The American Legacy in Iraq

[U2Edge]

"By 1999 a UNICEF study concluded that half a million Iraqi children perished in the previous eight years because of the sanctions—and that was four years before they ended. Another American expert in 2003 estimated that the sanctions killed between 343,900 and 529,000 young children and infants–certainly more young people than were ever killed by Saddam Hussein."

The American Legacy in Iraq » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Saddam had the means to prevent any deaths in Iraq from sanctions. He didn't and instead, resold humanitarian aid meant for Iraqi's on the black market to make money for himself. The entire blame for Iraqi's misery in the 1990s begins and ends with SADDAM HUSSIEN.

Only for those who believe Iraqi History began in 1991
Anyone paying attention knows how the CIA with Richard Helms as Director of Plans organized the 1963 military coup in Baghdad that first brought Saddam's Ba'ath Party to power.

Flash forward forty years and Iraq is once again a target of US "regime change", and very little being said in the corporate press bothered to mention how the CIA used political assassination, mass murder, and torture to bring Saddam to power in the first place.

Saddam and the Ba'ath Party went with the SOVIETS, not the United States.

 

[U2Edge]

"BARRY LANDO is a former producer for 60 Minutes who now lives in Paris. He is the author of The Watchman’s File. He can be reached at: barrylando@gmail.com or through his website."

Barry's recent post at CounterPunch alleges the US legacy in Iraq involves genocide more than democracy, and a carefully choreographed cover-up/revisionist spin on the actual events of the last decade.

"The last thing the U.S. should do is become militarily embroiled in the conflict raging again in Iraq. But for Americans to shake their heads in lofty disdain and turn away, as if they have no responsibility for the continued bloodletting, is outrageous.

"Why?

"Because America bears a large part of the blame for turning Iraq into the basket case it’s become.

"The great majority of Americans don’t realize that fact.

"They never did.

"So much of what the U.S. did to Iraq has been consigned by America to a black hole of history.

"Iraqis, however, can never forget.

"In 1990, for instance, during the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush, called on the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

"But when they finally did, after Saddam’s forces were driven from Kuwait, President Bush refused any gesture of support, even permitted Saddam’s pilots to keep flying their deadly helicopter gunships.

"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were slaughtered."

The American Legacy in Iraq » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

I'm sure Barry Lando would call the US invasion of Normandy to free France from Hilter's rule, genocide.

No wonder Saddam thought he could last forever in power, his fan club is still supporting him! LOL

I'm pretty sure Barry knows the history of Iraq at least as well as you

"In 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on Qasim. The failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam Hussein.

"In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate Qasim and Saddam's Ba'ath Party came to power for the first time.

"Saddam returned from exile in Egypt and took up the key post as head of Iraq's secret service.

"The CIA then provided the new pliant, Iraqi regime with the names of thousands of communists, and other leftist activists and organizers.

"Thousands of these supporters of Qasim and his policies were soon dead in a rampage of mass murder carried out by the CIA's close friends in Iraq."

Are you still clapping for the CIA?

Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

I clap for all the men and women that have honorably served in the United States military and intelligence services in some capacity over the past 70 years helping to defeat the axis powers, containing and fighting the spread of Soviet Communism around the world, preventing WORLD WAR III, protecting Persian Gulf Security and helping make the world the most prosperous and developed it has ever been in the history of this PLANET!

 

[U2Edge]

Here's the problem that I have with your 'the United States is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.' And as you say, 'probably far more than Saddam himself.'

Let's look at the Sudan for a second. Do you know how much money is being sent to the Sudan in supplies and food? And when those supplies and food get their, what is happening to that stuff? The same thing that happens to the supplies and food that we sent and are sending to Somalia and Ethiopia. It gets to the docks, gets loaded onto trucks and is promptly placed into a warehouse where a majority of it is STOLEN by warlords or corrupt government officials. It happens time and time again. And those children you see on TV? They die in droves because the help is stolen.

