SkipCaptcha, Automoderated users, edit
703
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 117:
Line 117: − + − + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Central Intelligence Agency (view source)
Revision as of 19:39, November 25, 2010
, 19:39, November 25, 2010→Iraq 1973-5
196-206, 240-6, in which he discusses living standards in Communist Cuba versus Pinochet's Chile.</ref>). In turn, this allowed Chile to make a long-term transition to sustainable democratic rule that would likely have been otherwise inconceivable.<ref>http://www.lyd.com/noticias/violencia/what_really.html</ref>
196-206, 240-6, in which he discusses living standards in Communist Cuba versus Pinochet's Chile.</ref>). In turn, this allowed Chile to make a long-term transition to sustainable democratic rule that would likely have been otherwise inconceivable.<ref>http://www.lyd.com/noticias/violencia/what_really.html</ref>
===Iraq 1973-5===
===Iraq===
Kissinger and Nixon approved a covert [[CIA]] campaign of subversion and sabotage designed to bring down the Socialist government of [[Iraq]] in 1973. Done in collaboration with the [[Shah]] of neighboring [[Iran]], it involved Soviet arms captured from Egypt and [[Syria]] in the 1973 war being dispatched to Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq. The Shah cynically used the Kurds to pressure the Ba'athist government to back down on a number of serious territorial disputes between the two nations. The US brokered a peace treaty between Iraq and Iran in 1975, and aid to the Kurds was subsequently cut off. The Kurds were then viciously slaughtered. "''Covert action should not be confused with missionary work,''" Kissinger famously declared.<ref>http://www.slate.com/id/2156400/</ref>
The US-backed Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, an event which shocked President Eisenhower. Worse, the new regime was led by a de facto [[Communist]] dictator, General Abdel Karrim Qassem. Qassem was far bloodier than his predecessor. Further, he withdrew from the Baghdad Pact, an agreement between Iraq, [[Iran]], [[Pakistan]] and other countries in the Middle East intended to deter the Soviets from intruding in the affairs of the region. Openly admiring of the USSR, Qassem repeatedly threatened his neighbors, including Iran, where a CIA-sponsored counter-coup had saved the Shah's regime from collapse in 1953. He publicly declared that Khuzestan province in northern Iran was really a part of Iraq, and allegedly armed secessionist revolts from the Arabs who lived there. He amassed troops to invade Kuwait, a move that nearly led to war between Iraq and [[England]] (which was committed by treaty to defend Kuwait).
Qassem was overthrown in a 1963 coup orchestrated significantly by the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath Party gained limited power in the new government, though it lacked control of the Presidency. It struggled with the military men who had assisted the coup for absolute power. The Ba'ath was purged a few months later, and would have to work to regain political influence. A series of coups and power struggles plagued Iraq until 1968, when the Ba'ath Party gained long-term power. During this time, Saddam gained increasing prominence in the Ba'ath Party. He consolidated more control as a result of the 1963 and 1966 purges within the party that removed the "moderates" and dissidents from within. Remembering the internal squabbles that cost the Ba'ath the limited power that it had gained in 1963; Saddam promoted party loyalty and would later design the security apparatus that enabled the creation of an effective police state.
In July 1968, a bloodless coup led by General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, Saddam Hussein and Salah Omar Al-Ali besieged the Iraqi presidential palace and forced Iraqi President Abdul Rahman Arif to resign. The new regime immediately freed all of the Communist and [[leftist]] political prisoners of the regime, and heightened tensions with Iran. The [[Lyndon Johnson]] administration was vociferously opposed to the new regime, viewing it as a "radical" government brought to power in a "counter-coup" that strengthened the Soviet Union.<ref>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/critchfield.html</ref> As a result, diplomatic relations with Iraq, cut off due to the 1967 Six Day War with Israel, remained completely severed for the next 16 years. The Iraqi government promptly seized all foreign oil fields for the purposes of "combating imperialism." The US made all arms sales to Iraq under this new regime formally illegal in a law passed by the US [[Congress]].
In 1973, Kissinger and Nixon approved a covert [[CIA]] campaign of subversion and sabotage designed to bring down the Socialist government of [[Iraq]]. Done in collaboration with the [[Shah]] of neighboring [[Iran]], it involved Soviet arms captured from Egypt and [[Syria]] in the 1973 war being dispatched to Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq. The Shah cynically used the Kurds to pressure the Ba'athist government to back down on a number of serious territorial disputes between the two nations. The US brokered a peace treaty between Iraq and Iran in 1975, and aid to the Kurds was subsequently cut off. The Kurds were then viciously slaughtered. "''Covert action should not be confused with missionary work,''" Kissinger famously declared.<ref>http://www.slate.com/id/2156400/</ref>
Ironically, the Ba'ath Party had first risen to prominence in a CIA-sponsored coup. The CIA under Eisenhower and [[Kennedy]] had dealt with the rather similiar problem of Qassem's leftist regime in a rather similar manner: CIA-sponsored regime change. The CIA repeatedly attempted to assassinate Qassem, armed Kurdish rebels against his regime, allegedly plotted a joint US-Turkey invasion of Iraq to remove him, and worked to isolate him diplomatically. The CIA had contacts with the Ba'athist plotters of the 1963 coup in Iraq and Egypt, and CIA records suggest it financially assisted the coup. Writing in his memoirs of the 1963 coup, long time OSS and CIA intelligence analyst Harry Rositzke presented it as an example of one on which they had good intelligence in contrast to others that caught the agency by surprise. The Ba’ath overthrow “was forecast in exact detail by CIA agents.”
"Agents in the Ba’ath Party headquarters in Baghdad had for years kept Washington au courant on the party’s personnel and organization, its secret communications and sources of funds, and its penetrations of military and civilian hierarchies in several countries… CIA sources were in a perfect position to follow each step of Ba’th preparations for the Iraqi coup, which focused on making contacts with military and civilian leaders in Baghdad. The CIA’s major source, in an ideal catbird seat, reported the exact time of the coup and provided a list of the new cabinet members. …To call an upcoming coup requires the CIA to have sources within the group of plotters. Yet, from a diplomatic point of view, having secret contacts with plotters implies at least unofficial complicity in the plot."<ref>Harry Rositzke, ''The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action'' (Boulder, CO: 1977), 109-110.</ref>
The CIA would have paid a lot of money for this steady supply of information, especially because American planners had determined that the Ba’ath Party would be the best for U.S. policy in Iraq going forward in 1962.<ref>United States, Department of State, Nina J. Noring and Glenn W. LaFantasie eds. ''Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963'', vol. XVII: Near East 1961-1962, 364-365.</ref> The First Political Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq in 1963 during the coup, Bill Lakeland, has admitted that CIA officer Ed Kane told him that the U.S. “had people who informed us about things…The CIA was kept aware of what was happening…[The CIA] had paid informants within the Ba’ath, but had no control of any operational…It was ultra secret….”<ref>William J. Zeman, "U.S. Covert Intervention in Iraq 1958-1963: The Origins of U.S. Supported Regime Change in Modern Iraq," (Thesis (M.A.)--California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Dept. of History, 2006), 52. http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQk-oiHeEQzzZGNzams5Zm5fM2hrZnJxc2Zr&hl=en</ref> The best direct evidence that the U.S. was complicit is the memo from NSC staff member Bob 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. ________excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it."<ref>Zeman, 97.</ref>
Thus, when former CIA Near East Division Chief James Chritchfield claims the 1968 coup was a "radical" "counter-coup," perhaps his language reflects the reality that it overthrew a government the US covertly helped bring to power.
===Angola 1975-92===
===Angola 1975-92===