If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle...your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
~Martin Luther King, Jr
"My MEMORY of January 17, 1991--and the troops are still in Kuwait and Iraq--WHAT A SAD WAY TO COMMEMORATE MLK DAY, AGAIN"
By Kevin Stoda, in exile
The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
As the first day of bombs fell in Iraq at 3am in the morning on January 17, 1991, I was freshly back in Kansas from the Washington D.C. demonstrations and a visit to the U.S. Senate chamber, where I witnessed the last sane discussion of War and Peace in the USA Capitol Building.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6v3r3-9KLk
Since early January 1991, I have never heard the Senate serious about ending endless wars and occupations anywhere--have you???
"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."
http://www.visualstatistics.net/east-west/Nurse%20Nayirah/Nurse%20Nayirah.htm
That "baby incubator allegation" was fully fabricated my spin-doctors for the government of Kuwait. The claim was that Sadam's forces entered Kuwaiti hospitals and picked up babies out of the incubators and splattered them up against the walls.
NOTE: I am not saying that Saddam's occupying forces in either Kuwait or Iran did not wreak atrocities. However, Americans should have been better educated after 1991 that the Bush family likes to take the nation to war with Saddam Hussein by serving up fabrications.
Nothing good ever comes of violence.
~Martin Luther King,
Democracy Now, Amnesty International, media investigators, and others who have since investigated the propaganda employed on the USA public in the run-up to the war in Kuwait in 1991--all noted it was a brazen manipulation of the American government and public.
In short, it was shown that lying to Congress and the public was an easy way to take America to war--again--and again. (Do you remember the Gulf of Tonkin Incident? Can you recall "Remember the Maine"?)
MLK would have been out preaching after that telling American schools and media to grow up and present Americans with the facts so that wars could be avoided in the future.
I have condemned any organizer of war, regardless of his rank or nationality.
~Martin Luther King, Jr
PROPAGANDA CAN TOO EASILY TAKE AMERICANS INTO WAR.
Below, in the notes section, you will get more of the story of how the lying and propaganda of 2002-2003 that led America to a stupid and catastrophic war & occupation in Iraq had its 1990-1991 predecessors. In short, as Martin Luther King, Jr. would have reminded us speaking truth to authority is important but speaking truth--in and of itself--is certainly not often enough.
Even Wikipedia doesn't yet have this propaganda episode about the babies and the incubators on its list of Gulf War Controversies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War#Gulf_War_controversies
In short, to-date we still cannot even relay on alternative media in all cases to get the word out.
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.
~Martin Luther King[2]
NOTES
[1 This narration comes from the "Confabulations of the Nurse Nayirah" weblink.
http://www.visualstatistics.net/east-west/Nurse%20Nayirah/Nurse%20Nayirah.htm
"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[to] the cold floor to die," and then leaving with the machines. The testimony came at a crucial time for the Bush 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 addition, [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.
[2] MLK quotes are from http://antiwar.com/quotes.php
