The murder of the Kuwaiti incubator babies
At the end of the eighties, Kuwait and Iraq had a dispute about the exploitation
of oilfields on the border of the two countries. Iraq caused Kuwait of pumping
oil from a field that was lying for a part in Iraq. Reportedly after consulting
the American ambassador in Iraq, Iraq decided to invade Kuwait, which it
considered to be a province of the original country anyway, and any look at the
map of the region shows that they certainly have a point. In fact, the state of
Kuwait was invented by the British in the time of their empirical rule of the
region, in order to safeguard their oil interests.
At the time of the invasion, Iraq had been supported for a decade by the United
States in its war against Iran. The fact that Iraq was ruled by the vicious
dictator Saddam Hussein did not matter at the time. So Iraq had some reason to
be assured about its planned actions, the more so when the American ambassador
gave it known that the United States would not take serious action upon the
matter. Later this ambassador was withdrawn, of course.
The fact was, Kuwait had been occupied by Iraq, and something had to been done
about it because of the Kuwaiti oil reserves. It soon became apparent that
friendly persuasion wouldn’t work, at least not at short notice, and there was a
noticeably faction in America, as there always is, for direct and hard action.
In addition, there also was pressure through all kinds of channels from
America’s local caretaker, Israel, to take on Saddam Hussein, because of his
attempts at getting hold of a nuclear weapon, a thing that would seriously
undermine Israel’s position as the dominating power in the region.
But equally clear was the fact that a war would be a costly thing, in both money
and personal terms. Do we put our boys on the line for some rich sheiks, that
were living abroad for a large part anyway? At least, that is what the public
would say. So there had to be found a good reason to start a war, one that would
appeal to the public. So what better to do than to hire experts in talking to
the public, a public relations firm. On its turn, this firm got the services of
a pretty little woman, who was send to the media, with the message that she had
been a nurse in a Kuwait hospital at the time of the Iraqi invasion.
Furthermore, she said she had witnessed that Iraqi soldiers had taking incubator
equipment from the hospital, after removing the babies that were nursed in them.
This story raised the proper outrage, and the war machine got on its way. Some
years later the role of the public relations firm got known, and also the fact
that the pretty little woman was a relation of a Kuwaiti ambassadorial staff
member. The most remarkable about this story is that it could be repeated only
eleven years later, and in the same region, the babies having become weapons of
mass destruction, that proved just as elusive, and just as much pure
propagandistic lies.
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