by Nicholas Wilson

A few months after the Bari bombing, Hill & Knowlton was hired by the Kuwaiti government to generate support for U.S. entry into the Gulf War against Iraq. One of their most successful deceptions was the incubator story. "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators ... and left the children to die on the cold floor." This was the story told by "Nayirah, " a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl who shocked a public hearing of Congress' Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990. It was widely reported in the media, and helped demonize Iraqis in American public opinion. The young woman was later unmasked as the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and Kuwaiti hospital officials interviewed after the Gulf War had ended said no infants had been dumped from incubators, but only a small fraction of those who were exposed to the original propaganda ever learned that.

Hill & Knowlton had helped "Nayirah" prepare her written testimony to Congress which mentioned 15 babies being dumped. H&K had sent its own film crew to the hearing, then sent the tearful testimony on video to a service that provided it to 700 TV stations nationwide. Portions were used on NBC Nightly News. The fraudulent story reached an estimated 35 million people.

By a January 8, 1991, House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on these and other phony atrocity stories engineered by H&K the story had mushroomed to 312 alleged incubator murders, a figure vouched for by Amnesty International. Four days after that hearing, Congress approved military action, and the bombing began.