Thursday, February 27, 2003
A TRADITION OF LIES
FEBRUARY 27. As the White House continues to move toward a war against Iraq, the lies pile up. We have the British intelligence dossier scandal. The “fine document,” as Colin Powell called it in front of the UN Security Council, turned out to be, for the most part, a fake, plagiarized from a graduate student’s paper that had presented an analysis of Iraq years earlier.
We have the intelligence services of both the US and England leaking comments to the effect: “We’re getting pressure to make a strong link between Al Qaeda and Saddam, and we can’t find one.”
We have the fundamental lie about the purpose of the war. In fact, as just about anybody who can fog up a mirror knows by now, this is for oil. And also about trying to maintain the US dollar as the currency of choice in global transactions, against the Euro.
There are other reasons for the war as well---for example, the continued building of a global military force that can, for any reason under the sun, find work cementing control of regions where mega-corporate interests are paramount. Which is to say, everywhere.
And now, from Joyce Riley, we have the report---I’ve been covering this---that a US soldier states he and others, during the first Gulf War, actually blew up the Kuwaiti oil fields in order to gain more support from the American people for the war. In other words, if this report is true, Saddam was blamed for that devastation when it was really a US military operation.
So I thought it would be instructive to examine a few other happenings from that period of Gulf War One. To flesh out a little this tradition of lying and propaganda.
My account, from here on, is based on the very solid reporting of John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, in their book, TOXIC SLUDGE IS GOOD FOR YOU (Common Courage Press, 1995). It is a book one should keep on the night table.
As Gulf War One approached, there was a need to do two things: gain popular sympathy for Kuwait, a country that had been invaded by Saddam; and accelerate the growing image of Saddam as the grand Satan.
The American people had to be behind the war.
There was a problem. Kuwait was not actually a model of a free nation. In 1986, the royal al-Sabah family had fired the National Assembly and taken every thread of power for itself. Rebels were put down hard. Journalists were under censorship and threat. Much of the labor in the country was carried out by immigrants, who were paid slave wages. The young men of the elite class were spoiled rotten.
Not a pretty picture, all in all. Not the sort of situation that would inspire American mothers and fathers to send their sons to make war, saying, “We must save Kuwait.”
And remember, Iraq was (is) not the only brutal government in the world. If that were the standard for making war, the US would have leveled a most or all of the globe by now. Especially those regimes the CIA and State Department had propped up on behalf of corporate clients.
So in the run-up to Gulf War One, a terrific PR plan was needed. And who better to pay for it than the oil sheiks of Kuwait themselves. (Even if the entire ensuing PR operation were exposed, the White House, a prime beneficiary, could mumble,” Hey, we didn’t pay for it. It was the sheiks.”)
The Rendon Group (PR) received a Kuwaiti retainer of $100,000 a month. Media work. Meaning, getting the right stories in the press.
Neill & Co. raked in a modest $50,000 a month to lobby Congress.
Two front groups were created: Coalition for Americans at Risk and the Freedom Task Force. They received $7.7 million for advertising and lobbying.
The Coalition put together 50 speakers who were kept on call for pro-war and publicity happenings.
Hill and Knowlton (HK), the biggest PR outfit in the world, coordinated the whole campaign.
Stauber: “[HK’s] activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded [by Kuwait] campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion.”
“By law,” Stauber writes, “the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it.”
Stauber: “Nine days after Saddam’s army marched into Kuwait, the Emir’s government [of Kuwait] agreed to fund a contract under which Hill and Knowlton would represent ‘Citizens for a Free Kuwait,’ a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration.”
In the next six months, $11.9 million from Kuwait’s ruling group flowed into the coffers of Citizens for a Free Kuwait..
Just about all of that cash eventually went to Hill and Knowlton.
Craig Fuller, one of Bush One’s best friends, was in charge of HK’s Washington office.
HK used both Republicans and Democrats to swing bipartisan Congressional support for the war.
HK put 119 of its execs across America on the Kuwait account.
HK set up media interviews for Kuwaiti bigwigs. Created National Free Kuwait Day. National Prayer Day (for Kuwait). National Student information Day.
