Saddam's short regional rise of militaristic projection

Eight years of war with Iran had left Iraq as a clear victor even though it hadn't gained anything from the war but casualties, Iraq had been at war with Iran for 8 years since it launched it's first wave and invasion in September 1980, before being forced to accept the ceasefire on August of 1988 after being on the offensive against Iraq for six years Iran had lost 60km of ground past the Iraqi border by the Iraqi Army and suffered several aircraft sorties.

Saddam Hussein had been made an infamous after ordering killing 5,000 people in a single gas attack on Halabja.

But Iraq came out of that war a regional power.



There was a delicate balance of power between 1988 and 1991, Iraq lost it's slip on power after the western nations led by the United States led a major aerial bombardment following their liberation of Kuwait.

But for a time after the Iran Iraq War there was a lot of uncertainty in the Middle East over the balance of power, Iraq had been ordering a lot of new military hardware to modernize it's forces, and was also on the way to developing a nuclear bomb probably in only a few short years, it had stationed Scud missiles and modified al-Hussein missiles in the west of the country facing towards Israel.

The world was changing, the wall had come down and eastern Europe had several revolutions, during this time in history there was a brief moment where Iraq was taking the opportunity to be the dominant military power in all of the Middle East.

In February 1990, Saddam Hussein demanded US naval vessels leave the Persian Gulf, however passed almost unobserved in the West, as they were all too busy with the developments in Europe and dissolution of the USSR.



By March 1990, US intelligence learned about Iraq building permanent missile launching sites in the west of the country, facing Israel.

Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq was in possession of binary chemical weapons and that:

“By God, we will make the fire eat up half of Israel, if it tries to do anything against Iraq.”

During the Arab Leage Summit, held in Baghdad, in late May 1990, the Iraqi President furthermore called for the liberation of Jerusalem, attacks on the USA and Israel, and demanded $27 billion from Kuwait, while blaming Kuwaiti and Saudi greed for oil, and equating them with an act of war against Iraq.

However there was a small emerald Saddam needed to ensure he had under his direct control to help the Iraqi economy recover from the war and ensure he stayed in his position of power for some more years to come.

The modern state of Kuwait was a country cut out of the old Ottoman empire of Basra back in 1961 for strategic purposes and for the lake of oil it sat on.

Control of Kuwait would be vital in helping Iraq completely recover economically and allow it to prosper following the long war with Iran.

So in August of 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait with over 100,000 troops, it only took a matter of hours.



Even though Iraq had a fair claim on Kuwait and had been mislead into believing the west would not intervene it was the resulting 1991 Persian Gulf War that would indefinitely shift the balance of power in the Middle East, as the US led and Saudi paid coalition used a massive amount of air power (including B-52's flying non stop from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana firing cruise missiles) to bombard Iraq destroying most of it's air defense, command centres and air defense centres and eventually a large amount of the countries infrastructure.



Iraq launched Scuds at Israel and Saudi Arabia with little effect (with the exception of the 28 US soldiers killed in the barracks at Dhahran) in undermining both states, the US ground offensive following the liberation of Kuwait lasted under 100 hours.

After being at war with the United States Saddam Hussein was left in power, he no longer had enough projection to use conventional power against his neighbours but still had some tanks and army and a marginally effective air force, the reason for leaving him in power was to ensure that neither Syria nor Iran could walk over Iraq with the brutal tyrant in power.

It was a drastic turning in the balance of power the aftermaths of them could be evident when the US led the invasion on the false provocation that Iraq actually mustered up the resources to develop Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Chamberlain "appeasement" rhetoric is getting blunt

Neville Chamberlain Prime Minister of Britain 1937 to 1940 is known almost entirely in today's world for appeasing Adolf Hitler and letting the Nazi's have Czechoslovakia, before they went on to crush the rest of Western Europe, but what exactly was it that Chamberlain did wrong?

Is this rhetoric used by those against Obama or any other politician for that matter factual correct?



