Nayirah testimony

Nayirah's statements were widely publicized and cited numerous times in the United States Senate and by American president George H. W. Bush to contribute to the rationale for pursuing military action against Iraq.

In January 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah had never been a nurse and that she was the daughter of Saud Nasser Al-Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States at the time the testimony was made.

[1][2] Nayirah's story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, which published a report about the supposed killings[3] and testimony from Kuwaiti evacuees.

It is impossible to compare this operation to any similar incidents or to provide an exact account thereof because it is in effect an operation designed to achieve nothing less than the complete removal of Kuwait's assets, including property belonging to the State, to public and private institutions and to individuals, as well as the contents of houses, factories, stores, hospitals, academic institutes, schools, and universities ... What has occurred in Kuwait is the perpetration of an act of armed robbery by a State which has used its military, security and technical organs for that purpose.

[10] On September 5, Abdul Wahab Al-Fowzan, the Kuwaiti health minister-in-exile, stated at a press conference in Taif, Saudi Arabia "that Iraqi soldiers had seized virtually all of the country's hospitals and medical institutions after their invasion" and that "soldiers evicted patients and systematically looted the hospitals of high-tech equipment, ambulances, drugs and plasma" which resulted in the death of 22 premature babies.

"[21][22] On September 9, NPR reported that "in a ward for premature infants, soldiers had turned off the oxygen on incubators and packed the equipment for shipment to Iraq.

[33] On October 9, at a Presidential news conference, Bush stated: I thought General Scowcroft [Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs] put it very well after the Amir left here.

"[37] The objective of the national campaign was to raise awareness in the United States about the dangers posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to Kuwait.

German historian Andreas Elter [de] stated:The work of the US advertising agency for the Kuwaiti carried the signature of the White House in a certain way.

They stripped the supermarkets of food, the pharmacies of medicine, the factories of medical supplies, ransacked their houses and tortured neighbors and friends.

If an Iraqi soldier is found dead in the neighborhood, they burn to the ground all the houses in the general vicinity and would not let firefighters come until the only ash and rubble was left.

[48] Hill & Knowlton, which had filmed the hearing, sent out a video news release to MediaLink, a firm which served about 700 television stations in the United States.

"[55] In a visit to Kuwait on October 21, 1990, by journalists who were escorted by Iraqi information ministry officials, doctors at a Kuwaiti maternity facility denied the incubator allegations.

"[4] On January 6, 1992, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by John MacArthur entitled "Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?

[57] MacArthur noted that "the incubator story seriously distorted the American debate about whether to support military action" and questioned whether "their [Representatives Lantos and Porter] special relationship with Hill and Knowlton should prompt a Congressional investigation to find out if their actions merely constituted an obvious conflict of interest or, worse, if they knew who the tearful Nayirah really was in October 1990.

[44][58] On January 15, 1992, the CEO of Hill & Knowlton, Thomas E. Eidson, responded to the concerns raised by MacArthur in a letter to the editor to The New York Times.

"[61] The letter explained that Nayirah's charge that Iraqi soldiers removed newborn babies from incubators was corroborated by Dr. Ibraheem Behbehani, head of the Red Crescent, before the United Nations Security Council, and that the media was not permitted back inside Kuwait "until after the liberation", so there was no way to verify the stories of refugees like her.

[61] Eidson concluded that "Nayirah's credibility should no more be questioned than if she had been a doctor or teacher" and the company's work with the Kuwaitis was consistent with firm's standards stating that "the public interest was fairly served.

"[61] In August 1992, Howard Paster replaced Robert K. Gray as the general manager of the Washington office in order to clean up the firm's image.

[62][63] Critics contended that Hill & Knowlton had concocted a fake popular movement, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, and subsequently used questionable evidence and suspect witnesses to influence public opinion and policy in the United States and the UN.

[60][64][65] Hill & Knowlton's actions taken on behalf of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, together with those of other major clients including Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the Church of Scientology, and an anti-abortion campaign by Catholic bishops raised ethical concerns among public relations professionals.

[53] In a letter to the editor to The New York Times on January 27, 1992, entitled "Kuwaiti Gave Consistent Account of Atrocities", Tom Lantos responded to MacArthur's allegations.

Its director, Andrew Whitley, told the press, "While it is true that the Iraqis targeted hospitals, there is no truth to the charge which was central to the war propaganda effort that they stole incubators and callously removed babies allowing them to die on the floor.

One investigator, Aziz Abu-Hamad, interviewed doctors in the hospital where Nayirah claimed she witnessed Iraqi soldiers pull 15 infants from incubators and leave them to die.

[44] In order to respond to these charges, the Kuwaiti government hired Kroll Associates to undertake an independent investigation of the incubator story.

"[44] Following the end of the war, Reuters reported that Iraq returned "98 truckloads of medical equipment stolen from Kuwait, including two of the baby incubators".

Abdul Rahim al-Zeid, an assistant under-secretary at the Kuwaiti Public Health Ministry, said that by returning the incubators the Iraqis had unwittingly provided proof that they took them.

In his book Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse, Frans H. van Eemeren, when discussing argumentum ad misericordiam, described Nayirah's story as a "clearly fallacious appeal to pity".

"[82] Ted Rowse, in his article "Kuwaitgate — killing of Kuwaiti babies by Iraqi soldiers exaggerated" in The Washington Monthly, noted that "Most reporters, having apparently been burned by Hill & Knowlton's handiwork in spreading the original Nayirah story without checking it out, seem to prefer to let the story fade away, passively falling, once again, for the company's public relations guile.

"[44] John R. MacArthur, who authored Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, has noted that "at the time, it was the most sophisticated and expensive PR campaign ever run in the U.S. by a foreign government.