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Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammad “Bin Laden became one of the most powerful men in the [Saudi] kingdom, even helping to put King Faisal on the throne in the early 1960s [November 2, 1964] and paying the wages of the entire Saudi civil service for the following four months because of a hole in the nation’s coffers. It was a stunning risk that was richly rewarded: Faisal was so grateful he decreed that all construction contracts should go to bin Laden, and even briefly made Mohammad the Minister for Public Works. Mohammad bin Laden’s company has since become a massive commercial entity, responsible for building much of Saudi Arabia, and rebuilding Kuwait and Beirut, with offices and palaces across the Middle East and an estimated turnover in the mid-1990s of $36 billion.”

 – Simon Reeve, The New Jackals, Page 158

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“In November [18] 1963, the Ba’ath’s chaotic and bloody rule ended in its overthrow by Arab nationalist officers allied with the president, Abd el-Salam ‘Aref, one of the leaders of the 1958 Revolution. The party was suppressed, and, as it went underground, leadership once again switched, this time to a career officer and former prime minister, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. Saddam Hussein was put in charge of organising the party’s civilian wing, and became the clandestine party’s deputy secretary general.”

 – Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, Page 29

In Iraq, “The Ba’ath also began to infiltrate the armed forces, and in February [8] 1963 was able to launch a successful coup that ended the regime of [Prime Minister] General [Abd al-Karim] Qassim [of Iraq].”

 – Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, Page 29

“In 1963, the Baath Party successfully overthrew the government and took power which allowed Saddam to return to Iraq from exile. While home, he married his cousin, Sajida Tulfah. However, the Baath Party was overthrown after only nine months in power and Saddam was arrested in 1964 after another coup attempt. He spent 18 months in prison, where he was tortured, before he escaped in July 1966.” [Month and day used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Jennifer Rosenberg, “Saddam Hussein,” About.com, Updated Dec. 16, 2014, Accessed on 2/1/2016

“Despite the arguments of some well-known scholars to the contrary, every state has, in the words of onetime Secretary of State Elihu Root [on August 30, 1962], ‘the right…to protect itself by preventing a condition of affairs in which it will be too late to protect itself.’ ”

 – John Yoo, War By Other Means, Page 61

“The first instance of American and British military intervention in Iraq, post-independence, goes back to July 1961, when British troops moved in to defend Kuwait against Iraqi troops massing on its border. Iraq claimed Kuwait based on the fact that as a part of the Ottoman Empire it had been subject to Iraqi suzerainty [a sovereign or a state exercising political control over a dependent state]. Kuwait was key to US-UK interests in the region; Gulf Oil (owned jointly by British and American interests) had been extracting oil from the Burgan oilfield there since 1946.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History of Al Qaeda, Page 182

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“In early September 1960 the Iraqi government hosted officials from Venezuela and three Gulf countries for an obscure five-day conference in Baghdad. Wearing suits rather than robes, and sitting at a plain wooden table, they founded the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).” [The 5th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Basra and Umm Qasr, “Crude Diplomacy,” The Economist, Feb. 18, 2010