Babies in Incubators: The Lie that Launched the Gulf War
Nayirah’s lie, meticulously staged and strategically timed, was effective in manipulating America into another conflict for power and oil.
In the summer of 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, setting off a chain of events that would ultimately culminate in Operation Desert Shield, a U.S. military campaign. The official reason? Protecting a small nation from the aggression of Saddam Hussein.
However, beneath the surface, U.S. interests in the region—especially oil—played a central role, including those tied to the personal business interests of President George H.W. Bush.
Of course, selling a war for oil to the American public was never going to work. To gain widespread support, a different narrative was needed—one that would evoke deep emotional responses and make the conflict seem morally imperative.
As Hal Steward, a retired army PR official, put it: "If and when a shooting war starts, reporters will begin to wonder why American soldiers are dying for oil-rich sheiks. The US military had better get cracking to come up with a public relations plan that will supply the answer the public can accept."
The Incubator Lie: A Masterpiece of Deception
The Incubator Lie: A Masterpiece of Deception
In October 1990, a 15-year-old girl named Nayirah appeared before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Voice trembling, Nayirah tearfully recounted a horrific tale of Iraqi soldiers had storming a Kuwaiti hospital, ripping babies from incubators and leaving them to die.
The testimony was horrifying and graphic—but entirely fabricated. What the public didn't know was that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, and her story was part of a $10 million public relations campaign orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton, a firm hired by the Kuwaiti government to drum up support for U.S. military intervention.
The campaign, spearheaded by Craig Fuller, a former chief of staff to George H.W. Bush, worked to sway public opinion, culminating in this emotional but false account.
The PR effort was funded by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a front for Kuwait’s ruling family, and used Nayirah’s fabricated testimony as its most dramatic moment to justify the war.
This masterclass in deception was a deliberate strategy, a campaign of disinformation to secure military defense of Kuwait’s oil reserves—a tactic of emotional manipulation that echoes in disinformation campaigns to this day.
How the Lie Spread: Media and Politics Collide
Nayirah’s testimony spread like wildfire. The media latched onto her story, broadcasting it on every major news outlet, igniting fury across the U.S. and around the world.
Her account, now endorsed and repeated by the president, was quickly eaten up by congressional politicians, who were all too happy to scale up production within the military industrial complex once again.
Americans, enraged by the idea of helpless babies being murdered by Iraqi soldiers, rallied behind the call for military action.
The truth, however, was nowhere to be found. Investigative journalists, years later, uncovered the reality: there were no babies pulled from incubators. The story was a lie, concocted to create the emotional impact necessary to sell a war to the American public.
Unfortunately, by the time the lie was revealed, it didn’t matter. The U.S. had already mobilized, Operation Desert Storm was in full swing, and thousands of lives had been lost.
Why the Lie Worked: Manipulating Public Emotions
So why did this lie work so well? The answer lies in the emotional weight of the story.
For humans with a functioning sense of right and wrong, there’s nothing more powerful than images of defenseless babies being murdered. It taps into a deep, primal sense of outrage, and it made the Gulf War seem like a moral imperative rather than an effort to maintain economic power and control over resources.
By focusing on the incubator lie, the narrative shifted from being about oil, power, and control of the Middle East to one about defending innocent lives from a brutal dictator.
The Kuwaiti government, through its PR firm, understood this dynamic perfectly. They knew that Americans wouldn’t fight to protect foreign oil fields, but they would fight to protect innocent children. And so, the incubator story was born, designed to tug at the heartstrings and bypass any critical questioning about the real motives behind U.S. involvement.
A War Built on Falsehoods
The fallout from this lie was immense. In January 1991, just a few months after Nayirah’s testimony, the U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm, a military campaign that would leave a lasting mark on both Iraq and Kuwait.
Over the course of 42 days, the coalition carried out more than 100,000 sorties, dropping over 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraqi forces and infrastructure.
According to the Iraqi government, over 3,000 civilians were killed as a direct result of the bombing campaign, though some independent reports suggest the figure could be even higher.
By February 1991, Iraqi forces had been expelled from Kuwait, and the war was declared a swift victory for the coalition. But the consequences of this victory would ripple across the region for decades.
The destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, particularly its water treatment and electricity plants, led to widespread disease outbreaks, including cholera and dysentery, as civilians struggled without access to clean water.
The United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iraq in the aftermath of the war, which, over the course of the next decade, would contribute to the deaths of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children due to malnutrition and other preventable diseases.
Beyond the immediate human toll, the war exacerbated tensions in the Middle East and set the stage for further U.S. interventions in the region, most notably the 2003 invasion of Iraq, launched under a new set of lies—this time about weapons of mass destruction (WMAs).
Far from stabilizing the region, and ineffective in removing Saddam from power, the Gulf War and its aftermath entrenched instability, sowing the seeds of future conflicts that would continue to claim lives and destabilize the area for years to come.
The incubator lie set a dangerous precedent: if you can craft the right story, you can sell a war to the American public, no matter how unjust or unnecessary it might be.
Lessons not learned: How the Incubator Lie Echoes Today
The lie that fueled the Gulf War should have served as a chilling warning: war can be sparked and justified through carefully crafted disinformation.
Despite this, the manipulation of public sentiment through false narratives remains a common strategy, one that has devastating real-world consequences.
Just as fabricated stories of weapons of mass destruction were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, similarly unfounded claims continue to fan the flames of conflict today, as seen in Israel's ongoing war crimes in Gaza.
This enduring pattern of deceit is employed to this day, where modern instances of disinformation and falsehoods not only justify violence but actively encourage the continued erasure of innocent lives under the guise of moral righteousness.
Whether it's the incubator story, lies about WMAs, or the outright disinformation regarding Israel’s atrocities, the common thread remains the exploitation of fabricated emotional narratives to legitimize mass violence before facts can be checked or truth can catch up.
The Incubator Lie’s Dark Legacy
The incubator lie was a deliberate deception designed to manipulate a nation into war, there is no other way to spin it. It worked because it played on emotions rather than facts, turning a complex geopolitical situation into a simple narrative of good versus evil.
Reliance on the alarmingly low media literacy levels of public, combined with its collective amnesia with regard to national crimes has paid off.
So, too, has the gamble that through indoctrination, patriotic (read: jingoistic) loyalty will always justify any atrocity committed under the false premise of “national security,” or, more dubiously, “humanitarian efforts.”
Behind that premise lies the stark reality of U.S. interests in the Middle East: control of oil, power projection, and the maintenance of hegemony.
The incubator lie is but one of countless reminders that truth is always the first casualty of war, and that the lies told to justify violence have consequences far beyond any battlefield.
Indeed, it’s the most vulnerable among us who, time and time again, bear the brunt of these repercussions; all while the ruling class that produces such conditions continue to profit off of the subsequent suffering.
At some point, the collective conscience will have to decide whether or not they will continue to accept this as normal behavior and a reasonable use of taxpayer money. Of course, that’s to say nothing of the human toll this evil