Nayirah: the 15-year-old Kuwaiti liar who conned the U.S. government
August 11, 2007
Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer’s most recent article (Promoting Dangerous Divisions in Middle
East) is the same old re-hashing of opinions of what is happening in Iraq. It is dull and laden with self-praise for her superior
intuition about events in the Middle East.
Among all her tired opinions, one statement stuck out like a black person at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Geyer wrote
about being in Saudi Arabia in the fall of 1990, just across the border from occupied Kuwait: She reminisced:
What was happening with Iraqi troops all over the place? We found out soon enough. It was horror on a mass
scale: piles of women’s breasts were found in bags …
I thought I had heard all the lies about the Iraqi regime, but this one is new.
Many accusations were made against Iraq before the 1991 destruction of the country as well as prior to the
illegal March 2003 invasion. So many preposterous allegations came forth, yet no one in the mainstream media tried to discover
the truth. To this day, all the falsehoods are still imbedded in the minds of most people in the West. A few journalists have
taken the time to discover reality, but most of their work is never seen by the majority of citizens. On the occasion that
a piece is discussed openly, the author is quickly denigrated for going against public opinion that is based on lies. The
perpetrator becomes the victim.
On August 9, 2004, www.dissidentvoice.org published an article by Lila Fajiva (Iraqi Women and Torture) in which the author dispels
some of the myths taken as fact. She stated:
Despite being totally debunked, the tale of Iraqi soldiers tossing babies out of incubators, a creation of
a D.C. public relations firm, found its way into a largely fictitious account of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait called
The Rape of Kuwait, by Alabaman Jean Sasson who has made a lucrative career out of negative stories about women’s
lives in the Middle East … "
A copy of The Rape of Kuwait made its way into virtually every press package sent out by the U.S. administration
in the buildup to Desert Storm. In addition, every member of the U.S. government received the book. The Kuwaiti embassy in
the U.S. ordered 200,000 copies for distribution.
Almost very word of this book has been discredited. But, not one U.S. politician has stated he/she used false
information on which to build an opinion about Iraq. The vast majority of the people who read the book still believe the contents
are accurate.
The lies transcend just one book. Rajiva added:
"Under the Saddam Hussein regime Iraqi women were not allowed to work outside the home," said Lisa DePasquale,
recycling outright propaganda.
DePasquale is a conservative columnist who is in denial of the results of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately,
her words were read by many and the absurd statement about women during the Ba’ath years is taken as standard fare in
the U.S.
The most well-known debunked fairy tale is that of the Iraqi soldiers tossing babies from incubators in Kuwait
and sending the incubators to Baghdad, leaving the babies to die on the floor. After Desert Storm, the truth emerged. The
story was fabricated by the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton, whom the Kuwaiti government paid $12 million for the
demonizing of the Iraqi government. The supposed "eye witness" of the tossing out of the babies was a 15-year-old girl who
testified to the U.S. Congress under the name of "Nayirah." In fact, she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the
U.S. and was not in Kuwait during the occupation. Hill and Knowlton provided the script she read to the duped U.S. lawmakers.
When the story first came forth, some people questioned its authenticity. Almost immediately, Amnesty International
(AI) verified the accusations. Now, there was no opposition to the huge lie; a lie that led seven U.S. senators to vote for
authorizing war and who later stated that if they knew the truth they would not have given the green light.
Amnesty International is one of those groups that has an untouchable aura about it. If AI says it’ so,
it must be. The truth differs. Instead of being the protector of human rights, the group may in fact be a convenient purveyor
of U.S. imperialistic designs.
In Covert Action Quarterly, Issue 73, Summer 2002, Francis Boyle gave a picture of AI that contradicted
that of the do-good, selfless public image the organization has.
Boyle was a member of the board of directors of Amnesty International USA from 1988 to 1992. Along the way,
he found discrepancies between the group’s image and its reality. In fact, he questioned the AI report of the Kuwait
incubators. According to Boyle:
Absolutely nothing happened. There was never an investigation, there was total stonewalling coming out of
London. They refused ever to admit they did anything wrong. There has never been an explanation, there has never been an apology.
It’s down the memory hole like 1984 and Orwell.
My conclusion was that a high-level official of Amnesty International at that time, whom I will not name,
was a British intelligence agent. Moreover, my fellow board member, who also investigated this independently of me, reached
the same exact conclusion. So certainly when I am dealing with people who want to work with Amnesty in London, I just tell
them, "Look, just understand, they’re penetrated by intelligence agents, U.K,. maybe U.S. I don’t know, but you
certainly can’t trust them."
Boyle did not give a grand assessment of the leadership of AI. He said:
They don’t care. They’re completely and totally arrogant. "We are Amnesty International. We are
the world’s largest and most powerful human rights organization. We won the Nobel Peace Prize for our work. So we do
whatever we want."
And again, if you don’t believe me, go search the Lexis-Nexis database and see if there has ever been
an apology by Amnesty International for the Kuwaiti dead babies report.
Most people think that Ai may make the occasional error in judgement, but the organization is based on good
deeds and the overwhelming desire to see the world rid of human rights violations. Again, this is an illusion. Boyle explained:
Amnesty International is primarily motivated not by human rights, but by publicity. Second comes money. Third
comes getting more members. Fourth, internal turf battles. And then finally human rights. To be sure, if you are dealing with
a human rights situation in a country that is at odds with the United States or Britain, it gets an awful lot of attention,
resources, man and womanpower, publicity, you name it, they can throw whatever they want at it. But if it’s dealing
with violations of human rights by the United States, Britain, Israel, then it’s like pulling teeth to get them really
to do something on the situation.
In November 2005, Ayatollah Sistani (the Shi’ite religious leader who can’t speak Arabic) issued
a fatwa calling for the killing of homosexuals in Iraq. Two weeks later, Bush called him a man of great integrity and courage.
Even before Sistani issued the fatwa, gays and lesbians were being hunted and killed in Iraq. After the fatwa,
the program was in full swing. Iraqi gays who were fortunate enough to get out of Iraq alive broadcast the plight of homosexuals
still in Iraq. The subject was publicized in Europe and other areas, but little was written in the U.S.
Almost a year after the issuing of the fatwa, and a considerable amount of press on the subject, Amnesty International
was asked their opinion of the sexual-cleansing of Iraq. The organization said it had never heard of the edict or the killing
of hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqi gays and lesbians. This ignorance of the facts proves Boyle’s allegations that
AI only works on cases that acquire the most publicity. Whether the cases are true or not means nothing to AI.
Recently, I had a long conversation with my colleague Husayn Al-Kurdi, an astute writer of Iraqi history and
culture. He stated the urgency of those few of us who write about the real history of Iraq to keep writing and writing. Al-Kurdi
brought up the fact that what little real history is available is diminishing and that the U.S. is in possession of decades
of Iraqi documents that will never be brought to daylight.
The U.S. has written the books Iraq now uses in its education system. Much real history of Iraq has been destroyed.
Now is the time for all scribes to set the record straight, especially in matters of debunking the outrageous lies put forth
by lackey journalists and human rights organizations.
Let's put the myths of the bags of women's breasts and killing of babies in the trash bin portion of history
and repeatedly call for the truth. The liars should be held responsible for their acts; acts that have caused the deaths of
more than three million Iraqis and the destruction of the most advanced country in the Arab world.
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