HK organized rallies, released hostage letters to the press, sent out news releases and press kits, heavily lobbied pols, produced many video news releases, took daily polls to gauge the state of mind of the American people---so that new “news” could be created to push the right buttons and tug on the right heartstrings.
Some surveys focused on the Kuwaiti ambassador---and from the results, his clothing and hairstyle were changed to make him more appealing.
Then came the big play. October 10, 1990. A hearing on Capitol Hill. The Congressional Human Rights Caucus. It looked like the real Congress at work, but it wasn’t. The Caucus was co-chaired by two Congressmen, Tom Lantos (Demo) and John Porter (Repub). But it was really an informal meeting. Nothing official. Funny thing---Lantos and Porter were also the co-leaders of a very similar-sounding group, the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, yet another deceptive informal association. Which kept offices, at no charge, in Hill and Knowlton’s office in Washington.
In other words, on October 10, 1990, the American people were watching a Hill and Knowlton front group in action, a group headed up by two US Congressmen.
The purpose of the “hearing” was the airing of human rights abuses committed by Iraq against Kuwait.
Fortunately, the rules against lying to Congress didn’t apply to the witnesses who would testify that day, because, again, this event just looked like Congress. It wasn’t.
A 15-year-old girl, called only Nayirah, was the star witness. The Congressional Caucus said her full name was a secret. Her family back in Kuwait would be in danger, from the Iraqi forces, if the full name were revealed.
Nayirah soon went into tears and described events she had witnessed in a Kuwait City hospital. This testimony was already in manuscript form for the press: “I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital. 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.”
The media sat down to a three-month feast on this story. Every way of saying the same thing over and over again was employed. President Bush took a crack at it. It turned up in actual Congressional testimony. The UN Security Council used it.
This was the grand hook, the big moment that would, through endless repetition, sway people on the fence and make them into warhawks.
Babies.
Cruel soldiers.
Death.
Evil.
312 babies. Flung to the cold floor to die.
Only one little thing.
This HK show had omitted a detail. Nayirah, the star witness, the girl, was actually a member of the Kuwaiti royal family.
Her father’s name was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, and he was the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. He had been in the room while his daughter told her story.
Hill and Knowlton vice-president, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, had coached Nayirah before she told her tale.
Stauber: “…even the Kuwaiti’s own investigators later confirmed [Nayirah’s story] was false testimony.”
Stauber: “Given the narrowness of the [eventual Senate approval for war] vote, the babies-thrown-from-incubators story may have turned the tide in Bush’s favor.” May have tilted the balance and brought on Gulf War One.
Amnesty International---after the war---issued a retraction. It had bought the babies-incubator tale hook, line, and sinker.
John Porter, the Congressman who co-chaired that phony HK “Caucus” that looked like the real Congress at work, during which Nayirah made her coached pitch---Porter said, “This is the first allegation I’ve had that she was the ambassador’s daughter. Yes, I think people…were entitled to know the source of her testimony.” Perhaps his statement could be used in good dictionaries as a cardinal example of the word disingenuous.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tried to obtain Nayirah’s father’s permission to interview the girl. He said no.
So…A tradition of lies?
I’d call it a royal flush.
But if they used that deck in a neighborhood poker game, there would be a few broken legs. They don’t have a Hill and Knowlton to deal the cards.
On a national and global scale, they can squeeze a war out of it, though.
You know, dead bodies by the hundreds of thousands. Starving children. But real.
If you think we know all the lies that are being told right now to support the imminent war against Iraq, there is nothing I can do to help you. Nothing.
If you think the press in this country is not controlled, ask yourself why, when the incubator-baby story was revealed as a lie, the media did not cover that as a major revelation.
Ask yourself why, when the move Wag the Dog made a splash, reporters did not play up, in a major way, the parallel between the young girl who was used, by Dustin Hoffman, to play the phony fleeing Albanian refugee with a kitty cat in her hand---on a sound stage in LA---the parallel between her and the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador.
The White House then and the White House now, Washington DC then and Washington now, fester. Smell it. Somebody turn on the fans.
JON RAPPOPORT www.stratiawire.com
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