how to sell a war: the bad guy murders babies

The pictured girl told the world under tears that she saw how Saddam Hussein's soldiers took babies out of their incubators and let them die on the cold floor.

That was three months before the 1991 Operation Desert Storm against Iraq (in which Iraq was blown back to the stone age), George HW Bush repeated her statement several times before the war begun.

But it wasn't the truth "Nurse" Nayirah hadn't been in Kuwait at the time. And she was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington, USA.

The lie



Only hours after Saddam Husseins Iraq had invaded Kuwait in August 1990 Kuwaitis living in the US hired the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton - a job worth $1 million a month. This was the biggest ever contract in the history of public relations to improve the image of their corrupt, oil-rich regime.

The story of how Iraqi troops, in the first days of the invasion, went into Al-Adan hospital, tore the sick babies from incubators and left them on the cold floor to die was graphically told to Congress on November 1990 before the crucial vote to send US troops (passed by about 5 votes).

What the audience didn't know however was that the 15-year old girl who made the moving, tearful testimony was none other than Niyirah al-Sabah - daughter of the US Ambassador to Kuwait. She had allegedly worked as a volunteer in the maternity ward of the hospital. But nurses who live in the two story white building opposite the hospital in Kuwait City claimed that they had never seen the girl before in their life.

She had been trained by Hill and Knowlton but that didn't matter, already Amnesty International helped publicize the fact that innocent babies had been murdered by hostile Iraqi invaders, President Bush even mentioned the incubator incident in five of his speeches and seven senators referred to them in speeches backing a pro-war resolution.

So there you have it, 14 or so babies who weren't murdered help generate a war that blew (literally) Iraq and its people back to the stone age!