The interesting thing is that even after opting for peace before declaring war on Germany after the invasion of Poland in 1939 Chamberlain had this to say:

"We have a clear conscience, we have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany's rulers could be trusted, and no people or country could feel themselves safe has become intolerable ... Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things we shall be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail."

After declaring war along with France the French Army dug in in the Maginot Line, Chamberlain ordered the Royal Navy to form a blockade to keep economic pressure on Germany, Chamberlain was reluctant to alter the British economy fearing that the emergency war budget would bankrupt the country.

When Germany attacked the Low Countries Chamberlain was soon replaced by Winston Churchill, he then stated they needed to stand united behind their new leader and fight the Nazi war machine, however one has to wonder if the Lend Lease given to Britain by the United States was too much, for ever cent worth of aid given by the United States was surely paid for, the equivalent of $500 billion in today's money was what the UK paid for it's war effort to eventually help to defeat the Nazi's (with help from several other major Allied powers), this hefty bill was only sorted out between Britain and the US in 2006!

Of course no cost is too great to be the pivotal defence against fascist expansion but in comparison to the geopolitical climate of today's wars there is truly no comparison to calling a British or American politician an appeaser like Chamberlain:



An interesting (if not so recent event) was George HW. Bush being called a wimp, before Saudi Arabia was directly bordered by (wasn't threatened by) Saddam Hussein's army after he invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Persian Gulf War that followed saw the entire country being disseminated by aerial bombardment, even though there was no proven plans that the Iraqi Army (who had dug in around Kuwait City) had planned to preemptively attack Saudi Arabia yet alone invade it!

So when the same is being said that the west should preemptively attack Iran before things "get out of hand" people have to ask themselves the question of whether or not a nuclear Iran merely justifies a major war fought 7,000 miles overseas!

if the majority had ruled

Cast your mind back to 1991, the Soviet Union was on verge of collapse, Germany was reunited after nearly half a century, Bush Senior announced a New World Order was coming upon us, also there was a war going on in the Gulf, in January 15th the infamous Operation Desert Storm begun, the power structure in the Middle East was about to change drastically.

By the time the ground offensive begun against Kuwait the Iraqi military had suffered major damage, the Iraqi fighter jets that weren't destroyed in their concrete bunkers had flown to Iran, Iraq's long time enemy, the Iraqi Army were bombed on its retreat, the highway was hit with everything they had from the air, F-15's, B-52's, AV-8B Harriers, A-6's and A-10's, with so many casualties inflicted it became known as the Highway of Death.



Iraq was virtually defeated, Kuwait was liberated, and in the south of Iraq the Shia majority that had been oppressed for Saddam for so long led an anti government uprising, this was led by the perception that the power of President Saddam Hussein was weak at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression.

The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution disbanding the Iranian military led Saddam in one way in an attempt to launch a large scale invasion of Iran, in one way this solidified Khomeini's revolution and led to thousands joining the Iranian military and launching an offensive war by 1982 against Iraq, his main ideal was to export the revolution to Saddam's oppressed Shia majority.

Having the majority of people is one of the basic fundamentals of democracy, if the Americans had seen eye to eye with those attempting a rebellion history for both of the countries could have been drastically different.

Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives.

George HW. Bush later had this to say:

"I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

We all know the history of the Iraq war that started in 2003 twelve years after all of this, it had been admitted by Colin Powell that if they had taken out Saddam the Iraqi military in the aftermath may have been too weak and Iran and Syria would have had a good chance at gaining more power and dominance in the region.

If these rebellions had been successful Iran would have surely had some input around the holy city of Basra which they had made several unsuccessful attempts to capture in the 1980s in human wave attacks Iraq may have been split into two states, Basra to the south, and the region of Mosul to the north (which was mainly inhabited by Sunni Muslims).

Regardless what these states would have done afterwords what was admitted by Colin Powell begs the question that even if one of the main roles in today's occupation of Iraq is really to promote democracy and the ideals of the majority.

