Search Results for:

“In November 1969, Saddam [Hussein] was appointed as the deputy head of the Revolutionary Command Council, Iraq’s supreme governing body. He gathered all the intelligence agencies, the real bulwarks of Ba’athist power, into his hands. The first to go were the non-Ba’athist officers who had executed the coup of 1968. Military and civilian Ba’ath Party rivals were quickly disposed of, through assassinations, mysterious ‘accidents,’ demotions, exile and imprisonment.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

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

-Richard Nixon – Republican president inaugurated
-Spiro T. Agnew – Vice President

 –

 –

 –

In Iraq, “Saddam [Hussein] helped lead the revolution on July 17, 1968, which eventually brought the Baath party to power under Gen. Ahmed Hassan Bakr.”

 – “Profile: Former Iraqi Leader Saddam Hussein,” China Daily, June 30, 2004

“In July [16] 1968, the Ba’ath, in alliance with a few dissident army officers, launched a successful coup against the regime of [Iraqi President] Abd el-Rahman ‘Aref. Using both state and party platforms, and working under the wing of his kinsman, [coup leader] Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, now the president of Iraq, Saddam [Hussein] was able to consolidate his position in the faction-riven Ba’ath Party.”

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

“On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced ‘a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk.’ The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later [February 28, 1968], the court martial of the soldier.”

 – Eric Weiner, “Waterboarding: A Tortured History,” National Public Radio, Nov. 3, 2007

“Formal diplomatic relations between the United States and Iraq were suspended after the Six Day War in [June 5-10] 1967.”

 – Charles Duelfer, Hide and Seek, Page 36

“…after his escape [from prison on July 23, 1966], [Saddam Hussein] made contact with Robert Anderson, a CIA officer who made frequent trips to Baghdad to monitor efforts by the Soviets to take control of Iraq’s oil reserves.”

 – Con Coughlin, Saddam: His Rise and Fall, Page 64

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

 –

“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

 –

 –

“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

” ‘If you go and live with these Arabs,’ President [Dwight] Eisenhower told [Director of Central Intelligence] Allen Dulles and the assembled members of the National Security Council [on June 18, 1959], ‘you will find that they simply cannot understand our ideas of freedom and human dignity. They have lived so long under dictatorships of one kind or another, how can we expect them to run successfully a free government?’ ”

 – Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, Page 157

On July 14, 1958, “A group of Iraqi army officers have staged a coup in Iraq and overthrown the monarchy. Baghdad Radio announced the Army has liberated the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by ‘imperialism.’ From now on Iraq would be a republic that would ‘maintain ties with other Arab countries.’ …While Iraqis are celebrating on the streets of Baghdad, the news is a cause for concern for western powers worried about their oil interests and instability in the region.”

 – “1958: Coup in Iran Sparks Jitters in Middle East,” BBC News – On This Day segment

“A joint United States-Canadian command, NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] was established [May 12] 1958, at the height of the Cold War. Its mission, ‘air sovereignty,’ was control of airspace above the domestic United States, as well as surveillance and control of the airspace of Canada and the United States. It was empowered to enforce ‘air sovereignty’ through the use of fighter jets kept on constant alert around the perimeter of the continent.”

 – John Farmer, The Ground Truth, Pages 27-28

President Dwight Eisenhower “said he wanted to promote the idea of an Islamic jihad against godless communism. ‘We should do everything possible to stress the *holy war* aspect,’ he said at a September [7] 1957 White House meeting…”

 – Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, Page 158

“US President Barack Obama made a major gesture of conciliation to Iran on Thursday [June 4, 2009] when he admitted US involvement in the [August 19] 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. ‘In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,’ Obama said in a keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. It was the first time a serving US president had publicly admitted American involvement in the coup. The US Central Intelligence Agency, with British backing, masterminded the coup after Mossadegh nationalised the oil industry, run until then by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhand methods to get rid of a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests.”

