Democrats Pick Iraq Hawk as House Foreign Policy Czar
News: Tom Lantos' past international relations efforts include pushing the Gulf War 1 tale of Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies from their incubators.
November 14, 2006
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Amid all the talk about a seismic shift in a Congress elected in a revolt over the war in Iraq comes news that Tom Lantos, the hawkish California Democrat, is about to take over the House International Relations Committee. If he were to face any competition for this important post, it would come from fellow Californian Howard Berman, but at this point, Lantos seems to have it in the bag. "We have every, every indication that he will be the chairman," Lantos' spokeswoman Lynne Weil told Mother Jones.
A Holocaust survivor and strong supporter of Israel, Lantos is a hardliner on the Middle East — he has supported going to war in Iraq, sealing Syria's borders with Lebanon, and getting tough on Iran. "If persuasion fails, then the United States must finally use the sanctions authority in U.S. law to punish and deter those who continue to invest in, and thereby aid and abet, a state bent on adding nuclear weapons to its arsenal of terror," he said earlier this year, echoing the Bush administration's established policy on Iran.
Lantos' most memorable effort, though, may be his role in pushing a tale that is now regarded as a museum-worthy specimen of war-time propaganda — the discredited Gulf War 1 yarn of Iraqi soldiers yanking Kuwaiti babies from their incubators as they looted hospitals. It was then that the California congressman held a hearing that starred a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl known only as Nayirah, who tearfully testified about the brutality of the Iraqi soldiers who pillaged her country. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," she said. "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." Lantos, who co-chaired the hearing with John Edward Porter, kept the girl's identity secret, supposedly to protect her family back in Kuwait from reprisals.
In the run-up to Desert Storm, the story was cited time and again by members of Congress in speeches; it helped to turn American opinion against Iraq, playing much the same role as the second Bush administration's WMD claims did 12 years later.
Though compelling, Nayirah's story was completely false. As it turned out, she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. and had been recruited by the PR firm Hill and Knowlton to sell an Iraq intervention to the American public. That firm, in turn, had been hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait (itself largely funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and put together by Hill & Knowlton), which was essentially a front for the exiled Kuwaiti government.
Citizens for a Free Kuwait lobbied Congress for a military response and helped Lantos set up the congressional Human Rights Caucus. A Hill & Knowlton VP helped organize hearings on Iraq's misdeeds and produced the girl, who was billed as a "nurse."
"Lantos basically turned over the Human Rights Caucus into a front for Hill and Knowlton," John MacArthur, who authored the book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, told the Institute for Public Accuracy recently. "When you called up the Human Rights Caucus Foundation, you got the offices of Hill and Knowlton. The Kuwaitis even ended up donating $50,000 as thanks to the foundation."
Paul George, the director of the California-based Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, an anti-war organization whose membership is drawn largely from Lantos' district, believes that as chairman, Lantos could spell trouble for the Democrats plans to change course in Iraq. "I think he's going to be a real problem for the Democrats if they are sincere about reversing Iraq policy as it now exists," he said. "As chair of the committee responsible for Iraq, I think he will be in a position and be willing to block any changes that are needed."
James Ridgeway is Investigative Editor at Mother Jones.
