Talk:Ramadan Revolution

Title

This title is February 1963 because I believe there was another one later that year, again. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it took place Nov 18, 1963. Wrad (talk) 20:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Tabloid Encyclopedia?

the section on US involvement borders on comedy. Especially the part "Unofficial involvement, indeed...." Sorry but taking an actual fact, then sarcastically mocking it then implying the opposite was really true, is not what we do here.Batvette (talk) 03:12, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

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Were the U.S./U.K. really involved?

NB: I don't necessarily still agree with everything I wrote below, and, in any case, I hope that the relevant Wikipedia articles now address this controversy better than my tl;dr talk page musings.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:03, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Large parts of the text in this article (and every other article discussing the topic) are partly based on a thesis by an undergraduate student and blogger who promotes easily debunked conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination in his spare time, which caused me to reexamine the record. At first, I thought the Komer to Kennedy memo is not conclusive, as at least one former senior CIA official (Ed Kane) is on record stating that the coup was a complete surprise to the U.S. government and that Komer was likely talking out of his hat. In addition, the relevant portion of the Komer memo ("CIA had") was redacted; making assumptions regarding the redacted text would constitute original research in lieu of a reliable source. Some find the notion that either the U.S. or the U.K. would have supported the early rise of the Ba'ath Party implausible on its face, due to the Party's anti-Israel and anti-Western stance. However, reevaluating many of the now-declassified documents (and Little's American Orientalism pp. 198-206, which presents the best history of the coup from the U.S. perspective that I've seen in an academic text) presents a clearer picture, revealing that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. To be sure, the U.S. view of the Ba'ath Party had soured by the time of the July 1968 coup that brought the Party to total control in Iraq, due to the radical behavior of the Syrian Ba'athists. (See, for example, this July 17, 1968 memo, stating: "The intelligence community's initial reading is that the new group—apparently Baathists—will be more difficult than their predecessors, but at this point no one knows how radical they will be. So far, their communiques have taken a fairly moderate line by Iraqi standards, promising economic reforms, honest government, a 'wise' solution of the Kurdish problem, and Arab unity against the Zionist and Imperialist threats. On the other hand, if these people are Baathists, their tendencies will be towards moving Iraq even closer to Fatah, the Syrians and the Soviets." This alarm was tempered by July 22, 1968, as it had become clear that "The Syrians had nothing to do with the coup" and "non-Baathists are playing a major role in the new government.") However, there is abundant archival and anecdotal evidence that U.S. officials in the State Department and CIA had a much more naive and optimistic view of the Ba'ath Party in the early 1960s, due to the Party's staunch secularism and avowedly democratic goals. The problem is that the U.S. was hardly as actively involved in trying to undermine Qasim as some conspiracy theorists would have you believe; Little writes that "Eisenhower preferred a policy of 'watchful waiting' to afford Qasim 'the opportunity to stand up to the communists'" (c.f. "With reference to specific courses of action, the Committee felt that dramatic military or political action by the United States was not desirable, that the most effective restraint on Communism in Iraq is that exercised by the Arab peoples themselves, and that our best efforts could be along the lines of encouraging Qasim, particularly through third parties such as Afro-Asian representatives, to maintain an independent Iraq resistant to the Communist threat."), and this is borne out not only by the Eisenhower-era documents he cites, but also by archives from the Kennedy administration, which repeatedly rejected the requests of Kurdish rebels to arm their revolt against Qasim. In fact, "From the Iraqi revolution on July 14, 1958 until the new British arrangement with Kuwait on June 19, 1961 the U.S. followed a policy of patience, tolerance, and scrupulous nonintervention toward Iraq." In the course of the Church committee's investigation, which revealed that the CIA's "Health Alteration Committee" had plotted to "'incapacitate' an Iraqi Colonel subsequently identified as Qasim believed to be "promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq", the CIA stated that the handkerchief "was in fact never received (if, indeed, sent) ... (the colonel) suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad (an event we had nothing to do with) not very long after our handkerchief proposal was considered." Ultimately, however, while there is no evidence that the U.S. or U.K. actively instigated the coup (in fact, the timing of the coup was "triggered by Qasim's recent arrest of a large number of Bath Party members"), it appears historically accurate to say they had advance knowledge and subsequently offered some limited economic and military support to the new regime. In addition to the confirmation by CIA agents Chritchfield (who has, nevertheless, stated the U.S. did not "actively support" the Party against Qasim) and Rositzke, in recent years the Komer memo has been fully declassified (see both versions here).

