I remind myself, everyday - "It's all made up"

[kpete]

By Kathy Kelly (4-14-00)
www.emperors-clothes.com

Introduction
by Jared Israel

In the following article, Kathy Kelly refers to the testimony before Congress some ten years ago given by a woman named Nayirah.

You probably heard about her testimony. She was the volunteer nurse who said she witnessed Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and tossing them on the cold floor to die. She told of witnessing other horrors as well.

What you may not know is: Nayirah's entire testimony was fabricated. Not a word was true. Nayirah was actually the daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador in Washington and she had been in her family's palatial home in Washington during the period described below. She never left the U.S. There was no vacation in Kuwait, no sister with a newborn baby, no volunteer work in a hospital. There were no leaflets seized by Iraqi troops; there were no Iraqi troops. There were only stories, products of imagination - hers and the people who coached her.

Reading these lies is useful. It prepares us to treat with skepticism the atrocity stories we are fed on CNN et al, and which are used to justify wars of Imperial conquest. Notice as you are reading that even though you know Nayirah is lying, she effects you. Reading it you want to sympathize. You have to remind yourself: she never left Washington. It's all made up.

................

more (lies and how they originated)
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/kelly/what.htm

[bemildred]

1. KnR nt

[grasswire]

2. I don't call that a sappy lie.

It was as bad as any lie that sent soldiers to war over the centuries. It's not "sappy" when blood is spilled half-way 'round the world and mothers are not there to comfort their dying child.

[kpete]

3. agree

and removed.

peace, kpete

[cthulu2016]

6. Sappy does not refer to seriousness or effect

It just means sentimental, and trading on sentimentality for its effect.

I wouldn't have made that word choice, but I understand it.

A lie about tossing newborn babies on the floor is sappier than a lie about a stockpile of weapons (which trades on fear more than sentiment), but that does not make one or the other more severe, more damaging, more dishonest, etc.

[Mojorabbit]

4. I remember this

and no one believes me when I tell them it was lies.

[barbtries]

22. that's sad.

i remember believing it. when i learned it was lies, i was just disgusted all over. bushies.

[pretzel4gore]

5. The 'Cold War' was made up...

we need an "Occupy History' movement- has anyone hereabouts ever watched 'Hushtory' television (aka 'history' tv if you're a slackjawed yokel) recently? The fact is, our rulers/bfdeal's were almost all, to a man, pro-fascist in days leading up to WW2 (see Spanish Civil War, Abbysinia), and only fought the nazis because the german rightwing was stoopid greedy and - well 'liberals' re 'chamberlain are a waste of air! Think about it. The Iraq bs mentioned in OP has been outgrowth of generations of successful lies which our ruling class (ie the 1 centers) have been foisting on wee humanity since adam and eve time....that's 6400 years ago! The USSR LOST 25 million people in the unprovoked nazi assault; it's economy was wrecked and the Soviet leadership was exhausted from years of 18 hours days trying to save the revolution- but in April 1945, with Red Army 300 miles past Berlin and easily able to march to Atlantic (which necessitated the allied frantic june 1944 DDay landing in order to stop Soviets occupying entire continent) suddenly was a threat to us? The rest is 'hushtory'. Due to fact most allied servicemen were PRO Soviet and the people saw how THEIR collective efforts could actually stop nazis and win global war etc... thus, the RULING CLASS decided we needed a cold war/Iron curtain and that communism was the great danger...President Roosevelt was murdered to put anti commie Truman in WHouse, Stalin was blamed for Trotsky murder (carried out in 1940 by western intell. agents in the Comintern) and Japan was nuked to scare Soviets into staying in Eastern Europe, though THEY COULD NOT AFFORD IT!
Stealing candy from a baby is harder then cheating the people by pandering to their racism, sexism and greedy stupidity, short attention span etc.
Oh, if only one had time to tell how we totally have been screwed by the rightwing fascists.... Just watch CNN, and see for yourself...

[jwirr]

7. That was one of the things I thought about when the Wall fell. Were were all the signs of this

powerful nation they were trying to scare us with all these years? They did not even have good hospitals let alone beating us in almost every category.

As to the lies from the ambassador's daughter. Is she still in this country? She should be deported for helping to start that damn war with her lies.

[MadHound]

8. I agree with you that much of our history has been manipulated,

Even fabricated. But you do yourself, and the cause of truth-in-history no good when you start spouting obvious false bullshit like FDR was murdered. Nor do you do any good by spouting fairly obvious rubbish to the effect that Russia was poised to take over Europe, and that was the reason for D-Day. Nor do you do your cause any good by overlooking the Soviet atrocities at the time, like killing twenty million of its own people. And broadcasting that Trotsky was killed by Western intel units, as opposed to the verifiable truth that the murder was carried out under the order of Stalin, by Soviet agents, just makes you look like a kook.

