The Paradox of Tolerance: Things you didn't know about the First Gulf War.
Throwback Thursday
Throwback Thursday
Hey y’all! If you’re new to the blog, today is Throwback Thursday (I know, I’m not very creative); on Thursdays I discuss historical events & marginalia that I think are relevant to current issues. Today, we’re going to talk about the Nayirah testimony.
Nayirah Testimony
On October 10th, 1990, a 15 year old girl sent the United States to war. Just 2 months earlier on August 2nd of 1990, the Iraqi military had violated the sovereign borders of Kuwait in retribution for “economic aggression.” Iraq claimed Kuwait was slant-drilling oil out from under the Rumaila oil field and then refusing to reduce sales of their harvest, lowering the value of Iraq’s then much-reduced oil production, which took a plunge during the Iran-Iraq war. Or, maybe the Emir of Kuwait just royally pissed Saddam off by saying he wouldn’t decrease oil production “until every Iraqi woman was a $10 prostitute”
But I digress, back to Nayirah, our 15 year old- America’s Jean D’arc. Nayirah testified that she had witnessed a mass murder of premature babies by Iraqi soldiers during a committee meeting of the congressional Human Rights Caucus (now the Human Rights Commission) .
The story went like this: in the process of looting medical equipment from a Kuwaiti hospital, Iraqi forces had stolen incubators and left the children contained therein to die cold and alone on the floor.
The dead baby story didn’t just show up out of thin air, it had been circulating since early September 1990, floated by unverified stories from Kuwaiti officials and anonymous, unnamed refugees. Over the next month it ramped into a fever pitch, climaxing with Nayirah’s testimony and the eventual coalition invasion 2 months later on January 17th, 1991.
The January 10th, 1991 authorization to use force passed the senate by only five votes. Seven senators cited the Nayirah testimony in speeches supporting use of force.
Though Nayirah wasn’t leading the troops herself, she provided ample casus belli for hawks of war to descend on the Persian Gulf. The only problem? She lied.
Manufactured Consent
In 1992, a division of Human Rights Watch published the results of their investigation into the dead baby story:
"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. The stories were manufactured from germs of truth by people outside the country who should have known better."
Aziz Abu-Hamad interviewed staff in the specific hospital where Nayirah claimed to have witnessed the atrocity:
"The doctors told him the maternity ward had 25 to 30 incubators. None was taken by the Iraqis, and no babies were taken from them."
Nayirah was later revealed to be the daughter of the US-Kuwaiti Ambassador.
NPR, The Washington Post, US News & World Report, and Reuters all did their part by relating reports and hearsay of the dead babies during September 1990. But there was much more than incidental blame to be placed at the feet of the real boogeymen, Hill & Knowlton, a PR firm hired by “Citizens for a Free Kuwait” at an estimated price of $12 million. “Citizens for a Free Kuwait” was established by the Kuwaiti embassy and occupied office space there.
"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." - Ted Rowse, Kuwaitgate.
Hill & Knowlton reportedly coached Nayirah on how to lie to congress, they ensured the footage of the testimony (which they had filmed) ended up in the hands of MedaLink, which then distributed it to their 700 client stations in the domestic US. The Footage was shown on both Nightline and NBC Nightly News to an audience estimated between 35 and 53 million Americans, or around 14% percent of the population on the low end.
30 years later, it’s incredible to think that the Nayirah testimony could be the pebble in the path that sent the world careening towards what was to be a three-decades long cinematic universe of middle eastern wars, 9/11, and ISIS, the bedrock of much of the bizarre dream-world we inhabit today. How could such small lies have such outsized impact?
Well, I wish I could say it was the only time.
The Real Boogeymen
Hill & Knowlton are the real deal of evil corporate America. In fact, their evil exceeds real and verges into the cartoonish. They make Captain Planet villains look relatively tame, because at least the Captain Planet villains get apprehended punished.
They’ve represented big tobacco in arguing that cigarettes don’t cause lung cancer. They also co-founded the Asbestos Information Association which fervently denied any negative health impacts of asbestos. They’ve run similar campaigns for lead, vinyl chloride, and chlorofluorocarbons. They represented the Church of Scientology. On the other side of the genocide coin they’ve also run PR for the Indonesian, Turkish, and Ugandan governments to soften the public image of their human rights violations. For topicality’s sake, they also ran an anti-abortion campaign for the Catholic church- so maybe they aren’t behind the times, but ahead of the curve?
Hill & Knowlton have a consistent record of being on the wrong side of history, and there isn’t a good way to put a human price on the delays they have caused in regulatory legislation over the years. Between the lung & liver cancer, the global warming, the lead poisoning, the asbestos, and the unmeasurable externalities of rehabilitating the public image of genocidal regimes, an optimistic number for Hill & Knowlton’s manslaughter is in the low tens of thousands. That’s not to mention every one of the 100K+ casualties of the first gulf war.
If you’re thankful that they’ve long since been shuttered and shut down for blatant distribution of misinformation for financial gain, you shouldn’t be- because they are still very much alive, and going strong.
The Paradox of Tolerance
What I want to tie back to an EoSV concept here is corporate blamelessness. To quote myself:
…bad actors are allowed to continually derive increased utility at the expense of others. When it’s time for consequences to get handed down, the individuals themselves are shielded by general puzzlement in how to punish a non-human, non-feeling, non-thinking corporation.
If there was a straightforward societal solution to this problem, we wouldn’t still be dealing with monsters like Hill & Knowlton. Instead, we’ve democratized the process of proliferating misinformation via social media platforms and doubled down on distributed guilt.
With the recent Supreme Court decisions, it’s clear to see that we’re nearing the end of the cycle predicted in 1945 by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. More specifically, the paradox of tolerance has run its course, and it is time again for intolerance to have its day in the sun.1
Conclusions
In 1991 we invaded Iraq on the unsworn testimony of a 15 year old girl. She had been coached by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton to lie about Iraqi soldiers killing babies. This was just another in a long line of manipulations of truth and policy by a corporate serial offender who remains beyond both prosecution and retribution.
There’s no telling how many lives have been lost indirectly due to the willful malfeasance of Hill & Knowlton, but it easily rests in the tens of thousands. What is to be done? Keep an eye peeled for a future post where I’ll talk about the state of corporate punishment and how we could rethink our policies.
I feel that sheltering consistent bad-faith actors on the scale of Hill & Knowlton under the guise of free speech is akin to allowing a relative to continue to beat their child. What do you think? Tell me in the comments or on twitter. What do your friends think? Share this article with them and find out.
Who am I kidding? It’s more akin to a 40 year eclipse that will extinguish the life and joy of anyone bold enough to have enjoyed the past era of free love.