And you are naïve enough to think that Saddam Hussien, who gassed thousands of his own people, was going to worry about what happens to the children of his nation? The thing that kills me is that YOU NEVER LEARN... EVER. You demonstrated when Reagan put missiles into Europe in response to the SS-20's. Nuclear Armageddon, you cried! How horrible of the US you whined, never once screaming about the SS-20's in Poland and Czechoslavakia. Your allies in Hollywood even made a scare movie about nuclear war and showed it on prime time. Sit down with the Soviets you whined. They're not that bad, you can talk to them you pleaded. Give them what they want, we don't want to die! Reagan didn't listen and the end result? START II and the collapse of the Soviet Union. You cannot sit down and deal with tyrants, despots and psychotic regimes. You have to deal with them from a position of STRENGTH. I don't expect you to actually read, but there are several good books from the old Soviet point of view about what Reagan did and why it threw them into such a fit. He didn't buckle and they knew they were in trouble. You remember JFK? Same as he did during the Cuban missile crisis.

Naturally, everything that the US does in the middle east is because we WANT THEIR OIL. Course, if it was, we should be rolling in it? You and rdean, who doesn't have a glimmer of common sense, should look at the export totals for Iraqi oil, the import break down of oil imported into the US, and tell me where all this oil we went to war for, is going. Less and less oil from the middle east is making its way to the US because of the new finds. The Saudi's are nervous about it too.

You think for a second that if the embargo was lifted that Saddam would have allowed tons of supplies to immediately go to children? Then you are as idiotic as rdean. It would have went to him and his family and then sold on the black market to finance his personal empire. I just don't understand the idiocy of people trying to say that these type of tyrants will act like normal people. They won't...

Iraq, Sudan, and Somalia along with Libya, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran were all slated for regime change within weeks of 911. Most of those who profit the most from starving thousands of children don't live in any of those states.

.

Oh yes, because a retired general had a conversation with some unnamed employee at the Pentagon, it must definitely be true! LOL Absolute RUBISH!

Likewise those in the USA who get rich from war could care less about acquiring ME oil for the American consumer than they do about controlling who receives the oil elsewhere on the planet, and how much they pay for it. FDR set this in motion in 1944 when the US was the world's leading oil exporter.

It does not matter whether someone in the United States is getting rich from middle east oil or not! THE PLANET benefits when global oil supplies keeps up with demand because that keeps the price of oil from damaging the global economy!The People of PLANET earth depend on the free flow of oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf. Anything that helps and secure that is good and helps the citizens of earth. Anything that threatens or cuts it off is bad and is a threat to the world!

Your conservative crocodile tears for the "thousands of his own people" gassed by Saddam would be a lot more believable if you were to equally condemn the role the CIA played in bringing Saddam to power in the first place, along with other butchers from Indonesia to the Philippines, to Guatemala.

Unfortunately, you don't now how to distinguish between actions that are good for humanity and those that are not. With your logic, we would have to condemn any aid and help for the Soviet Union during World War II which was necessary to help defeat the Axis powers and save the planet!

As far as the Gipper and the Russians are concerned, the last thing Russia needed at the end of WWII was a Cold War with a global superpower whose homeland infrastructure was untouched by the war. Had countries like Greece, Palestine, Korea, and Vietnam been allowed to decide their own fates at the ballot box at that time, those SS-20s would not have been needed in Poland and Czechoslavakia, and neither would US missiles in Turkey.

Wow, a defender of SADDAM now a defender of the SOVIET UNION! LOL

Stalin and the Soviet leadership at the end of World War II were interested in one thing, expanding their POWER. Its the Soviets that murdered and butchered the democracy movement in Eastern Europe before the war was even over and reneged on all their promises to allow free elections in Poland, Czechloslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, etc. Only one party was allowed in government in those countries, THE COMMUNIST PARTY. Then you have the stationing of hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in these countries to keep them in line.

