[Peace-discuss] Susan Rice’s Viagra Hoax: The New Incubator Babies

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Meanwhile, the news is that US attempts to kill Gadhafi have resulted in the 
death of his youngest son and his children.  We're a long way form "establishing 
a no-fly zone to protect civilians." Obama et al. should be facing trial in The 
Hague.]


Susan Rice’s Viagra Hoax: The New Incubator Babies
Eric Garris, April 30, 2011

On Thursday, US ambassador Susan Rice announced that Libyan government troops 
were being issued Viagra and told to rape as a terror weapon. She made the 
comment as part of a debate with another envoy to highlight that “the coalition 
is confronting an adversary doing reprehensible things.” Several diplomats said 
Rice provided no evidence for the Viagra allegation, which they said was made in 
an attempt to persuade doubters the conflict in Libya was not just a standard 
civil war but a much nastier fight in which Gadhafi is not afraid to order his 
troops to commit heinous acts.

However, today, MSNBC was told by US military and intelligence officials that 
there is no basis for Rice’s claims. While rape has been a weapon of choice in 
many other African conflicts, the US officials say they’ve seen no such reports 
out of Libya.

This sort of tactic is nothing new. It is reminiscent of the incubator babies 
story. In the run-up to the first gulf war in 1990, a tearful Kuwaiti girl 
testified before a congressional committee that she had witnessed Iraqi troops 
removing premature babies from incubators and stealing the incubators, levaing 
the babies to die. The story was used to promote the attack on Iraq, and 
continues to be cited as a reason for going to war in 1991.

However, the story has been widely debunked. The girl who made the allegations 
turned out to the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador the US, a resident of 
Washington, DC. Investigations by human rights groups and others found no 
evidence that the event ever occurred, or that the ambassdor’s daughter was even 
in Kuwait at the time.

My guess is that the Viagra story will still be repeated years from now as a 
reason we attacked Libya.

Truth is the first casualty of war.