Chook Me!

To invade Iraq 16 Jan 91, what story was used to inflame US blood lust.?

I am arguing with friends, what story made the US public support that war. My opinion is, that story about babies been taken out of incubators in Kuwait, by Iraqi soldiers (it was later found out, that the 17 year old girl (eyewitness), was daughter of a Kuwait Diplomat, born in CA and had never left the USA.) Can anybody shed some light?

Public Comments

1. IRAQ INVADES : Gas Prices Skyrocket
2. Someone told me if we went there, we could kill hundreds if not thousands of worthless muslims and not be charged with murder. I changed units to go, and he was right.
3. I never once heard that story, but it doesn't matter. The Iraqis had enough on themselves and their corrupt government to be invaded for the next 100 years.
4. The story that got America interests peaked went something like this : "Yeah umm, the guy we secretly sold weapons to and have been training in terror tactics for the last ten years renigged on the pinky swear that we made and now he wants to kill all of us because we have refused to pass on the secrets to our modern marvels such as running water and womens rights. We have intel that shows that Saddam is also angry at us for busting up his infamous paper football gambling ring...this has of course led to wide spread unrest among his country men due to a huge loss in illegal gambling profits. The whole oil thing, we just made that up. But we are very sorry and we need to kill this guy before he uses the 300,000 AK-47's that we gave him against us. So umm, if you believe in America and are not a terrorist you will support this war. Umm, yeahhhh." That was a direct quote from an article in the NY times...
5. Um, we didn't invade Iraq in 1991. That was the start of the Air War that paralyzed the Iraqi army, leading to the ground war of Operation DESERT STORM in February, 1991, in which we pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait. We did not cross the border into Iraq during DESERT STORM (although we could have).
6. I honestly don't remember there being any big news story that rallied support. A few differences to note, the threat and offense in the 1st Gulf War were much more clear. It was well in the view of the public's eye that Iraq had indeed invaded a neighboring country. In the current war, the accusations were made by the President and the evidence was much less clear. This allowed for quite a bit more skeptism. The world as a whole was much more united in condemning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and were more resolute to respond to it. In this war, the world was not nearly as united in supporting the U.S. accusations of WMD. I just think the first Gulf War was presented to the American public MUCH better than the 2nd.
7. Iraq invaded Kuwait to get to the oil fields. We stopped them to protect the oil market world wide, not just for the US. We never stepped on Iraqi land during that conflict. Other stories are simply speculation by the media, used to get folks stirred up. Unfortunately, many people actually believe all of that crud!
8. yes we did enter Iraq during Desert Storm however we did not enter Baghdad our mission was to push them out of Kuwait and destroy their war making capabilities we did. We should have taken out Saddam then.
9. Actually, we didn't invade Iraq. We liberated Kuwait, and while the story of children being taken out of incubators may or may not have been made up, the Iraqis did commit a few war crimes over there (killing innocent civilians, stealing everything not nailed down.) Besides, you don't need to lie to me to get my blood up, just show me the gas prices.
10. This is what really irritates me about this place. People that have absolutely no clue about a subject answer the questions anyway just to get two points and try to raise their levels. They should start making the levels based on percentage of best answers instead of quantity of answers. What happened in Desert Storm was that the Iraqi government was given a date to withdraw their troops from Kuwait, they did not comply and had to deal with the wrath of the many countries that stood in defense of Kuwait. As for some of the other responders, I was there and I was in Iraq as were about 250,000 other troops from many countries. The unit I was in went up to the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, which unless the maps were and still are wrong are in the middle of Iraq.