New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

almarst2003 - 08:49pm Apr 19, 2003 EST (# 11342 of 11500)

Former US official says CIA aided Iraqi Baathists - http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2003-daily/19-04-2003/world/w1.htm

PHILADELPHIA: If the United States succeeds in shepherding the creation of a postwar Iraqi government, it won't be the first time that Washington has played a primary role in changing the country's rulers.

At least not according to Roger Morris, who says the CIA had a hand in two coups in Iraq during the darkest days of the Cold War, including a 1968 putsch that set Saddam Hussein firmly on the path to power.

"This takes you down a longer, darker road in terms of American culpability," said Morris, a former State Department foreign service officer who was on the National Security Council staff during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. In 1963, two years after the ill-fated US attempt to overthrow the Cuban government, Morris says the CIA helped organise a bloody coup in Iraq that deposed the Soviet-leaning government of General Abdel-Karim Kassem.

"As in Iran in '53, it was mostly American money and even American involvement on the ground," said Morris, referring to a U.S.-backed coup that had brought about the return of the shah to neighbouring Iran. Kassem, who had allowed communists to hold positions of responsibility in his government, was machine-gunned to death.

And the country wound up in the hands of the Baath Party. At the time, Saddam was a Baath operative studying law in Cairo, one of the places where the CIA chose to plan the coup, Morris says. In fact, he claims the former Iraqi ruler castigated by US President George W. Bush as one of history's most "brutal dictators," was actually on the CIA payroll in those days.

Five years later, in 1968, Morris says the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath Party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protege in 1979. "It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary," Morris said.

His version of history is a far cry from current American rhetoric about Iraq -- a country that top US officials say has been liberated from decades of tyranny and given the chance for a bright democratic future without making mention of America's own alleged role in giving birth to the regime.

A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on Morris' claims of CIA involvement in the Iraqi coups but said his assertion that Saddam once received payments from the agency was "utterly ridiculous." Morris, who resigned from the NSC staff over the 1970 US invasion of Cambodia, says he learned the details of US covert involvement in Iraq from ranking CIA officials of the day.

Now 65, Morris went on to become a Nixon biographer and is currently writing a book about US covert action in Afghanistan and Iraq. He regards Saddam as a deposed US client in the mould of former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos and former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

"We climb into bed with these people without really knowing anything about their politics," Morris said in an interview from Seattle where he is working on his book. "It's not unusual, of course, in American policy. We tire of these people, and we find reasons to shed them."

But many experts, including foreign affairs scholars, say there is little to suggest US involvement in Iraq in the 1960s. David Wise, a Washington-based author who has written extensively about Cold War espionage, says he is aware only of records showing that a CIA group known as the "Health Alteration Committee" tried to assassinate Kassem in 1960 by sending the Iraqi leader a poisoned monogrammed handkerchief.

almarst2003 - 08:52pm Apr 19, 2003 EST (# 11343 of 11500)

Amid cheers at the Abu Haneefa Al Nu'man mosque in Baghdad, a leading cleric warned Americans on Friday to get out of Iraq before they are forced out, and thousands of people took to the streets crying "No to America, no to Saddam!" . As Shiite and Sunni Muslims prayed together for the first time since U.S. forces entered the city, the cleric, Ahmed al Kubeisy, used his sermon to attack what he called the U.S. occupation, telling the Americans, "you are the masters today, but I warn you against thinking of staying. Get out before we force you out." . Another cleric warned that "long queues of holy warriors" were lining up to fight the Americans. . Then the worshipers, joining a large crowd outside, marched peacefully, calling for unity among the country's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish populations. "Our revolution is Islamic," they chanted, in the biggest nationalist demonstration in many years. . A large banner said: "Leave our country. We want peace." . A U.S. patrol was surrounded by part of the crowd and one of the soldiers, fingering his rifle, told people to back off, "or I'm going to shoot you." . An elderly woman shouted back: "We have our pride." . The Iraqi police, who have only just returned to duty, escorted the nervous Americans away from the crowd.

http://www.iht.com/articles/93772.html

(157 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense