resumed transmission around 9 a.m., broadcasting verses from the Koran, Reuters reported.

Iraq's international satellite channel, which broadcasts 24 hours a day, went off the air around the time of the raid but had resumed service four hours later.

Television is one of the biggest propaganda tools Saddam Hussein has. His regime has complete control of the airwaves, and has offered these images of the war to Iraqis:

A downed American helicopter

Dead and captured Americans

Resistance to coalition troops from Iraqi citizens

Injured Iraqi civilians

And Saddam has offered his own calls for mass uprising against the Americans.

"The enemy has violated your lands and now they are violating your tribes and families," Saddam said in a televised statement Tuesday. "If you cause them any damage, no matter how small, they will flee. Don't wait for our orders. Just fight them. Every one of you is a military leader. Fight them in small groups, hit their frontlines and their rear units so the whole advance will stop. And when it stops, attack them. If they deploy, leave them alone, don't fight them, but if they rest somewhere, attack."

Sarah Sewall, program director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, said such images have power. "There is an argument to be made that unless you cut off Saddam's ability to portray an image of being in control, you have given him a huge military advantage," she said. The Carr Center is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.