A PR firm coached the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter to give fake testimony about babies thrown from incubators to sell the Gulf War

When Congress voted to authorize military force against Iraq in October 1990, six senators cited one piece of testimony as particularly persuasive: a young girl's account of Iraqi soldiers ripping newborns from hospital incubators and leaving them to die on cold floors. The girl, identified only as "Nayirah" to protect her identity, delivered her testimony with visible emotion on October 10, 1990, describing scenes of brutality that shocked lawmakers and the American public.

What made this testimony especially powerful was its specificity and apparent credibility. Nayirah described being in a Kuwaiti hospital, witnessing soldiers enter the maternity ward, and seeing them disconnect life support systems. She claimed hundreds of babies died as a result. Major media outlets reported her story. Human rights organizations initially cited it. The narrative fit a clear pattern of Saddam Hussein's documented brutality and provided a moral justification for military intervention beyond geopolitical interests.

The official response from Iraq's government was denial, which observers largely dismissed given Hussein's known human rights abuses. The American government and media treated the testimony as credible evidence of Iraqi atrocities. No one in mainstream media outlets questioned the girl's identity or motivations during the critical period when public opinion was forming.

The truth emerged years later, piece by piece. Nayirah was not a random hospital witness. She was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States. Her testimony had been carefully orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton, a major American public relations firm hired by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile. The campaign was funded with millions in Kuwaiti money specifically designed to build American support for military intervention.

Documents and later investigations revealed the extent of the coordination. Hill & Knowlton had coached her extensively. They arranged her appearance before Congress. They managed her public image and media access. The incubator story itself had no reliable corroboration. When Amnesty International later investigated the claim seriously, they found no credible evidence that such events had actually occurred.

The damage to public trust was substantial but largely invisible. Most Americans who heard about the fabricated testimony did so years after the war had already begun and largely concluded. The story had already served its purpose. Few major outlets conducted serious follow-up reporting on how thoroughly they had been manipulated. The incident became a footnote in media criticism rather than a watershed moment that fundamentally changed how journalists approached government claims about foreign conflicts.

What makes this case historically significant is not that PR firms exaggerate for clients—that is their business. What matters is that a manufactured narrative, created specifically to influence a major foreign policy decision, was presented to Congress and the American people as eyewitness testimony. Journalists failed to verify a central claim. Lawmakers voted partly based on information they did not know came from a paid publicity campaign.

This episode demonstrates a persistent vulnerability in democratic decision-making: the gap between how we expect to be informed about consequential choices and how information actually flows through our systems. It shows that official denials mean little without independent verification, and that emotional testimony requires skepticism, not deference.