On the other hand



The idea of bringing a war to a dramatic end by taking out the leader was in fact tested in the opening salvo of the 2003 invasion, known as the Dora Farms strike, it involved two F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers dropping four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound Bunker Busters GBU-27 on the compound, complementing this attack was a further four Tomahawk missiles fired from destroyers in the the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Saddam Hussein was not present nor were any members of the Iraqi leadership or Hussein family. The attack killed one civilian and injured fourteen others, including nine women and one child.

It was later discovered that Saddam hadn't even visited the area since 1995!

Iraq's slip on power

Following an eight year war with Iran Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in deep debt, although he came out of the war claiming to be a winner the truth was the countries economy had taken a hard blow, the war had been a blow to his forces and he owed billions in war debts to his southern Emirate neighbors.

However following the war with Iran the Iraqis (or Saddam at least) was opting to make Iraq a regional military super power making plans to rebuild his military

It owed $65 billion in unforgiven debts to Kuwait, which in those years was depressing other oil states since it was overproducing oil selling it for under the price required by OPEC, this further devastated the Iraqi economy, that along with the fact that due to history Kuwait was technically part of Iraq and had been given statehood on ignorant strategic purposes by western powers.

During this postwar time (1988 to 1990) the Iraqi regime had big plans regarding their regional power in the future, especially regarding improving their air power as a potent weapon of terror and a tool for destruction of enemy economies. Aside from purchasing around 140 MiG-29s (137 were eventually ordered and built, but less than 40 delivered) and 36 Su-24 fighters from the USSR (intended to replace obsolete MiG-23MF/MLs, Tu-16s, TU-22Bs, and MiG-25RBs) the IrAF was also showing immense interest in obtaining Su-27 Flanker and Mirage 2000 fighters.

As well as this Iraq was financing the development of a conventionally armed version of the French ASMP supersonic cruise missile, and the development of the MAA-1 Piranha heat-seeking air-to-air missile in Brazil, both of which were eventually planned to enter production in Iraq too. The basic problem with all these projects was money: Iraq was so starved of finances that negotiations for Mirage 2000s were dropped in 1989, because the French insisted that Iraq had to first pay its debts. The collection of MiG-29 interceptors was also slow, Baghdad instead turning to Moscow and negotiating for Su-27s. Eventually, all the projects were stopped due to the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 which was Iraq's final attempt to stop the country going into economic collapse, after (in a view opposed to in the west) Iraq annexed Kuwait renaming it the 19th province of Iraq.



While in the west it was blown out of proportion, after launching Operation Desert Shield the US convinced the UN to veto Iraq, a coalition was built up in Saudi Arabia under the pretext of defending it and that Iraq was ready to attack (they were digging in around Kuwait City).

Starting on January 17th Iraq's economic and military problems were about to get much worse, the start of the stupid TV war Operation Desert Storm had begun, several units of the Iraqi air force flew to Iran to avoid destruction by the coalition onslaught of aircraft sorties and cruise missile strikes.



Iraq in retaliation only managed to fire 32 Scud missiles at the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa killing two civilians and a few at Saudi Arabia in one case killing 28 soldiers in a barracks in Dhahran.

After the first 100 hours of the ground war the American led coalition ground forces stopped at the Euphrates, Iraq had been blown to tatters and most of the world held economic sanctions against them, Saddam was left in power to stop Iran and Syria becoming too powerful over a weak Iraq, which is how they had left Iraq, a weak enemy that could come under threat from their biggest potential enemy in the neighboring region (Iran).

In 2003 the US went the extra mile and went in to personally overthrow Saddam, which led to a rather violent war which has only cooled down in the past year or so, the Iraqi people had a real street thug as their president for the latter half of the 20th century and paid heavily for it after only ever maintaining a brief grip of power that a nation of its size and wealth deserved!

a no tolerance policy

In August of 1990 when Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait the US launched Operation Desert Shield channeling American air, sea and ground forces into and around Saudi Arabia on the pretext first of preventing Saddam from launching an invasion there as well:



This saw a mass deployment of US troops onto Saudi territory, however even though the Saudis were happy to "rent" a superpower to do all the necessary fighting it wasn't ready to tolerate the various faiths of the foreign soldiers that were ready to fight and die for their land!

