Cassius Clay
4th April 2003, 10:14
CIA Trained Saddam To Be Fascist Killer
The Saddam Hussein that the Bush gang is painting as evil personified is a creature of four U.S. administrations, Democrats Kennedy and Johnson, and Republicans Reagan and Bush, Sr. The Saddam Hussein we now know didn’t "suddenly" appear in 1991. His roots go back to the Kennedy era.
In 1958, General Abdel Karim Kassem ousted a pro-Western monarchy in Iraq. During that decade, the Communist Party of Iraq (CPI) had become arguably the largest mass organization in the Middle East. With a multi-ethnic membership and leadership of Arabs, Kurds and Jews, and a mass base among oil workers, the CPI organized huge general strikes and might have taken power. But it backed off under its "united front" with the "progressive" wing of bosses opposed to British and U.S. imperialism, which led to its downfall. Thousands were killed by the same generals and bosses it had sought unity with.
By 1961 Kassem was "Seeking new arms rivaling Israel’s, threatening Western oil interests…[and] talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East….Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed." ("A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making" by Roger Morris, New York Times, 3/14)
By 1963, Kennedy had the CIA set up shop in Kuwait from which it radioed orders to, and organized rebels in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Iraq itself, including arming Kurdish insurgents, to overthrow Kassem. (All this was disclosed by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and by David Wise, an authority on the CIA.)
On Feb. 8, 1963, CIA-organized forces staged a coup, backed by Britain and Israel. The Kennedy administration "immediately befriended the successor regime. ‘Almost certainly a gain for our side,’" Kennedy National Security aide Robert Komer wrote JFK on the day of the coup. (Morris, NYT)
Then, says Morris, "As its instrument, the CIA had chosen the…anti-communist Baath Party….Among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein" [then 25]…. The 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists supplied by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers… — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself…participated."
The U.S. "also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon…Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business in Baghdad — for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq."
Then in 1968, in-fighting within this regime led to still another CIA-backed coup, during the Johnson administration, enabling a Baathist general to seize control and bring Saddam Hussein next to the seat of power.
In the 1980s, during the Iraq-Iran war, the U.S.backed Saddam— the U.S. had lost Iran when its puppet, the Shah, had been overthown in 1979. They sent Iraq’s dictator arms and chemical and biological materials (see CHALLENGE, 3/5, and the UN weapons inspectors’ report). These formed the basis of his celebrated Weapons of Mass Destruction that the Bush gang is so "upset" about. But we should be very clear: Saddam Hussein, a fascist dictator, is an enemy of the Iraqi and international working class. The CIA taught Saddam how to kill workers and Reds. He deserves to be smashed — along with U.S. imperialism — by Iraqi workers and workers everywhere.
The "icing" on the U.S.-backed "cake" came in 1990 when Bush, Sr.’s ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam that any dispute with Kuwait was "an internal matter," of no concern to the U.S., giving him the green light to invade. Of course, U.S. rulers soon decided that Saddam’s control of Kuwaiti oil fields might make him too much of a threat to U.S. "friend" Saudi Arabia, world’s largest oil producer, so for the first time in three decades, the U.S. reversed gears on the "evil" it had created.
Concludes Morris, ‘In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals….If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace."
Why, on the eve of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, has the New York Times printed such an exposé of the U.S. creation of Saddam? Perhaps it’s their way of telling the Bush crowd they’d better be prepared because they may be opening up a Pandora’s box of uncontrolled opposition to U.S. imperialism worldwide.
Just goes to prove that old saying 'The US has no permanent allies, only permanent interests' to still be correct.
The Saddam Hussein that the Bush gang is painting as evil personified is a creature of four U.S. administrations, Democrats Kennedy and Johnson, and Republicans Reagan and Bush, Sr. The Saddam Hussein we now know didn’t "suddenly" appear in 1991. His roots go back to the Kennedy era.
In 1958, General Abdel Karim Kassem ousted a pro-Western monarchy in Iraq. During that decade, the Communist Party of Iraq (CPI) had become arguably the largest mass organization in the Middle East. With a multi-ethnic membership and leadership of Arabs, Kurds and Jews, and a mass base among oil workers, the CPI organized huge general strikes and might have taken power. But it backed off under its "united front" with the "progressive" wing of bosses opposed to British and U.S. imperialism, which led to its downfall. Thousands were killed by the same generals and bosses it had sought unity with.
By 1961 Kassem was "Seeking new arms rivaling Israel’s, threatening Western oil interests…[and] talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East….Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed." ("A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making" by Roger Morris, New York Times, 3/14)
By 1963, Kennedy had the CIA set up shop in Kuwait from which it radioed orders to, and organized rebels in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Iraq itself, including arming Kurdish insurgents, to overthrow Kassem. (All this was disclosed by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and by David Wise, an authority on the CIA.)
On Feb. 8, 1963, CIA-organized forces staged a coup, backed by Britain and Israel. The Kennedy administration "immediately befriended the successor regime. ‘Almost certainly a gain for our side,’" Kennedy National Security aide Robert Komer wrote JFK on the day of the coup. (Morris, NYT)
Then, says Morris, "As its instrument, the CIA had chosen the…anti-communist Baath Party….Among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein" [then 25]…. The 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists supplied by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers… — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself…participated."
The U.S. "also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon…Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business in Baghdad — for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq."
Then in 1968, in-fighting within this regime led to still another CIA-backed coup, during the Johnson administration, enabling a Baathist general to seize control and bring Saddam Hussein next to the seat of power.
In the 1980s, during the Iraq-Iran war, the U.S.backed Saddam— the U.S. had lost Iran when its puppet, the Shah, had been overthown in 1979. They sent Iraq’s dictator arms and chemical and biological materials (see CHALLENGE, 3/5, and the UN weapons inspectors’ report). These formed the basis of his celebrated Weapons of Mass Destruction that the Bush gang is so "upset" about. But we should be very clear: Saddam Hussein, a fascist dictator, is an enemy of the Iraqi and international working class. The CIA taught Saddam how to kill workers and Reds. He deserves to be smashed — along with U.S. imperialism — by Iraqi workers and workers everywhere.
The "icing" on the U.S.-backed "cake" came in 1990 when Bush, Sr.’s ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam that any dispute with Kuwait was "an internal matter," of no concern to the U.S., giving him the green light to invade. Of course, U.S. rulers soon decided that Saddam’s control of Kuwaiti oil fields might make him too much of a threat to U.S. "friend" Saudi Arabia, world’s largest oil producer, so for the first time in three decades, the U.S. reversed gears on the "evil" it had created.
Concludes Morris, ‘In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals….If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace."
Why, on the eve of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, has the New York Times printed such an exposé of the U.S. creation of Saddam? Perhaps it’s their way of telling the Bush crowd they’d better be prepared because they may be opening up a Pandora’s box of uncontrolled opposition to U.S. imperialism worldwide.
Just goes to prove that old saying 'The US has no permanent allies, only permanent interests' to still be correct.