 – “Obama Admits US Involvement in 1953 Iran Coup,” Agence France-Presse, June 4, 2009

“Fifty years ago this week [on August 19, 1953], the CIA and the British SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] orchestrated a coup d’etat [in Iran] that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The prime minister and his nationalist supporters in parliament roused Britain’s ire when they nationalised the oil industry in 1951, which had previously been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves. Britain accused him of violating the company’s legal rights and orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iran’s oil that plunged the country into financial crisis. The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup, an idea originally rebuffed by President Truman. But when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, cold war ideologues–determined to prevent the possibility of a Soviet takeover–ordered the CIA to embark on its first covert operation against a foreign government. …the CIA–with British assistance–undermined Mossadegh’s government by bribing influential figures, planting false reports in newspapers and provoking street violence. Led by an agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, the CIA leaned on a young, insecure Shah to issue a decree dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister. By the end of Operation Ajax, some 300 people had died in firefights in the streets of Tehran.”

 – Dan De Luce, “The Spectre of Operation Ajax,” The Guardian, Aug. 20, 2003

-Dwight D. Eisenhower – Republican president inaugurated
-Richard M. Nixon – Vice President

 –

 –

On October 24, 1952, “The eight-page directive that [President Harry] Truman had signed made SIGINT [signals intelligence] a national responsibility and designated the secretary of defense as the U.S. government’s executive agent for all SIGINT activities, which placed NSA [National Security Agency] within the ambit of the Defense Department and outside the jurisdiction of the CIA. Truman gave the NSA a degree of power and authority above and beyond that ever given previously or since to any American intelligence agency, placing it outside the rubric of the rest of the U.S. intelligence community. Truman also ordered that the new agency’s powers be clearly defined and strengthened through the issuance of a new directive titled National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 9 ‘Communications Intelligence.’ ”

 – Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry, Page 44

As a majority Palestinian state, Jordan was unhappy with King Abdullah’s attempts for a peace treaty with Israel. “On July 20, 1951, while visiting the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, he [King Abdullah] was assassinated for his efforts by a Palestinian with links to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

 – Bruce Riedel, The Search for Al Qaeda, Page 91

“In a [April 11] 1951 address explaining America’s participation in the Korean War, President [Harry] Truman insisted that if the allies ‘had followed the right policies in the 1930s–if the free countries had acted together to crush the aggression of the dictators, and if they had acted at the beginning when the aggression was small–there probably would have been no World War II. If history has taught us anything, it is that aggression anywhere in the world is a threat to peace everywhere in the world.’ ”

 – Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, Page 115

In an address to the nation on July 19, 1950, President Harry Truman explained “why it was necessary for the United States to resist aggression in Korea. ‘Korea is a small country, thousands of miles away, but what is happening there is important to every American. …The attack upon Korea was an outright breach of the peace and a violation of the Charter of the United Nations. …This is a direct challenge to the efforts of the free nations to build the kind of world in which men can live in freedom and peace. …This challenge has been presented squarely. We must meet it squarely.’ ”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Pages 116-117

“In [July 26] 1947, during the Truman administration, Congress approved the National Security Act, which among other things created the Department of Defense (by merging the War and Navy departments), the CIA, and the National Security Council.”

 – Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, Page 317

President Harry Truman’s address to Congress on March 12, 1947, (Truman, a Democrat, was inaugurated on April 12, 1945) marked the start of the Truman Doctrine, which defined the U.S.’s attempts to contain the spread of communism. In a speech pledging financial support for Turkey and Greece, he said: ” ‘I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.'”

 – President Harry Truman, “Address of the President of the United States–‘Recommendation for Assistance to Greece and Turkey,'” March 12, 1947, Avalon Project, Avalon.Yale.edu, Accessed on 1/13/2016

“The era [of postwar American foreign policy] commenced in [March 12] 1947 with a congressional address by [President] Harry Truman in which he allowed the ‘frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free people, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.’ ”

 – Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, Page 112