Not only were coalition troops on station in Saudi Arabia not allowed to drink any alcohol, they were also not allowed any Bibles, Saudi customs officers confiscated Bibles, the Jewish soldiers were not allowed hold any religious services on Saudi territory.

The Americans found a way around this by instead sending the Jewish soldiers via helicopter to ships in the Gulf to hold their services there instead!

Before the January 15th UN deadline date was announced for Saddam to pull his forces out of Kuwait Operation Desert Shield was expected at the time to last a long time, the large coalition military presence was indeed very costly to maintain.



* $1.2 billion a month for the American military machine
* $2.2 billion for the large amount of air power
* $4 billion for the Muslim allies sent to the Saudi Desert

All of this and the fact that the coalition forces (comprising of Western GIs) helped neutralize Saddam Hussein's Iraq and in turn ensure Saudi Arabia's safety, while despite this their way of life wasn't even tolerated!

maybe a limited government is what the US really needs

Ron Paul is one of the only politicians that come to mind that tell things how it is about the United States:



Since the Spanish American War of 1898 America in one form or another has interfered with country policies far from its own borders to secure it's interests, this really came to pass after the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazi's in 1945.

Up until 1991 the United States competed with the Soviet Union in the spreading of ideology often destroying smaller countries in the process (Nicaragua comes close to mind there) and setting up parts of the world as buffers against the spread of communism (South Vietnam and Iran) again far from its own borders, however you could argue that this was justified in the name of the Cold War.

Which officially ended in 1991, yet the United States has continued interfering with certain countries far from home launching preemptive wars.

For instance take the 1991 Persian Gulf War:



The US "had to" intervene because Iraq under Saddam Hussein had shown a posture of aggression when he invaded Kuwait, this was true in one sense when you ignore the fact Kuwaitis are ethnic Iraqis and the fact Kuwait 'acquired' its independence in 1961 when it was carved out of Iraq because of its strategic location and the lake of oil that it sits on, you wouldn't be far wrong if you said Kuwait is really just a western oil company with a flag!

Not only that but comparing Saddam to Hitler and trying to display the Iraqi Army as baby murders isn't a just cause for blowing away Iraq's infrastructure and then starving a million of its citizens through harsh economic sanctions before invading the country in its entirety 12 years later.

The cure really did turn out to be worse than the illness in this case!

But what people have said to me is that now Obama is president things are going to be a lot better, no more wars, but still his foreign policy remains the same, America under Obama is far from keeping to its own.



I will ignore the fact that in the past two years the US has set up Africom which puts US forces in 53 African nations spanning across most of the continent.

But what startled me the other day was when asked about why he was sending more and more US soldiers into Afghanistan with no clear sign of a victory he responded with:

“You have to learn lessons from history.”

I'm not sure if he was referring to the lost British Army in Afghanistan from the 19th century, or the fact Jimmy Carter’s administration was responsible for creating, training and arming al Qaeda in the first place and that Jimmy Carter signed an order supporting the Mujahadeen against the USSR in 1979 which spurred the Soviet Union’s invasion that resulted in a decade long bloody war that ended in the Soviets withdrawing after 15,000 of them had been killed and bringing Afghanistan into a bloody civil war that saw the Taliban eventually bought into power!

If only America could have a president that is not oblivious and ignorant to history, I hope that it was a slip up on Obama's half, or even if it was ignorance because if it wasn't then it seems to put forward the fact that he is no better than Bush before him!

Bottom Line: If America and its people restore a country with great potential back to a republic and maybe deal more with internal affairs more than foreign affairs maybe just maybe the federal government will be able to help it's own people!