Face it, the Soviet Union was another kleptocratic oligarchy that rode to power by hijacking a people's revolution. That they nominally governed under auspices of socialism only goes to show that the Soviet Union, like the West, loved to use, and was adept at using propaganda to achieve their ends.

Yes, there is much little know, covered up history out there. The best way for you to expose this is to engage yourself in education and research rather than spewing conspiratist garbage that you find on the internet.

[pretzel4gore]

26. fascism is gonna win- we should try to derail them...asap

and using a chainsaw to cut through mass media underbrush best idea. Sure Trotsky was murdered by spanish commies, and yeah FDR died naturally, and ok we (allies) meant well, and made our mistakes innocently (see wmd's) but ....we are handing the world over to hard rightwing fascists every bit as nasty as hitler and the reactionarkies who ran Europe into the mud were! The Soviet Union suffered 25 million deaths in WW2, and the chaos following ww1/revolution/ civil war etc hardly gave the USSR leadership time to be fancy dealing with problems-especially as we DO NOT KNOW what the '911 was inside job' crowd were doing leading up to the great depression/WW2/Cold War era etc. Please look at a map. The borders of East Germany are far to west of city of Berlin, so that means USSR in control of Berlin in april 1945 when the nazis fell. Berlin was WAY inside East Germany! Yet USSR GAVE 2/3rds of Berlin to Britain, france and USA. If USSR wanted 'cold war' with west, why give German capital to us? Answer- they wanted to share in 'Marshal Plan' reconstruction, and tried to co-op with Truman, churchill allies etc...iow, it was we DEMOCRACIES who were defrauded, not USSR, and the rightwing used trickery and lies (see 'rise and fall of 3rd reich' by intell agent william shirer published in 1960) to affect the popular misunderstanding.
The Berlin Wall was put up in 1961 when JFK was the new president-remember 'we are all Berliners' quip he made? !961 was 16 years AFTER end of WW2
Then again, many of you DU'ers really think the arabs attacked us on 911 (though Von Clauswitz and the BIBLE warn against attacking a stronger opponent!)
then again, maybe arabs don't read (?)

[RZM]

10. Utterly ridiculous

The Soviets were not 300 miles past Berlin.

The Cold War wasn't 'made up.' I would argue it was inevitable. There was much hostility between the West and Soviets going back to 1917. And their plans for Eastern Europe and Germany were not really compatible.

FDR was not murdered.

Trotsky was not killed by Western agents.

[MadHound]

11. Actually, that part about the Cold War being made up was correct,

Though not for the reason that the poster gives.

The fact of the matter is that for over a decade after WWII, the US relied upon one man, one former Nazi named Reinhardt Gehlen, for all of our intelligence concerning the Soviet Union.

During the final weeks of the war Gehlen, head of Eastern European intelligence for the German army, planned and carried out his own scheme to surrender to the Americans. The US, despite the fact that he should have been turned over to the Soviets, whisked Gehlen, seven of his senior agents, and his all important papers, out of Germany to the US where he was never held accountable for the millions of deaths he caused in Eastern Europe.

Instead, since the US had no intelligence operation in the Soviet Union, Gehlen was given charge of intelligence for the Soviet bloc. All intelligence about the Soviets passed through Gehlen's hands, and he used that opportunity to exaggerate, alter and falsify all sorts of intelligence in order to inflate the Soviet threat in the eyes of the US.

For instance, while the Soviet Union was ripping up the tracks that led from East to West Germany in the late forties, Gehlen turned this intelligence on its head, portraying it as the Soviets actually building more railroad tracks in order to facilitate troop movement from East to West. Likewise, Gehlen consistently overestimated the number of missiles that the Soviets had, which lead to the great arms race between the US and USSR. Gehlen had placed the number of Soviet missiles in the hundreds, while the reality the possessed only a few dozen.

This pattern was repeated over and over again during Gehlen's tenure with the US intelligence service. Even when the U2 overflights proved that his information was incorrect, Gehlen still continued to wield inordinate power within the intelligence community, and continued to do so as he was later given charge of West Germany's intelligence division.

It is an easy conclusion to reach that if not for Gehlen, the arms race and the Cold War would not have reached the point that they did. We would not have wasted the peacetime dividend after WWII expanding our military capability to meet such a weak threat that the Soviets presented. In fact, there could very well never have been a Cold War or an arms race, though I do imagine that US-Soviet relations would have been difficult.

This is why we need to fully study history, in order to learn its lesson. History continues to be rewritten to benefit certain people, certain groups. Sometimes it even reaches the level of propaganda. However the danger of completely disregarding history is obvious, we come up with wild ass conspiracy junk like the poster above provides us. The answers are out there however, and we need to fully educate ourselves in order to find them.