The Soviets then tried to force the United States out of Berlin by blockading it. The United States and the West had no choice but take measures to defend itself.

 

[georgephillip]

Saddam had the means to prevent any deaths in Iraq from sanctions. He didn't and instead, resold humanitarian aid meant for Iraqi's on the black market to make money for himself. The entire blame for Iraqi's misery in the 1990s begins and ends with SADDAM HUSSIEN.

Only for those who believe Iraqi History began in 1991
Anyone paying attention knows how the CIA with Richard Helms as Director of Plans organized the 1963 military coup in Baghdad that first brought Saddam's Ba'ath Party to power.

Flash forward forty years and Iraq is once again a target of US "regime change", and very little being said in the corporate press bothered to mention how the CIA used political assassination, mass murder, and torture to bring Saddam to power in the first place.

Saddam and the Ba'ath Party went with the SOVIETS, not the United States.

The CIA brought Saddam to power:

"In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about than his outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a military coup in Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading role, overthrew Qassim.

"Support for the conspirators was limited. In the first hours of fighting, they had only nine tanks under their control. The Baath Party had just 850 active members.

"But Qassim ignored warnings about the impending coup.

"What tipped the balance against him was the involvement of the United States.

"He had taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact.

"In 1961, he threatened to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), the foreign oil consortium that exploited Iraq's oil. In retrospect, it was the ClAs favorite coup. We really had the ts crossed on what was happening, James Critchfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East, told us.

"We regarded it as a great victory. Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement. We came to power on a CIA train, admitted Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the Baath Party secretary general who was about to institute an unprecedented reign of terror.

"CIA assistance reportedly included coordination of the coup plotters from the agency's station inside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad as well as a clandestine radio station in Kuwait and solicitation of advice from around the Middle East on who on the left should be eliminated once the coup was successful."

Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

Saddam moved left into the Soviet camp in the 70s, and was rewarded with being placed on a US list of nations that support terrorism.

All that changed with the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s when the Gipper provided Saddam with many of the means to gas his own people, for example.

 

[U2Edge]

Only for those who believe Iraqi History began in 1991
Anyone paying attention knows how the CIA with Richard Helms as Director of Plans organized the 1963 military coup in Baghdad that first brought Saddam's Ba'ath Party to power.

Flash forward forty years and Iraq is once again a target of US "regime change", and very little being said in the corporate press bothered to mention how the CIA used political assassination, mass murder, and torture to bring Saddam to power in the first place.

Saddam and the Ba'ath Party went with the SOVIETS, not the United States.

The CIA brought Saddam to power:

"In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about than his outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a military coup in Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading role, overthrew Qassim.

"Support for the conspirators was limited. In the first hours of fighting, they had only nine tanks under their control. The Baath Party had just 850 active members.

"But Qassim ignored warnings about the impending coup.

"What tipped the balance against him was the involvement of the United States.

"He had taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact.

"In 1961, he threatened to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), the foreign oil consortium that exploited Iraq's oil. In retrospect, it was the ClAs favorite coup. We really had the ts crossed on what was happening, James Critchfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East, told us.

"We regarded it as a great victory. Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement. We came to power on a CIA train, admitted Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the Baath Party secretary general who was about to institute an unprecedented reign of terror.

"CIA assistance reportedly included coordination of the coup plotters from the agency's station inside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad as well as a clandestine radio station in Kuwait and solicitation of advice from around the Middle East on who on the left should be eliminated once the coup was successful."

Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

Saddam moved left into the Soviet camp in the 70s, and was rewarded with being placed on a US list of nations that support terrorism.

All that changed with the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s when the Gipper provided Saddam with many of the means to gas his own people, for example.