You know put out wildfires in California or in the case of New Orleans be able to give humanitarian aid to its own people instead of worrying about the rest of the world!

the Iraqi No Fly Zone period

During Operation Desert Storm the Iraqi Air Force was one of the biggest in the Middle East, following that however it was quite a different story.

There was only one coalition aircraft shot down in the entire conflict, an F/A-18 flown by Captain Michael “Scott” Speicher was downed by an Iraqi MiG-25, the (the remains of his body were only found the other day), following the coalition bombing several of Iraq's prime fighter jets were destroyed as several of their air bases were destroyed on the ground while their aircraft rested in their bunkers.



More aircraft than were shot down by the Americans flew to Iran (Iraq's mortal enemy at the time), the Iranians claimed all these aircraft as reparations for the Iran Iraq War and refused to return any of them, that was 137 aircraft whilst the coalition destroyed 42.

After Desert Storm the Iraqis had lost all of their MiG-29's, Mirage F-1's and several other aircraft and bombers, following the war the Iraqi Air Force had a single Tu-22 bomber and several squadrons of MiG-25 Foxbat's they had received from the Soviet Union before the war against Iran.

They were proven in Operation Desert Storm on more than one occasion to be able to outrun missiles such as AIM-120 AMRAAM's fired from F-15's and AIM-54 Phoenix missiles fired from F-14 Tomcats, this proved them a good asset to have during the No-fly-zone period put into force by the United States.

Also during these periods however it would prove to be difficult to keep these aircraft in the air, like the Iranian Air Force following the revolution in 1979 there was an even stricter measure put on the Iraqi Air Force enforced by the United Nations making it virtual impossible for the Iraqis to get spare parts to keep their planes in the air.



There was some dispute over what parts of Iraqi air space rightfully belonged to Iraq, the United States was enforcing the No-fly zones using the Phoenix armed F-14 Tomcat and the AMRAAM armed F-15 Eagle, this resulted in just three Iraqi MiG's being destroyed in several such encounters, usually the MiG-25's because of their impressive speed (3.2 Mach) was able to outrun these missiles and maneuver in such a way as to avoid them.

That being said the Foxbats didn't score any victory against coalition aircraft in this times and the US had a lot of and sea power over Iraq in the 1990's as evident by the hastily arranged Operation Desert Fox which saw a series of attacks against Iraqi military installations to deform Iraq's military.

Afterwords Saddam stepped up in his efforts to down a coalition plane which proved not to be successful and saw coalition aircraft for the next five years attacking Iraqi airfields and shooting down several Iraqi interceptor jets, therefore further weakening the nearly destroyed Iraqi air force.

Five years later in 2003 when the Americans launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to topple Saddam Hussein's regime an order was given by Saddam to bury the dissemble or bury the remainder of their flyable planes, the Iraqi Air Force put up no resistance against the invading coalition forces.



Several examples of the MiG-25's that survived the Gulf War were found in most cases buried, several abandoned broken down MiG-23's were also discovered in very poor condition abandoned at their bases.

Most of these were later sold for scraped or simple destroyed and dumped.

Today none of Saddam's planes bought between 1979 and 1990 remain in service with the Iraqi Air Force today.

Quantity better than quality

I had wrote a thesis before about how basic conventional warfare has been phased out, this couldn't be further than the truth during Ronald Reagan's second term as president of the United States in the mid to late 1980's.

He had planned to be stronger than the bear in the woods (the USSR) and really meant it for what he had started.

He had planned for a 600 ship Navy, this included:

Recommissioning older Iowa class battleships from World War II

Building more of the new aegis cruisers

Keeping older ships in service longer

Building several more Nimitz class carriers

To understand the scope of things one Nimitz carrier requires 6,000 crew members to function properly and carries over 90 fixed wing aircraft, during the 1980's these were a mix between F-14 Tomcats to defend the carrier, (one of which could shoot down 6 Soviet aircraft from up to 100 miles away), more new F/A-18 Hornets which could engage air and ground targets along with A6 Intruders and EA-6 Prowlers which could be escorted on bombing runs.



