The Incubator Babies
A tearful 15-year-old told Congress that Iraqi soldiers pulled newborns from incubators and left them to die. She was the ambassador's daughter, and a PR firm wrote the script.
- First reportCongressional Human Rights Caucus
Girl identified only as "Nayirah" testifies to babies thrown from incubators
Testifying under only her first name, "Nayirah" described Iraqi soldiers storming a Kuwaiti hospital, pulling babies from incubators, and leaving them to die on the floor. The testimony was widely covered and repeatedly cited by senators and President George H.W. Bush in building the case for the Gulf War.
Democracy Now!, "Did PR Firm Hill & Knowlton Invent the Story of Iraqi Soldiers Pulling Kuwaiti Babies From Incubators?" ↗ - CorrectionIndependent journalists and human rights investigators
The witness is the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter
Reporting revealed "Nayirah" was Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States. Her appearance had been arranged by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a group organized and paid for by the Kuwaiti government through the PR firm Hill & Knowlton as part of a roughly $10 million campaign.
MERIP, "The News Industry" (1992) ↗ - RetractionHuman rights investigators, follow-up interviews
No independent corroboration of the incubator claim was ever found
When later interviewed, Nayirah herself described having actually seen a single baby outside an incubator for "no more than a moment" — a far narrower claim than the testimony as delivered and covered. No hospital records, other witnesses, or human rights investigation ever substantiated the mass-incubator account.
Democracy Now!, "Did PR Firm Hill & Knowlton Invent the Story" ↗
What it teaches
The testimony worked exactly as designed: an anonymous, sympathetic witness, an unverifiable atrocity, and no disclosure of who had staged it or paid for it. By the time the arrangement surfaced, the war it helped justify was already over.