Chapter I	Tragedy at Mayerling
	Chapter II	Death of a Princess
	Chapter III	Malediction
	Chapter IV	The First Casualty of War
	Chapter V	Credibility of Foreign Informants
	Chapter VI	Confabulations of Nurse Nayirah
	Chapter VII	Jumana Hanna and Sara Solovitch
	Chapter VIII	Origins of the First World War
	Chapter IX	Ritual Slaughter
	Chapter X	Search for Implausible Narratives

Thomas Lantos, the California congressman, told Minister of Knesset Colette Avital, who was visiting Capitol Hill:   "My dear Colette, don't worry, you won't have any problem with Saddam, we'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you."   Lantos explained to his guest from Israel that there's no lack of Iraqi opposition figures in exile, but until they learn how to run a state, "we'll be there." According to Lantos that interim period, with an American-sponsored dictator in power, should last between five to six years.  In any case, he promised her that afterwards, America,  will go straight to Syria. Akiva Fidar, Haaretz. September 30, 2002

"Nurse" Nayirah

Confabulations of Nurse Nayirah
"Nurse Nayirah" was a creation of public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for promoting the 1991 Gulf War.
 
Fifteen-year-old "Nayirah" (Nijirah al-Sabah) testified before the United States Congress in October 1990 that she was a refugee volunteering in the maternity ward of Al Adan hospital in Kuwait City, and that during the occupation by Iraq she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers dumping Kuwaiti infants out of their incubators "on the cold floor to die," and then leaving with the machines. The testimony came at a crucial time for the Bush

"Iraqi soldiers were dumping Kuwaiti infants out of their incubators on the cold floor to die,"

 administration, which was pressing for military action to eject Iraq from Kuwait. Nayirah's story was widely reported by the media and Bush referred to the story six times in the next five weeks. The story was an influence in tipping both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen would say Nayirah's testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military actions in a 52-47 vote.
 
In 1990, Congressman Thomas Lantos organized hearings of the House Human Rights Caucus, which he is co-chair of, and brought a "nurse" to testify that she had seen Iraqi soldiers pull "incubator tubes out of babies in a Kuwaiti hospital." This allegedly "nurse" that Lantos had brought to his hearings happened to be a Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter, and had never been in the hospital at the time of the invasion. This "hearing" took place just before the vote to initiate the Gulf War and was used to get the votes for the war.
 
In reality, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, organized by the exiled Kuwaiti government, had hired Hill & Knowlton to gain support for the US counterstrike. Hill & Knowlton was paid US $14 million by the US government for its help in promoting the Gulf War. It was not revealed until later that the girl was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. Frieda Construe-Nag and Myra Ancog Cooke, two maternity nurses in that ward, later said that they had never seen Nayirah there and that the baby-dumping had never happened.
 
Lauri Fitz-Pegado, later Assistant Commerce Secretary, invented Nayirah's story and coached the girl. She also prepared Iraq-invasion testimony for the UN which was later discredited, and later promoted a book about the rescue of PFC Jessica Lynch during the 2003 Iraq War.
 
The final decision to go to war was made on January 12, 1991 in a Senate vote of 52 to 47 (a margin of 3). Before passing this resolution, six pro-war senators specifically brought forth the baby incubator allegations in their speeches supporting the resolution. Without the incubator allegations the margin of victory within the Senate would likely not have been sufficient for the war to be approved.
 
Related stories
Captain Karim, a former bodyguard of Saddam Hussein, was featured on 60 Minutes (1/20/91) claiming that
 
"Saddam Hussein becomes very happy when he sees anyone in the acid bath."
 
But as reported by Doug Ireland in the Village Voice (2/12/91), an investigation by French intelligence could find no evidence that Karim ever worked for Saddam, and labeled him a "mythomaniac."
 
Before launching the Gulf War, Bush Sr. claimed that an Iraqi juggernaut was threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia. Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier. The St. Petersburg Times acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, and found no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border — just empty desert.
 
These deceptions contributed to deaths of thousands of people
Douglas Harbrecht in Toting the Casualties of War (Business Week Online, February 6, 2003) reports that
 
Beth Osborne Daponte was a 29-year-old Commerce Department demographer in 1992, when she publicly contradicted then-Defense Secretary Richard Cheney on the highly sensitive issue of Iraqi civilian casualties during the Gulf War. In short order, Daponte was told she was losing her job. She says her official report disappeared from her desk, and a new estimate, prepared by supervisors, greatly reduced the number of estimated civilian casualties. Daponte had estimated that 13,000 civilians were killed directly by American and allied forces, and about 70,000 civilians died subsequently from war-related damages. In all, 40,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed in the conflict, she concluded, putting total Iraqi losses from the war and its aftermath at 158,000 The American Statistical Association. weighed in on behalf of her methodology.
 
The coalition lost 139 soldiers in combat, 79 of whom were Americans. Of 540,000 Gulf War veterans, two out of five are on disability; many of them suffering from radiation effects of weaponized depleted uranium.
 
The prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published a scientific study of deaths in Iraq during the current war, initiated by Bush’s son George. Making conservative assumptions, so far about 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The second invasion of Iraq (as of July, 2006) cost over 2,550 lives of the U.S. soldiers.

References
Faircloth, L. (1994) Hearing before the United States Senate Committee. May 25. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Fidar, A. (2002) They’re jumping in head first. Haaretz. September 30.