THE 1991 FAKED "KIWAITI INCUBATOR BABIES STORIES": DEBATE ON DEMOCRACY NOW

"What was not said at the time is that Nayirah was the daughter of the
Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, Saud Nasir al-Sabah.

"By March of 1991, Amnesty International took the unprecedented move
of retracting its report, saying it had become clear that the
allegations were baseless."

A Debate on One of the Most Frequently Cited Justifications for the
1991 Persian Gulf War: Did PR Firm Hill & Knowlton Invent the Story of
Iraqi Soldiers Pulling Kuwaiti Babies From Incubators?

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We spend the hour with Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the woman who ran the PR
campaign for Hill and Knowlton, and John Stauber, co-author of
"Weapons Of Mass Deception."

On December 19, 1990, Amnesty International published an 84-page
report on human rights violations in occupied Kuwait. The report
stated that, "300 premature babies were reported to have died after
Iraqi soldiers removed them from incubators, which were then looted."

This allegation, which was widely reported by the global media, became
one of the most often cited justifications for the 1991 Gulf War. On
January 9 1991, President George HW Bush cited Amnesty's report in a
letter sent to campus newspapers across the country. In the Senate,
six senators specifically cited the story in their speeches supporting
the resolution to give Bush authorization to use American forces in
Kuwait. That vote ultimately passed by a mere half-dozen votes.

But the most dramatic moment in this story came on October 19, 1990,
when a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl, identified simply as Nayirah
testified in front of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she
had personally witnessed 15 infants taken from incubators by Iraqi
forces who she said, "left the babies on the coal floor to die."
California Democrat Tom Lantos explained that her identity would be
kept secret to protect her family.

What was not said at the time is that Nayirah was the daughter of the
Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, Saud Nasir al-Sabah. By March of 1991,
Amnesty International took the unprecedented move of retracting its
report, saying it had become clear that the allegations were baseless.

On October 17, Democracy Now! spoke with author and PR Watch
co-founder John Stauber as well as retired Air Force Colonel Sam
Gardiner about the U.S. government's use of psy-ops, propaganda and
information warfare in the build up to the Iraq invasion.

Within that conversation John Stauber spoke about his findings that a
new Jessica Lynch-related book is: "being promoted by … [the]
Livingston Group's Lauri Fitz-Pegado. She is infamous for her work at
Hill & Knowlton PR in 1990 coaching the Kuwaiti girl called "Nayirah"
in her shocking but phony testimony on Congressional hill that she'd
seen Iraqi soldiers murdering Kuwaiti babies. That stunt helped propel
the U.S. to war against Iraq in 1991. Fitz-Pegado's client was the
ruling family of Kuwait and the baby-killing claims were later shown
to be false."

    * "Toxic Sludge is Good for You" – excerpt of a documentary about
the book Weapons of Mass Deception co-authored by PR Watch editors
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.
    * Lauri Fitz-Pegado, principal at the Livingston Group. She
formerly worked at Gray and Company and Hill and Knowlton. Lauri
Fitz-Pegado also served as Assistant Secretary and Director General of
the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce
under former President Clinton. She is a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations.
    * John Stauber, co-founder of PR Watch and co-author of the book,
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on
Iraq which takes a look at how the Bush administration's highly
successful public relations campaign sold the Iraqi war to the
American public.

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/02/1540237

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