Former H&K Exec Still Defends Iraqi Baby Killing Stories

Democracy Now! featured a debate between Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the account supervisor for Hill & Knowlton's PR campaign on behalf of "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," and John Stauber, co-author of Weapons Of Mass Deception and Toxic Sludge Is Good For You. Citizens for a Free Kuwait was a front group for the Kuwaiti government and royal family. Hill & Knowlton's received over ten million dollars to organize a massive PR campaign to make sure the US went to war in 1991 to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Democracy Now! notes that "on October 10, 1990, a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl, identified simply as Nayirah testified in front of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she had personally witnessed 15 infants taken from incubators by Iraqi forces who she said, 'left the babies on the cold floor to die.' What was not said at the time is that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, Saud Nasir al-Sabah." This sensational baby-killing claim was echoed by politicians and the media to justify the US war against Iraq, and is credited as turning the US Senate debate in favor of war. Later investigations by Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Fifth Estate, authors John MacArthur (Second Front), Randal Marlin (Propaganda & the Ethics of Persuasions) and others found that the baby killing claims could not be documented and were likely concocted for propaganda purposes.