The United States and the United Kingdom did have a role in helping overthrow Qasim from power in 1963 which brought Abdul Salam Arif to power. Arif put the Bath Party members in jail at the end of 1963. He died in plane crash in 1966 and then his brother came to power. The Bath Party and Saddam did not succeed in coming to power until the summer of 1968, which is over 5 years after CIA involvement in the removal of Qasim.

So yes, the CIA had been involved in removing what it felt were pro-communist leadership in Iraq, but that did not put Saddam in power. In fact, Saddam was put in jail after that.

Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union by the start of the 1980s. It was the Soviet Union the provided Iraq with nearly all of its weapon systems. The United States aid provided to Iraq in the 1980s was limited and only constituted 5% of the total. The United States did not supply Iraq with weapon systems. It did supply Iraq with loans for food, trucks, transport helicopters, standard trade relations and intelligence on Iranian military movements.

But it was the Soviets who were neck deep involved in Iraq supplying thousands of weapons systems and stationing over 1,000 Soviet military advisors in the country every year from 1980 all the way up to just before the start of the 1991 Gulf War!

The United States did not supply Iraq any weapon systems, but we did supply Iran with over 1,000 TOW missiles during the Iran-Iraq war.

 

[georgephillip]

Saddam and the Ba'ath Party went with the SOVIETS, not the United States.

The CIA brought Saddam to power:

"In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about than his outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a military coup in Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading role, overthrew Qassim.

"Support for the conspirators was limited. In the first hours of fighting, they had only nine tanks under their control. The Baath Party had just 850 active members.

"But Qassim ignored warnings about the impending coup.

"What tipped the balance against him was the involvement of the United States.

"He had taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact.

"In 1961, he threatened to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), the foreign oil consortium that exploited Iraq's oil. In retrospect, it was the ClAs favorite coup. We really had the ts crossed on what was happening, James Critchfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East, told us.

"We regarded it as a great victory. Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement. We came to power on a CIA train, admitted Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the Baath Party secretary general who was about to institute an unprecedented reign of terror.

"CIA assistance reportedly included coordination of the coup plotters from the agency's station inside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad as well as a clandestine radio station in Kuwait and solicitation of advice from around the Middle East on who on the left should be eliminated once the coup was successful."

Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

Saddam moved left into the Soviet camp in the 70s, and was rewarded with being placed on a US list of nations that support terrorism.

All that changed with the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s when the Gipper provided Saddam with many of the means to gas his own people, for example.

The United States and the United Kingdom did have a role in helping overthrow Qasim from power in 1963 which brought Abdul Salam Arif to power. Arif put the Bath Party members in jail at the end of 1963. He died in plane crash in 1966 and then his brother came to power. The Bath Party and Saddam did not succeed in coming to power until the summer of 1968, which is over 5 years after CIA involvement in the removal of Qasim.

So yes, the CIA had been involved in removing what it felt were pro-communist leadership in Iraq, but that did not put Saddam in power. In fact, Saddam was put in jail after that.

Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union by the start of the 1980s. It was the Soviet Union the provided Iraq with nearly all of its weapon systems. The United States aid provided to Iraq in the 1980s was limited and only constituted 5% of the total. The United States did not supply Iraq with weapon systems. It did supply Iraq with loans for food, trucks, transport helicopters, standard trade relations and intelligence on Iranian military movements.

But it was the Soviets who were neck deep involved in Iraq supplying thousands of weapons systems and stationing over 1,000 Soviet military advisors in the country every year from 1980 all the way up to just before the start of the 1991 Gulf War!

The United States did not supply Iraq any weapon systems, but we did supply Iran with over 1,000 TOW missiles during the Iran-Iraq war.

Saddam's party would not have come to power in Iraq absent the 1963 coup which the CIA played a major role:

"Qasim was overthrown by the Ba'athist coup of February 8, 1963, motivated by fear of communist influence and state control over the petroleum sector.

