Shortly after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait stories began to seep out of the country about significant human rights violations being perpetrated against the local inhabitants by Saddam Hussein's army. Perhaps the most notorious accusation was that babies were being removed from incubators -- a story later dismissed by many on the left as a myth:
In the months before the Gulf War began, media uncritically repeated the claim that Iraqi soldiers were removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The story was launched by the testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in October 1990. Eventually, as repeated in the media by the first President Bush and countless others, it blossomed into a tale involving over 300 Kuwaiti babies.
What was not reported at the time was the fact that the public relations company Hill & Knowlton was partly behind the effort, and the girl who testified was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. Subsequent investigations, including one by Amnesty International, found no evidence for the claims (ABC World News Tonight, 3/15/91).
I couldn't help but be reminded of this story when I read the following on Michael Yon's blog this morning:
An Army medic who was part of the Coalition force that liberated a Kuwaiti hospital told me that when they first entered the nursery, there were dead and dying infants strewn about the floor. Tossed from their "cradles," their heads had been crushed under the boots of Iraqi soldiers, a parting shot as the Iraqi Army fled from real combatants.
Who knows, maybe the army medic was bought off by Hill & Knowlton?
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