[RZM]

12. Except it was a whole lot bigger than one man

Like I said in the other reply, it's important to remember that you could characterize the interwar period as its own Cold War. The Soviets and West remained implacably hostile to one another. That's one of the main reasons they could never get together to contain Hitler. Though the British, French, and Soviets all opposed Hitler, they just couldn't all get on the same page because of the legacy of mistrust etc. Although the US really didn't enter the picture here until after WWII, its' not for nothing that it took until the FDR era to even grant official diplomatic recognition to the USSR. Churchill had been a big proponent of intervention in the Russian civil war and destroying the Soviet Union in the beginning, when it was weakest.

Although the Soviet Union was a shattered country after WWII, it's one of Stalin's greatest feats that he managed to convince the rest of the world that the USSR was a 'superpower.' Privately he believed that war between the West and the Soviets was probably only a matter of time in the postwar era. He wasn't willing to budge on postwar security. He believed that the USSR had to be protected from threats and this required a cordon of friendly Communist states on his borders. He also consistently demanded that the USSR be allowed to keep the territory they had seized in collusion with Hitler from 1939-1940. He never really wavered from this either.

[riverwalker]

9. That was 1990

22 years ago, giving "testimony" to Congress. The lawmakers and a handful of media then tried to influence the world. CNN and 24/7 news cycle was just beginning, the Internet was in it's infancy. Could it happen now? I am not so sure. I don't think so.
The danger is being so skeptical of every claimed atrocity that we don't believe any. I have seen the videos coming out of Syria, and as a nurse, I assure you, they are real children, they are dead, and they did not die of natural causes.
I am (sadly) impressed with the creative ways people rationalize indifference.

[cpwm17]

13. The fabricated threats from Iraq's non-existent WMD's was recent.

Only a minority of Americans knew they were lying despite the ample evidence available on the Internet of the lies. The fabricated threats from Iran are believed by a large percentage of Americans, including some here on DU. Most rationalizations for conflicts and wars are lies.

[OnyxCollie]

23. Could it happen again? Hell yes,

and this time with CGI and green screens for authenticity.

[CoffeeCat]

14. We're being spoon-fed "made up" every day...

If you read the PNAC plan, you can see what is happening. The PNACers are the neocons--the
warmongers who want to take over the Middle East and dominate specific regions of the world
by plundering their resources and using the military might of the United States.

They spell it all out in their big grand plan. First, they say they want Iraq. Then, they specifically
name Iran, Syria and Libya.

We're constantly being told about what is happening in these countries, and we're also being told
that we must justify US presence and/or military action in these regions.

All of it is just justifications theater for the masses--so these bastards can get the countries, land,
resources and dominance that they've wanted to achieve for decades.

It's all on their website. If you want to know which country will suddenly need US intervention--just
read their manifesto. They were kind enough to create a website and publish their intentions.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

[mistertrickster]

15. The moment I heard this on the news, I knew it was faked.

1. Kuwait needed an "outrage" to whip up hysteria, and an outrage was provided. (Nevermind about Kuwait stealing Iraq's oil and not allowing them to ship Iraqi oil out of Kuwait's ports.)

2. Soldiers invading a foreign country want a number of things--alcohol, women, and money for instance. They most assuredly do not want incubators for babies. What are they going to do, strap them on their backs?

Ridiculous. But by damn, everybody believed it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. Alexander Cockburn debunked Nayirah's story pretty quickly, but the MSM

never picked up on it.

Nayirah said that 200 babies had been taken out of incubators and left to die, and the number seemed unrealistically large to him, so he had his assistant call all the hospitals in New York City to find out how many incubators they had. The result: There weren't 200 incubators in all of New York City, and such a number would be unimaginable for a single hospital.

One reason Americans had so much trouble believing early reports of the Holocaust was that so much of the anti-German propaganda in World War I turned out to be false, things like German troops roasting and eating Belgian babies or cutting off the breasts of all the women in Belgian and French villages.

[mistertrickster]

20. Good points. I think I remember something about

Alexander C . . . but the second point is new to me.

Thanks.

[WCGreen]

17. I didn't believe it when I heard it back then...

[Zorra]

18. The 1% are sociopaths and will do absolutely anything to get what they want.

They don't care about truth.

They wanted Iraq's oil.

And they go it.

[bhikkhu]

19. the incubator babies thing was made up

...most of the other crap that goes on, that made us believe the incubators story to begin with - most of that isn't made up. I wouldn't use one lie to justify disbelieving and turning away from everything else.

On the other hand, I wouldn't use a steady stream of grisly news to justify hating and fearing any people - as the vast majority of all people everywhere are decent and honest and kind.

[DeSwiss]

21. You mean they'd LIE to us!?!?!?!

K&R

[pansypoo53219]

24. don't forget april glaspie,

who told saddam we wouldn't care if he invaded kuwait.

[Quantess]

25. Kick