Here’s a suggestion for saving American lives in Baghdad.

Soap opera.

I’m not joking. One of the most inexplicable and dangerous failings of U.S. occupation authorities is their failure to communicate with the Iraqi people. Ordinary Iraqis don’t know who’s in charge or what U.S. officials are doing. This breeds suspicion and hostility along with false and vicious rumors about the actions of American troops.

Just this week, an anti-American mob of 10,000 gathered in Najaf on the basis of a rumor that Americans had arrested a prominent cleric. The rumor wasn’t true, just like popular rumors that U.S. troops look through women’s clothes with night-vision goggles.

So you might think that the Coalition Provisional Authority (or CPA) would be seeking new ways to get its message out. You might think the CPA would be brainstorming with Iraqis about creative television programming.

You might think that — but you would be wrong.

The Iraqi Media Network — the CPA-funded operation that dominates domestic broadcasting — is dull and repetitious, with little original programming and limited news programs. Iraqis are far more likely to tune in to foreign TV channels, like those of Iran, which has 24-hour news programs that blast U.S. occupation. Or a Lebanese network run by Hezbollah, a group labeled as terrorist by the U.S. government.

Iraqis with the money buy satellite dishes that bombard them with Arab channels like Al-Jazeera, with its endless anti-American talk shows. Since most Iraqis are currently jobless, they sit at home listening (when they have electricity) to a diet of anti-American news programs.

Meantime, the CPA shows little sign that it knows how to overcome its isolation from Iraqis. The Pentagon has yet to put enough money or staff into coalition television to produce original programming or expand its meager news shows.

This isn’t a problem that can wait. U.S. officials must have a means to get the facts out. They must have the means to keep Iraqis informed about plans to move toward elections — and end the occupation. They must give the new Iraqi interim government — which is supposed to be the first step toward elections — a way to publicize efforts to draft a new Iraqi constitution and set up a new judicial system.

There are plenty of good suggestions about how to do this, if the CPA is finally ready to finance a serious Iraqi media operation. No signs yet they are.

“Radio and television programming are the most critical means to getting the message out,” says a new report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which just assessed U.S. reconstruction efforts. The report prescribes a massive effort to establish more local TV stations and to set up a national “headline news”-type program.

Frederick Barton of the CSIS also suggests that coalition TV set up a crime watch show so that Iraqis can phone in tips about looters and share information. All-day news shows on radio and TV could combat Iranian misinformation.

Several Iraqi friends say that TV or radio talk shows would give Iraqis a chance to air their grievances. Why not have a fresh-faced Iraqi TV host haul in CPA and Iraqi officials to be questioned by callers, so they could feel a personal connection with their interim rulers? As the CSIS report noted: “Without seeing or hearing (CPA head Paul) Bremer and others, disinformation will continue to prevail over truth.”

But my favorite suggestion comes from Timothy Carney, a former U.S. diplomat who just spent three months with the CPA in Baghdad. He thinks one way “to capture Iraqi popular interest would be a soap opera with a select few characters.” Imagine a show, with fine Iraqi actors (there is a theater tradition in Baghdad) who dramatized Iraqis’ suffering under Saddam, and their struggles to cope with the new situation.

Through soap operas, Iraqis could see actors resolve their problems, could feel they weren’t alone, could even watch as CPA officials did (or didn’t) do things right. There might even be a U.S. soldier-hero — like some of the young officers I met who are building schools or setting up new city councils.

And in between the soap segments, bulletins could keep Iraqis apprised of real news.

— Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her e-mail address is trubin@phillynews.com.