"This coup was allegedly carried out with the backing of the British government and the American CIA.[33][34][35] The best direct evidence that the U.S. was complicit is the memo from NSC staff member Robert Komer to President John F. Kennedy on the night of the coup, February 8, 1963. The last paragraph reads:

"'We will make informal friendly noises as soon as we can find out whom to talk with, and ought to recognize as soon as we’re sure these guys are firmly in the saddle. CIA had excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it.'"

Abd al-Karim Qasim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saddam's path to the presidency detoured through prison, but his fate, and that of his family, was all due to the CIA and the US military/industrial complex, as was that of Abdul Salam Arif:

"On December 13, 2004, Arif's daughter, Sana Abdul Salam, and her husband, Wamith Abdul Razzak Said Alkadiry, were shot dead in their home in Baghdad by unknown assailants. Rafal Alkadiry, their 22-year-old son, was kidnapped,[12] and later killed."

Abdul Salam Arif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[U2Edge]

The CIA brought Saddam to power:

"In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about than his outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a military coup in Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading role, overthrew Qassim.

"Support for the conspirators was limited. In the first hours of fighting, they had only nine tanks under their control. The Baath Party had just 850 active members.

"But Qassim ignored warnings about the impending coup.

"What tipped the balance against him was the involvement of the United States.

"He had taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact.

"In 1961, he threatened to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), the foreign oil consortium that exploited Iraq's oil. In retrospect, it was the ClAs favorite coup. We really had the ts crossed on what was happening, James Critchfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East, told us.

"We regarded it as a great victory. Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement. We came to power on a CIA train, admitted Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the Baath Party secretary general who was about to institute an unprecedented reign of terror.

"CIA assistance reportedly included coordination of the coup plotters from the agency's station inside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad as well as a clandestine radio station in Kuwait and solicitation of advice from around the Middle East on who on the left should be eliminated once the coup was successful."

Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

Saddam moved left into the Soviet camp in the 70s, and was rewarded with being placed on a US list of nations that support terrorism.

All that changed with the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s when the Gipper provided Saddam with many of the means to gas his own people, for example.

The United States and the United Kingdom did have a role in helping overthrow Qasim from power in 1963 which brought Abdul Salam Arif to power. Arif put the Bath Party members in jail at the end of 1963. He died in plane crash in 1966 and then his brother came to power. The Bath Party and Saddam did not succeed in coming to power until the summer of 1968, which is over 5 years after CIA involvement in the removal of Qasim.

So yes, the CIA had been involved in removing what it felt were pro-communist leadership in Iraq, but that did not put Saddam in power. In fact, Saddam was put in jail after that.

Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union by the start of the 1980s. It was the Soviet Union the provided Iraq with nearly all of its weapon systems. The United States aid provided to Iraq in the 1980s was limited and only constituted 5% of the total. The United States did not supply Iraq with weapon systems. It did supply Iraq with loans for food, trucks, transport helicopters, standard trade relations and intelligence on Iranian military movements.

But it was the Soviets who were neck deep involved in Iraq supplying thousands of weapons systems and stationing over 1,000 Soviet military advisors in the country every year from 1980 all the way up to just before the start of the 1991 Gulf War!

The United States did not supply Iraq any weapon systems, but we did supply Iran with over 1,000 TOW missiles during the Iran-Iraq war.

Saddam's party would not have come to power in Iraq absent the 1963 coup which the CIA played a major role:

"Qasim was overthrown by the Ba'athist coup of February 8, 1963, motivated by fear of communist influence and state control over the petroleum sector.

"This coup was allegedly carried out with the backing of the British government and the American CIA.[33][34][35] The best direct evidence that the U.S. was complicit is the memo from NSC staff member Robert Komer to President John F. Kennedy on the night of the coup, February 8, 1963. The last paragraph reads:

"'We will make informal friendly noises as soon as we can find out whom to talk with, and ought to recognize as soon as we’re sure these guys are firmly in the saddle. CIA had excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it.'"

