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Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a
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(11239 previous messages)
almarst2003
- 03:09pm Apr 10, 2003 EST (#
11240 of 11245)
The "toppling" of Saddm and the Iraqi regime: a tale of
2 photos - http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=55268&group=webcast
almarst2003
- 03:19pm Apr 10, 2003 EST (#
11241 of 11245)
The Americans who will run Iraq - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2932965.stm
The main Iraqi Shia group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), says it is boycotting a meeting
planned for Iraqi opposition leaders, including exiles. It is
to be one of the first meetings leading up to the
establishment of an interim authority.
"We are not going to take part in this meeting in Nasiriya.
We think this is part of General Garner's rule of Iraq
and we are not going to be part of that project at all,"
Sciri's London representative, Hamid al-Bayati told Reuters.
almarst2003
- 10:32pm Apr 10, 2003 EST (#
11242 of 11245)
The war against Iraq highlights the influence of a web
of individuals inside and outside the government that operates
with minimal scrutiny - http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/opinion/10HERB.html
almarst2003
- 01:59pm Apr 11, 2003 EST (#
11243 of 11245)
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved
with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September
1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials
date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized
six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime
Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in
what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified,
described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."
According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke
on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key
buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet
Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join
the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region
and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and
conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw
from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out"
according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.
Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy
arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists
into ministry positions of "real power," according to this
official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA
Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most
dangerous spot in the world."
In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative,
told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling
Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the
intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a
recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National
Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim,
saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and
anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."
According to another former senior State Department
official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part
of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source,
Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid
Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of
Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.
Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy
Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the
CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist
working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials
separately confirmed Darwish's account.
Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid
Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy
who paid for the apartment from his own personal account.
Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is
accurate.
The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was
completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official
said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began
firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding
Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of
the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that
another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his
coat.
"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence
official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car,
escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a
fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and
Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government
officials said.
Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by
Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish
and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut,
the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a
brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency
then helped him get to Cairo, they said.
One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the
time, said that eve
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