Babies and the Incubators, Again
Back in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government hired the PR company Hill and Knowlton to plead it's case. H&K then decided to make shit up and thus was born the infamous Baby Incubator Fraud:
"[They] first coached a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only at the time as Naira, to testify before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from hospital respirators. Naira claimed to be a refugee who had been working as a volunteer in a Kuwaiti hospital throughout the first few weeks of the Iraqi occupation. She said that she had seen them take babies out of the incubators, take the incubators, and leave the babies ``on the cold floor to die.''
Naira's emotional testimony riveted human rights organizations, the news mediums, and the Nation. That incident was cited by six Members of the U.S. Senate as reasons to go to war with Iraq."
The propaganda effort worked but later the entire episode was exposed as an outright lie and the girl turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. No matter that it was all just a staged stunt to sway people's opinions, it helped to pave the way for all the misery and death to follow. They gave those emotional chains a big, hard yank.
Now comes a somewhat similar lying tactic in this slow-motion-trainwreck lead up to war on Iran. Flying around the giant neocon echo chamber is this false assertion that the Iranian parliament passed a law that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims. It was supposedly on Drudge but it's been removed. As it was from here, the supposed originator.
Removed for good reason, as Juan Cole very ably demonstrates.
Yanking the chains again.
As he puts it, "The whole thing is a steaming crock."
"[They] first coached a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only at the time as Naira, to testify before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from hospital respirators. Naira claimed to be a refugee who had been working as a volunteer in a Kuwaiti hospital throughout the first few weeks of the Iraqi occupation. She said that she had seen them take babies out of the incubators, take the incubators, and leave the babies ``on the cold floor to die.''
Naira's emotional testimony riveted human rights organizations, the news mediums, and the Nation. That incident was cited by six Members of the U.S. Senate as reasons to go to war with Iraq."
The propaganda effort worked but later the entire episode was exposed as an outright lie and the girl turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. No matter that it was all just a staged stunt to sway people's opinions, it helped to pave the way for all the misery and death to follow. They gave those emotional chains a big, hard yank.
Now comes a somewhat similar lying tactic in this slow-motion-trainwreck lead up to war on Iran. Flying around the giant neocon echo chamber is this false assertion that the Iranian parliament passed a law that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims. It was supposedly on Drudge but it's been removed. As it was from here, the supposed originator.
Removed for good reason, as Juan Cole very ably demonstrates.
Yanking the chains again.
As he puts it, "The whole thing is a steaming crock."
posted by nolocontendere at 1:26 AM
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