VIDEO. How the United States lied to legitimize the Gulf War in 1990

Is the truth possible in politics? Does the exercise of power necessarily lead to mystifying reality? In the age of fake news, sometimes relayed by politicians,e documentary Lies in politicswritten and produced by journalists Patrick Cohen and Dimitri Queffelec, broadcast Sunday September 29 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5, examines in detail four major lies which have marked contemporary history.

Through the cancer of François Mitterrand passed over in silence during his two mandates, the supposed weapons of mass destruction held by Iraq, or the Monica Lewinski affair, the film questions the reasons why politics escapes the demand for truth, the repercussions of state lies, as well as the need to fight against false information.

The documentary also focuses on a forgotten or little-known episode: the lies which led a coalition of 35 countries, including France, under the leadership of the United States, to militarily defend Kuwait during the first Gulf War.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein, then at the head of Iraq, decided to invade and annex Kuwait against a backdrop of falling oil prices and refusal to cancel a debt of 80 billion dollars. American President George HW Bush decides to curb the ambitions of the Iraqi head of state and threatens to send troops to Kuwait. The American population, traumatized by the Vietnam War, expressed its hostility to the idea of ​​a conflict. The outlines of a scenario created from scratch by the Bush administration and the Kuwaiti government then emerge, in order to turn public opinion in their favor and convince other countries to take up arms.

At the time, the great reporter Alain Hertoghe covered this subject for The Cross. He recounts in the documentary that, during a public meeting of the American Congress on the alleged human rights violations committed by Iraqis in Kuwait, a young woman named Naira presented herself as a volunteer Kuwaiti nurse and testified . “JI saw Iraqi soldiers entering the hospital with weapons. (…) They took away the incubators and left the babies to die on the cold ground”declares the young woman in tears, citing the figure of 15 newborns killed.

“It provokes indignation. (…) The public is moved and it will be widely publicized throughout the United States.”

Alain Hertoghe, former journalist

in the documentary “Lies in Politics”

The images of his intervention, which we see in the documentary, strengthen the cause of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, an association created by the Kuwaiti government in exile to raise awareness around the world about the situation in the country. President Bush himself relays the words of the supposed young nurse in numerous meetings, in order to demonstrate the cruelty of the Iraqi army and legitimize the war.

Two days before the UN Security Council rules on the legitimacy of using force to free Kuwait from the clutches of Iraq, a new witness is heard before its authorities, remembers Alain Hertoghe in the documentary : a Kuwaiti surgeon, who claims that not 15, but 120 premature newborns died. “I myself buried 40 newborns who had been taken out of their incubators by the military”assures the doctor.

Other testimonies subsequently poured in, as well as a damning report from Amnesty International which revealed that in fact, more than 300 babies lost their lives. The barbarity of Iraqi soldiers exploded before the eyes of the world, the Gulf War was launched on August 2, 1990. On February 28, 1991, it ended successfully with the operation “Desert Storm” .

Once Kuwait is liberated, senior reporter Alain Hertoghe goes there to report on the abuses committed by Iraqi forces. “I started with the incubatorsconfides the journalist. I then met the deputy head of department at the Kuwait City maternity ward who told me: ‘Indeed, in my department, there are 150 incubators. But there were no incidents around the incubators, there were no incidents around the babies.'” The truth astonishes the journalists who were used to relay a fable in the service of war.

Patricia Allémonière worked for TF1 at the time. The war reporter had interviewed a supposed Kuwaiti doctor in London who told the same story of dead babies.

“Today, we know that behind this whole baby story, there was an American communications agency. (…) These interviews were in some way remote-guided and organized from the United States to Western countries to reverse the ‘public opinion.”

Patricia Allémonière, journalist

in the documentary “Lies in Politics”

Over the months, journalists discovered that the supposed surgeon who had testified at the United Nations was an orthodontist and that Naïra, the young nurse in tears, was none other than the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.

The documentary Lies in politics, written and produced by journalists Patrick Cohen and Dimitri Queffelec, is broadcast Sunday September 29 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5 and france.tv.