About four more of these were commissioned before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, by that time the US Navy was the largest in the world with 15 carrier battle groups, 4 battleship surface action groups, a handful of Aegis cruisers and over 100 attack submarines.



But did quality also fit in with this, well the truth was even though with the size of it being bigger then the Soviets the fleet also had more quality in it, for instance at the time the old Iowa class battleships, (commissioned in the 1940's during the Pacific War against the Japanese, these were refitted with RGM-84 Harpoon, BGM-109 Tomahawk, and Phalanx CIWS system capabilities, plus their armor plating would be more resilient against anti-ship missiles, this was perfect for attacking positions on shore and in shore in a coastal target, its 16 inch guns able to haul something as heavy as a small car nearly 20 miles!
While its Tomahawk missiles could hit targets around 2,500km away!

This configuration on the USS Missouri (BB-63) during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991 proved it to be perfect for the war.

But when the wall came down in '89 the Soviets were gone and Russia wasn't seen as much as a threat, Congress cut funds decommissioning the older ships that made up the 600 ships Navy.

Today though the US Navy still has a hefty 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers and a few dozen missile destroyers, its small than it ever was but is still hi-tech, but in the case of a conventional war in the future will we see the return of older ships to help fill the void?

At the end of the day unlike the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II the US Navy managed to cleverly combine quality and quantity.

the deeply flawed Patriot

In 1991 during the Gulf War between the allies and Iraq Saddam Hussein possessed several Scud and Al Hussein missiles, to counter these threats the US deployed their new version of the Patriot missile system, this one designed to shoot down ballistic missiles.

But how effective was it?

On January 18th 1991 it was reported that the first ballistic missile was shot down, in fact it didn't engage anything but a computer glitch, hench a missile that didn't exist, this was to start the long history of failings malfunction and general uselessness relating to this expensive hardware.

On February 25, 1991, an Iraqi Scud hit the barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 American soldiers, battery at Dhahran been in operation for 100 hours, by which time the system's internal clock had drifted by one third of a second. Due to the closure speed of the interceptor and the target, this resulted in a miss distance of 600 meters.

Okay one screw up, even though it was reported at the end of the Gulf War that the Patriot missile had a 70% success rate in Saudi Arabia and a 40% success rate in Israel, however according to George HW Bush the success rate of the Patriot was 97%, this is backed up by nothing and he was clearly talking out of his arse.

There is actually no evidence that any Scuds were hit during the, analysis of postwar videos show nothing of the sort, most of the Patriots simply firing too late missing their targets or just firing and exploding in a great ball of fire.

Overall the correct figure for success rate in the Gulf War is 10%, and we'll accept that even though it's probably more close zero, the US Army were also pretty sure there were some major problems in the Patriot, but why report this to the public, that's what the enemy wants right?

That's probably why daddy Bush rattled off his 97% success rate calling the men that operate it patriots to not have anyone second guessing, but is a missile system that creates its own targets and has several errors really something that is worth continuing to make and put into combat?

When deployed in Kuwait in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 a British Panavia Tornado was returning home with no weapons after a mission flying in friendly skies when a Patriot suddenly fired a missile hitting it head on killing both the pilots, it was later described as a glitch.

The Patriot had 12 engagements in that war, 3 of them friendly fire incidents, it was described later in the war as scoring 9 out of 9, well done guys, what about the three jets they downed, three jets the Iraqi's probably would not have been able to down!

Over ten years had passed since Operation Desert Shield and the Patriot is still messing up, I'd like to note that the Israeli's still use the MIM-23 Hawk missiles to scan and defend their air space even though the US consider is obsolete.

They had given the Israelis Patriot missiles during the Gulf War when Saddam had targeted Tel Aviv and Haifa, the Israelis were so dissatisfied with the performance of the missile defense, that they were preparing their own military retaliation on Iraq regardless of US objections since the Patriot made little to no difference!

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!