Abd al-Karim Qasim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saddam's path to the presidency detoured through prison, but his fate, and that of his family, was all due to the CIA and the US military/industrial complex, as was that of Abdul Salam Arif:

"On December 13, 2004, Arif's daughter, Sana Abdul Salam, and her husband, Wamith Abdul Razzak Said Alkadiry, were shot dead in their home in Baghdad by unknown assailants. Rafal Alkadiry, their 22-year-old son, was kidnapped,[12] and later killed."

Abdul Salam Arif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SADDAM and the Bath Party came to power despite the events prior to the summer of 1968.

The US did NOT install 26 year old SADDAM as the leader of Iraq in 1963. The CIA helped to install Arif. Its not even clear that the CIA knew or cared who SADDAM was in 1963.

In addition, what SADDAM and the Bath party would become decades later did not exist in the 1960s. So all of these connections that are being drawn in this case are irrelevant.

 

[georgephillip]

The United States and the United Kingdom did have a role in helping overthrow Qasim from power in 1963 which brought Abdul Salam Arif to power. Arif put the Bath Party members in jail at the end of 1963. He died in plane crash in 1966 and then his brother came to power. The Bath Party and Saddam did not succeed in coming to power until the summer of 1968, which is over 5 years after CIA involvement in the removal of Qasim.

So yes, the CIA had been involved in removing what it felt were pro-communist leadership in Iraq, but that did not put Saddam in power. In fact, Saddam was put in jail after that.

Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union by the start of the 1980s. It was the Soviet Union the provided Iraq with nearly all of its weapon systems. The United States aid provided to Iraq in the 1980s was limited and only constituted 5% of the total. The United States did not supply Iraq with weapon systems. It did supply Iraq with loans for food, trucks, transport helicopters, standard trade relations and intelligence on Iranian military movements.

But it was the Soviets who were neck deep involved in Iraq supplying thousands of weapons systems and stationing over 1,000 Soviet military advisors in the country every year from 1980 all the way up to just before the start of the 1991 Gulf War!

The United States did not supply Iraq any weapon systems, but we did supply Iran with over 1,000 TOW missiles during the Iran-Iraq war.

Saddam's party would not have come to power in Iraq absent the 1963 coup which the CIA played a major role:

"Qasim was overthrown by the Ba'athist coup of February 8, 1963, motivated by fear of communist influence and state control over the petroleum sector.

"This coup was allegedly carried out with the backing of the British government and the American CIA.[33][34][35] The best direct evidence that the U.S. was complicit is the memo from NSC staff member Robert Komer to President John F. Kennedy on the night of the coup, February 8, 1963. The last paragraph reads:

"'We will make informal friendly noises as soon as we can find out whom to talk with, and ought to recognize as soon as we’re sure these guys are firmly in the saddle. CIA had excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it.'"

Abd al-Karim Qasim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saddam's path to the presidency detoured through prison, but his fate, and that of his family, was all due to the CIA and the US military/industrial complex, as was that of Abdul Salam Arif:

"On December 13, 2004, Arif's daughter, Sana Abdul Salam, and her husband, Wamith Abdul Razzak Said Alkadiry, were shot dead in their home in Baghdad by unknown assailants. Rafal Alkadiry, their 22-year-old son, was kidnapped,[12] and later killed."

Abdul Salam Arif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SADDAM and the Bath Party came to power despite the events prior to the summer of 1968.

The US did NOT install 26 year old SADDAM as the leader of Iraq in 1963. The CIA helped to install Arif. Its not even clear that the CIA knew or cared who SADDAM was in 1963.

In addition, what SADDAM and the Bath party would become decades later did not exist in the 1960s. So all of these connections that are being drawn in this case are irrelevant.

