Lies About War Never Stop

A “good war” was launched by George Bush Senior in 1990 and the “bad war” was Bush Junior’s in 2003. Yet we overlook a few facts. Both depended upon lies to garner popular support.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September of 1990 that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier. George HW Bush said, “I took this action to assist the Saudi Arabian Government in the defense of its homeland.”  A quarter of a million troops with heavy armor amassed on the Saudi border certainly seemed like a clear sign of hostile intent. Yet it was false. No military build-up, just simply empty desert.

In October 1990 a young woman who gave only her first name, Nayira, testified that she had been a volunteer at Kuwait’s al-Adan hospital, where she had seen Iraqi troops rip scores of babies out of incubators, leaving them “to die on the cold floor.” Between tears, she described the incident as “horrifying.” Her account was a bombshell. Portions of her testimony were aired that evening on ABC’s “Nightline” and NBC’s “Nightly News.” Seven US senators cited her testimony in speeches urging Americans to support the war, and George HW Bush repeated the story on 10 separate occasions in the weeks that followed.  Except the story was totally bogus — a piece of war propaganda the American media swallowed hook, line and sinker.  Nayirah was in fact the daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the US. Her testimony had been organized by a group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which was a front for the Kuwaiti government. Citizens for a Free Kuwait hired Hill & Knowlton, a New York-based PR firm that had previously spun for the tobacco industry and a number of governments with ugly human rights records. The company was paid “$10.7 million to devise a campaign to win American support for the war. Without the atrocities, the idea of committing American blood and treasure to save Kuwait just “wasn’t an easy sell.” Hill & Knowlton had spent $1 million on focus groups to determine how to get the American public behind the war, and found that focusing on “atrocities” was the most effective way to rally support for rescuing Kuwait. Hill & Knowlton sent out the video news release featuring Nayirah’s gripping testimony to 700 American television stations. In an effort to spruce up the Kuwait image, the company also organized Kuwait Information Day on 20 college campuses, a national day of prayer for Kuwait, distributed thousands of “Free Kuwait” bumper stickers, and other similar traditional PR ventures.

Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait was just as illegal as the US invasion that would ultimately oust him 13 years later — it was neither an act of self-defense, nor did the UN Security Council authorize it. But it can be argued that Iraq had significantly more justification for its attack than Bush Jnr. and Blair. Saddam Hussein felt that Kuwait should forgive part of his regime’s war debt because he had halted the “expansionist plans of Iranian interests” not only on behalf of his own country, but in defense of the other Gulf Arab states as well.

After an oil glut knocked out about two-thirds of the value of a barrel of crude oil between 1980 and 1986, Iraq appealed to OPEC to limit crude oil production in order to raise prices — with oil as low as $10 per barrel, the government was struggling to pay its debts. But Kuwait not only resisted those efforts — and asked OPEC to increase its quotas by 50 percent instead — for much of the 1980s it also had maintained its own production well above OPEC’s mandatory quota. According to a study by energy economist Mamdouh Salameh, “between 1985 and 1989, Iraq lost US$14 billion a year due to Kuwait’s oil price strategy,” and Kuwait’s refusal to decrease its oil production was viewed by Iraq as an act of aggression against it. There were additional disputes between the two countries centering on Kuwait’s exploitation of the Rumaila oil fields, which straddled the border between the two countries. Kuwait was accused of using a technique known as “slant-drilling” to siphon off oil from the Iraqi side.

George HW Bush told the public that Iraq’s invasion was “without provocation or warning,” and that “there is no justification whatsoever for this outrageous and brutal act of aggression” and not a  longstanding and complex dispute between two undemocratic petro-states.   These underlying disputes between Iraq and Kuwait got considerably less attention in the American media than did tales of Kuwaiti babies being ripped out of incubators.

 Saddam reportedly decided on war sometime in July 1990, but before sending his army into Kuwait, he approached the United States to find out how it would react. In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had “no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.” The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did. Glaspie told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee insisted she had been tough. When diplomatic cables between Baghdad and Washington were released via WikiLeaks the State Department instructed Ms. Glaspie to give the Iraqis a conciliatory message punctuated with a few indirect but significant warnings but Glaspie apparently omitted the warnings. There is no dispute about one crucially important point: Saddam Hussein consulted with the US before invading, and the US ambassador chose not to draw a line in the sand, or even hint that the invasion might be grounds for the US to go to war. Hussein ordered the attack on Kuwait confident that the US would only issue verbal condemnations.

Twelve years later, the second invasion of Iraq was premised on Hussein’s supposed cooperation with al Qaeda, vials of anthrax, Nigerian yellowcake and claims that Iraq had missiles poised to strike British territory in little as 45 minutes with secret WMDs.

Lest we forget the UK’s culpability and Tony Blair’s so-called wisdom we recall a few of his statements.

'I have certainly made up my mind, as indeed any sensible person would that the region in the world, most of all the people of Iraq, would be in a far better position without Saddam Hussein... It will be far better if he was not leading Iraq; the whole of the world would be safer if that were the case.' - May 2002

'The threat is very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community but to Britain.' -  7th September 2002

'The document discloses that his (Saddam's) military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.' - Tony Blair's foreword to the infamous 'dodgy dossier': 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Assessment of the British Government, 24th September 2002.

'A majority of decent and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler and that those who did were war-mongers.' - 28th February 2003.

'We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years—contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence—Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.' -  House of Commons, 18th March 2003.

'Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction I suggest they wait a little bit. I remain confident they will be found.' - 28th April 2003.

Eleven years on and the names and place may now be different but the lies are still being told about Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran.

When will we learn? Perhaps the lessons of the First World War commemorations will also contribute more to our understanding of how the ruling class manipulate feelings and attitudes to foster their war plans.

Adapted from here