Good to see the Eye's old friend Roger

"Currant Bun" Lyons loyally going before his

recalcitrant TUC brothers to defend the prime

minister's line against Iraq.

Listing the crimes for which the Iraqi

government should be held culpable, the Amicus

general secretary rounded of with this clinching

indictment: "And no one can forget the babies

thrown out of the incubators in Kuwait, so the

equipment could be taken back to Iraq."

No one who followed the Gulf War

could indeed forget the story, since it was just that

- a story. After the war ended it emerged that

"Nayirah", the tearful 15-year-old girl who had

gone before the US congress to testify to this

alleged war crime, was none other than the

daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US,

and had in fact been in Washington at the time she

supposedly witnessed babies being thrown out of

incubators.

Coaxed and coached by PR agency Hill &

Knowlton, the lucky recipients of a $ 10m contract

from Citizens for a Free Kuwait (financed by the

Kuwaiti government in exile), her heart-tugging

fabrication duly had the desired effect of

hardening Washington's belief in military

intervention in the Gulf. In the senate, where the

pro-war motion was passed by just five votes,

seven senators said it was Nayirah's testimony

which had swayed them.

None of this is likely to bother "Currant Bun"

- who, as Eye readers will be all too aware,

seldom allows awkward facts to interfere with his

public pronouncements, especially when Brownie

points with No 10 are up for grabs. Can a peerage

be far behind?

Private Eye 1063 3 October 2002

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