I never claimed the US installed 26 year-old Saddam as the leader of Iraq in 1963. At that time Saddam was deputy to Ahmed Hassan al_Bakr, who was appointed Prime Minister and later, Vice President of Iraq in the ba'ath-nasserist coalition government that came to power following the CIA-driven assassination of Qasim in 1963

"Although he (Arif) was chosen as president, more power was held by the Ba'athist prime minister, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

"Following a Ba'athist-led coup in Syria in March 1963, Arif entered his country into reunification talks with Syria and Egypt (which had split from the UAR in 1961).

"After a fallout with Nasser in July, the Ba'athist government of Iraq removed all non-Ba'athist members from the cabinet, despite Arif's support for Nasser.[3]

"On November 18, Arif, with the support of disaffected elements in the military, took advantage of a split between the Ba'ath—which weakened the party—and ousted their members from the government.

"Arif formed a new cabinet, retaining a few Ba'athists, but mostly made up of Nasserist army officers and technocrats. He maintained his presidency and appointed himself chief-of-staff."

Abdul Salam Arif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ba'ath Party was the CIA's chosen instrument in toppling Kassem, and 25 year-old Saddam Hussein played a prominent role after returning from a Cairo exile where it's suspected he was trained by the CIA.

 

[U2Edge]

Saddam's party would not have come to power in Iraq absent the 1963 coup which the CIA played a major role:

"Qasim was overthrown by the Ba'athist coup of February 8, 1963, motivated by fear of communist influence and state control over the petroleum sector.

"This coup was allegedly carried out with the backing of the British government and the American CIA.[33][34][35] The best direct evidence that the U.S. was complicit is the memo from NSC staff member Robert Komer to President John F. Kennedy on the night of the coup, February 8, 1963. The last paragraph reads:

"'We will make informal friendly noises as soon as we can find out whom to talk with, and ought to recognize as soon as we’re sure these guys are firmly in the saddle. CIA had excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it.'"

Abd al-Karim Qasim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saddam's path to the presidency detoured through prison, but his fate, and that of his family, was all due to the CIA and the US military/industrial complex, as was that of Abdul Salam Arif:

"On December 13, 2004, Arif's daughter, Sana Abdul Salam, and her husband, Wamith Abdul Razzak Said Alkadiry, were shot dead in their home in Baghdad by unknown assailants. Rafal Alkadiry, their 22-year-old son, was kidnapped,[12] and later killed."

Abdul Salam Arif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SADDAM and the Bath Party came to power despite the events prior to the summer of 1968.

The US did NOT install 26 year old SADDAM as the leader of Iraq in 1963. The CIA helped to install Arif. Its not even clear that the CIA knew or cared who SADDAM was in 1963.

In addition, what SADDAM and the Bath party would become decades later did not exist in the 1960s. So all of these connections that are being drawn in this case are irrelevant.

I never claimed the US installed 26 year-old Saddam as the leader of Iraq in 1963. At that time Saddam was deputy to Ahmed Hassan al_Bakr, who was appointed Prime Minister and later, Vice President of Iraq in the ba'ath-nasserist coalition government that came to power following the CIA-driven assassination of Qasim in 1963

"Although he (Arif) was chosen as president, more power was held by the Ba'athist prime minister, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

"Following a Ba'athist-led coup in Syria in March 1963, Arif entered his country into reunification talks with Syria and Egypt (which had split from the UAR in 1961).

"After a fallout with Nasser in July, the Ba'athist government of Iraq removed all non-Ba'athist members from the cabinet, despite Arif's support for Nasser.[3]

"On November 18, Arif, with the support of disaffected elements in the military, took advantage of a split between the Ba'ath—which weakened the party—and ousted their members from the government.

"Arif formed a new cabinet, retaining a few Ba'athists, but mostly made up of Nasserist army officers and technocrats. He maintained his presidency and appointed himself chief-of-staff."

Abdul Salam Arif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ba'ath Party was the CIA's chosen instrument in toppling Kassem, and 25 year-old Saddam Hussein played a prominent role after returning from a Cairo exile where it's suspected he was trained by the CIA.

