War by PR Firm

In 1990, the first Iraqi War was made to go down easier over a divided Senate by trotting out a fifteen year old girl to tell us how Iraqi soldiers were tossing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators.

Even at the time, young, thin, full-head of haired, Attaturk, who otherwise supported military action at that time, thought that story was to say the least "a little much." For it reminded him of the propaganda of World War One when German soldiers were accused of tossing Belgian Babies into the air to skewer on their teutonic bayonets.

That turned out to be the case.

In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.

If Nayirah's outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated to support military action.

The lie then.

And then in the lead up to the current Iraqi War, another woman was pulled out and sold to the press, who again, with all the powers of discernment and investigation of a fluffy catepillar did not investigating of the source whatsoever.

An Iraqi woman who was granted refugee status in the United States after telling The Washington Post and U.S. officials that she had been imprisoned, tortured and sexually assaulted in Iraq during the 1990s appears to have made false claims about her past, according to a fresh examination of her statements.

Jumana Michael Hanna also claimed that her husband, Haitam Jamil Anwar, had been executed during the rule of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Her testimony led to the arrest of several Iraqi security officials. Based on her testimony, U.S. officials took her into protective custody in Baghdad and then to the United States.

She was the subject of a lengthy article in The Post in July 2003. Later, a writer who was interested in collaborating with Hanna on a book concluded that she was not telling the truth. The writer's article appears in the January issue of Esquire magazine.

In recent interviews in Baghdad, Hanna's in-laws -- including her husband's brother, uncle and cousin -- all said the husband was alive and had left Iraq several months ago. They also said that although Hanna was imprisoned in Baghdad in the 1990s, it was not for the reason she told The Post.

It took a year and a half, and the work of Esquire Magazine to expose Hanna as lying.

Now we have this little photo op of a woman named Safia Taleb Al Souhail.


Now considering that just last year we saw a State of the Union with this picture...

along with the past history of lies and overstatement forgive me for being skeptical. By the way what happened to the rest of these people surrounding Lump?

Thanks to another KOS comment (it's Kos day here apparently) we discover some interesting information on Ms. Al Souhail.

She was mentioned by Bush on Wednesday and got a prominant place next to Laura of course:

One of Iraq's leading democracy and human rights advocates is Safia
Taleb al-Suhail. She says of her country, "we were occupied for 35
years by Saddam Hussein. That was the real occupation. ... Thank you
to the American people who paid the cost ... but most of all to the
soldiers." Eleven years ago, Safia's father was assassinated by
Saddam's intelligence service. Three days ago in Baghdad, Safia was
finally able to vote for the leaders of her country - and we are
honored that she is with us tonight.

So truly, this woman (winner of any pending Iraqi Monica Lewinsky lookalike contest) must have been one of those millions of repressed people living and fighting for demoncracy in Iraq for lo these many years?

Not exactly.

She is a member of the Iraqi interim goverment. A review of the list of the interim goverment's ambassadors reveals this:

EGYPT: Ambassador Safia'a Al Suhail
Daughter of Sheikh Talib al Suhail al Tamimi; born and lived in Lebanon, where her mother comes from; became politically active after her father was assassinated in Beirut in 1996 by Saddam's secret service; married Bakhtyar Amin, Kurdish political activist and founder of Iraqi Democracy Institute in the US, who is now Minister for Human Rights.

She was a member of another group, which included Chalabi and Allawi called The following 65 individuals were selected to be on the Follow-Up and Arrangement Committee (FUAC) of the Iraqi opposition. You will find her as #31.

There is more to this story, but we all know, according to the SCLM that bloggers aren't journalists. But I would not be surprised if there is a substantial financial connection between this latest person and these prior two efforts. This is their pattern.

UPDATE:

Fnord traces this even farther and finds at the end...surprise...rich white guys pushing their agenda.