The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 by a 15-year-old girl who provided only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States Senators and President George H. W. Bush as reasons to attack Iraq in the Gulf War.
In 1992, it was finally revealed that Nayirah’s last name was al-Sabah and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of a public relations campaign for Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which was itself run by the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government [in conjunction with one or more of our own “intelligence” agencies no doubt]. Nayirah al-Sabah’s testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern Atrocity Propaganda.
In her emotional testimony, Nayirah stated that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.
Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International (a British NGO), which published several independent reports about the killings as well as testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, the truth came out. An ABC report found that “patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait’s nurses and doctors … fled” but Iraqi troops “almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die.” Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of “opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement.” You don’t say.
It is telling perhaps that the US Congress didn’t really seem to have much of a problem with this… or the missing “Weapons of Mass Destruction”… or the deaths of HALF A MILLION women and children… or the devastation of a relatively prosperous secular and sovereign Middle East nation. Nope. In spite of all the lies and made up bullshit, “It was worth it,” they said. The very words they used. Ask yourself a question and let it linger in your mind going forward, “Worth it for whom?”