Yes, you did! SADDAM and the Bath Party did not come to power in 1963. In fact, they were imprisoned. Saddam and the Bath Party's time is the summer of 1968, long after Qasim had been removed from power.

The links you draw between the CIA involvement in Iraq in 1963 and SADDAM don't exist in the way you have portrayed them.

SADDAM's rise to power in Iraq is the summer of 1968, long after the CIA intervention in Iraq in 1963.

26 year old SADDAM in 1963 was not the man he would become in 1979 or especially in 1990. He was soon imprisoned, far from being in power. He was a peasant who went on to exaggerate his role in Iraqi politics in the early 1960s once he was fully in power decades later.

CIA involvement in any country at a certain time period does NOT in of itself equate to automatic responsibility for all actions that occur in a country many years after that fact. There were things that the CIA did impact in Iraq especially in 1963, but there are many things that were impacted by the CIA and have no relation to the CIA in Iraq post 1963!

 

[georgephillip]

SADDAM and the Bath Party came to power despite the events prior to the summer of 1968.

The US did NOT install 26 year old SADDAM as the leader of Iraq in 1963. The CIA helped to install Arif. Its not even clear that the CIA knew or cared who SADDAM was in 1963.

In addition, what SADDAM and the Bath party would become decades later did not exist in the 1960s. So all of these connections that are being drawn in this case are irrelevant.

I never claimed the US installed 26 year-old Saddam as the leader of Iraq in 1963. At that time Saddam was deputy to Ahmed Hassan al_Bakr, who was appointed Prime Minister and later, Vice President of Iraq in the ba'ath-nasserist coalition government that came to power following the CIA-driven assassination of Qasim in 1963

"Although he (Arif) was chosen as president, more power was held by the Ba'athist prime minister, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

"Following a Ba'athist-led coup in Syria in March 1963, Arif entered his country into reunification talks with Syria and Egypt (which had split from the UAR in 1961).

"After a fallout with Nasser in July, the Ba'athist government of Iraq removed all non-Ba'athist members from the cabinet, despite Arif's support for Nasser.[3]

"On November 18, Arif, with the support of disaffected elements in the military, took advantage of a split between the Ba'ath—which weakened the party—and ousted their members from the government.

"Arif formed a new cabinet, retaining a few Ba'athists, but mostly made up of Nasserist army officers and technocrats. He maintained his presidency and appointed himself chief-of-staff."

Abdul Salam Arif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ba'ath Party was the CIA's chosen instrument in toppling Kassem, and 25 year-old Saddam Hussein played a prominent role after returning from a Cairo exile where it's suspected he was trained by the CIA.

Yes, you did! SADDAM and the Bath Party did not come to power in 1963. In fact, they were imprisoned. Saddam and the Bath Party's time is the summer of 1968, long after Qasim had been removed from power.

The links you draw between the CIA involvement in Iraq in 1963 and SADDAM don't exist in the way you have portrayed them.

SADDAM's rise to power in Iraq is the summer of 1968, long after the CIA intervention in Iraq in 1963.

26 year old SADDAM in 1963 was not the man he would become in 1979 or especially in 1990. He was soon imprisoned, far from being in power. He was a peasant who went on to exaggerate his role in Iraqi politics in the early 1960s once he was fully in power decades later.

CIA involvement in any country at a certain time period does NOT in of itself equate to automatic responsibility for all actions that occur in a country many years after that fact. There were things that the CIA did impact in Iraq especially in 1963, but there are many things that were impacted by the CIA and have no relation to the CIA in Iraq post 1963!

True or False:
1. After Qasim was overthrown in February of 1963, Ahmed Hassan al Bakr, a leader of Iraq's Ba'ath Party was appointed Prime Minister, and later, Vice President of Iraq in a ba'ath-nasserist coalition government?

2. Saddam was al-Bakr's deputy in 1963?

Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia