Changes

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>

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.”

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 plotters of the 1963 coup in Iraq and Egypt.  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>

While Qasim was actually killed by a firing squad of the Ba'ath party that overthrew him, there had been a separate CIA plan to incapacitate him. In their request, they said the target's death would not be unacceptable to them, but was not the principal objective: "We do not consciously seek subject's permanent removal from the scene; we also do not object should this complication develop."

 

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>

====Angola 1975====

====Angola 1975====