Page 189 - Dragon Flood

necessary to sustain the desired outcome...

“Newsworthy events, involving people, usually do not happen by accident. They are
planned deliberately to accomplish a purpose, to influence our ideas and actions.”
[Source: PR! A History of Spin, Stuart Ewen]

Since the advent of television, the manipulation of mankind has risen to new heights. Not
only are words used to shape thoughts and stir men to action, but images are skillfully
crafted to manipulate the masses. It seems symbolic that the center for America’s television
industry is a city named Hollywood. Holly was a wood sacred to ancient druids and is used
by witches to craft their magic wands. In the massively popular Harry Potter series, the
lead character’s wand was made out of Holly wood. The television is an instrument of
bewitchment. The masses are spellbound by its power.

A recent example of a manufactured news event that bears striking resemblance to the
reports Ivy Lee crafted for the Rockefeller family comes from the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Some months before, during the fall of 1990, a particularly alarming story began to be
circulated by American news agencies. Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the report
affirmed, Iraqi soldiers entered hospitals in Kuwait City and removed hundreds of
premature infants from incubators, leaving them to die on cold hospital floors. Appearing
again and again in the American news media, the story attested to the profound cruelty
of the invasionary force.

The source of this story was an anonymous fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl, called Nariyah,
who had testified to the horrific events before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus
on October 10, 1990. According to her story, she was a “hospital volunteer” and a
firsthand witness to the purported barbarism. To ensure her continued safety, the head
of the caucus announced, the girl’s true identity be kept secret.

Only much later, after the Persian Gulf War was fading into the historical record, did it
turn out that “Nariyah” was in fact, Nariyah al-Sabah, daughter of the Kuwaiti
ambassador to the United States. Her actual whereabouts, at the time the alleged cruelties
had taken place, were questionable; she had been witness to no such events.

Beyond the dubiousness of her tale, it also turned out that the meeting of the
Congressional Human Rights Caucus itself had been the brainchild of Gary Hymel, a vice-
president of Hill and Knowlton, one of the largest public relations firms in the world.
Hymel had graciously provided the caucus with all the witnesses that it heard. Hymel and
Hill and Knowlton were on the payroll of the Kuwaiti royal family in exile and had been
given the assignment of manufacturing public support for the U.S. military intervention.

Nariyah’s shocking testimony was but one created circumstance in an involved plan to
inflame American public outrage. Within a few months, tales such as hers had readied the
public mind and led the nation into war.
[Source: PR! A History of Spin, Stuart Ewen]