Lantos Set for Promotion Despite Role in Incubator Scandal

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California Democrat Tom Lantos is reportedly the frontrunner to chair the House International Relations Committee in the next Congress. In 1990 a Hill & Knowlton created front group, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, lobbied Congress for military action after Iraq's invasion. Lantos convened and co-chaired a hearing of the congressional Human Rights Caucus which heard tearful 'testimony' from a Kuwaiti 'nurse' known only as 'Nayirah'. She claimed that Iraqi soldiers took babies out of incubators at the al-Addan hospital in Kuwait and left them "on the cold floor to die." It was later revealed that Nayirah's story was fabricated and that she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. The director of the California-based Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Paul George, told Mother Jones that "as chair of the committee responsible for Iraq policy, "I think he [Lantos] will be in a position and be willing to block any changes that are needed."