I still believe the length of the section on U.S. involvement is undue; notwithstanding the revisionist hagiographies, Qasim lacked any popular support (as evidenced by the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—a huge chunk of Iraq's population at the time—fleeing his brutal and unpredictable regime) and his overthrow was largely an internal Iraqi affair (though it was welcomed by everyone from Nasser to the Shah to the Kuwaitis, all of whom were alarmed by Qasim's close ties to the Soviet Union and his threats to invade Kuwait). In particular, the original author of much of this content is prone to overstatement. Based on Google Books snippets, it seems that Rositzke was not claiming any credit for the coup, but discussing the inherent diplomatic awkwardness of "calling an upcoming coup", citing Iraq as an example of how "this sensitivity" has resulted in a situation where "almost any coup anywhere has been uniformly ascribed to the CIA or the State Department" (without reading the book, I assume that this selective quoting is the extent of the misrepresentation, which appears to be a valid assumption based on the snippets available). There is another questionable paragraph: "Qasim believed in the U.S. complicity in the plot and continually denounced the U.S. in public. The Department of State was worried that Qasim would harass American diplomats in Iraq because of this." Prior to being edited for NPOV, the first sentence read "Qasim was aware of the U.S. complicity in the plot", which is even more objectionable: The cited source (not linked for obvious reasons, but available here) does not prove that Qasim had any hard intelligence linking the U.S. to the coup plans or that his threats were not merely another case of him demagogically employing the U.S. as a scapegoat, as he did even when the U.S. was steadfastly refusing to assist his opponents. Whether or not the "believed" revision is enough to satisfy NPOV, the use of this source still seems to constitute original research (although it's nothing compared to the original author's claim elsewhere that the U.S. had advance knowledge of the Ba'athist plot to kill Qasim in 1959, based on a source that says nothing of the kind: "Reports of coup plots, including the assassination of Qassim, have increased in recent weeks, but no organization capable of bringing off a successful coup is known to exist ... There is considerable reason to believe, however, that troop commanders in the Baghdad area are loyal to Qassim and that many identified antiregime nationalist and pro-UAR officers have been purged or placed in positions of relative unimportance. Thus, if the nationalists, either alone or with UAR help, do attempt a coup at this time, we believe that its chances of success would be less than even. In the event of a coup attempt, and especially if Qassim were assassinated, serious civil strife is likely"). For the sake of historical understanding, I believe it is also important to note that while U.S. officials very much wanted to make the most of the "Iraqi opportunity" presented by Qasim's overthrow, the support provided by the Kennedy administration was limited by the understanding of long-term differences with the Iraqi Ba'athists such as "Iraqi bias against monarchies" and "Iraqi hostility toward Israel" as well as "The internal struggle between extremists and moderates of the Pan-Arab Socialist Baathist movement" (c.f. "A fundamental underlying all the foregoing is that while the new regime appears to be a vast improvement over Qasim, we cannot consider that it will be pro-American or that it will be free from internal pressures of an extremist nature. It remains to be seen how cohesive it remains, and how responsibly it acts"); despite repeated rumors in the Arab world that the Kennedy administration provided a list of Iraqi communists to be killed by the new regime, in contrast to similar allegations (e.g., Indonesia 1965) there is literally no evidence that this happened besides the fact that an anti-communist purge took place, making it more of a rumor than an historical fact. At the very least, the aforementioned thesis utterly demolishes the theory that William Lakeland (who was career State Department, not CIA) was the culprit.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:18, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

A detailed six-year study by Bryan R. Gibson based on hundreds of documents (including newly declassified records from the National Archives and the CIA's CREST system) and interviews with senior U.S. officials including a high-ranking CIA agent in the Middle East during the period 1958 to 1976 (and, for the relevant section on the Kurdish War, two Israeli Mossad officials) has painted a far clearer picture of these events than we ever possessed before, and seems to resolve many of the contradictions that plagued our previous understanding of U.S.-Iraq relations (including the deranged lie that Kissinger cynically sold out the Kurds). (I'd also recommend Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt's "The End of the Concessionary Regime", which is written from a very different point of view but is ultimately largely orthogonal to Gibson's thesis—and includes magesterial analysis of the Iraq Petroleum Company archives.) To wit:

• First of all, the Church Report's description of what has been called the CIA's plot to kill Qasim in February 1960 always seemed a bit, well, off. You will recall that CIA officials requested endorsement of a plan to "incapacitate" an "Iraqi Colonel believed to be promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq" with a technique "which, while not likely to result in total disablement, would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months", but under Congressional questioning CIA officials could "not now recall the name" of the colonel in question. That does not sound like an assassination attempt, and it is implausible that CIA officials would fail to remember an attack on the Iraqi head of state. Moreover, Qasim was not a colonel but a brigadier general, and he did not openly promote Soviet interests in Iraq. Logical deduction suggests the likely target for the handkerchief "treated with some kind of material for the purpose of harassing that person who received it" was not Qasim but the "outspokenly pro-communist" Colonel Fadhil 'Abbas al-Mahdawi who had been actively involved in suppressing anti-communist elements as head of Iraq's "People's Court". Far from being "a hard historical fact" that the CIA considered an unrealized plot to kill Qasim in 1960, this entire narrative is a blatant misrepresentation propagated solely by citogenesis and wishful thinking.

Extended content:

NB: Wolfe-Hunnicutt cites a "highly alarmist" analysis of "the reality of Communism in Iraq" drafted by Miles Copeland Jr. and James Eichelberger in February 1960. Gibson persuasively demonstrates (pp. 27-28) that the memo "stands in stark contrast to the prevailing views at the time, including those held by the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence community ... the Copeland-Eichelberger report stands out as a peculiar irregularity at a time when the situation in Iraq was in fact stabilizing." I'm tempted to say this is scrapping the bottom of the barrel—anyone who knows anything about Copeland could not be surprised that of course he was towing Nasser's line—but it is possible that an undercurrent of this sort of thinking influenced the CIA's plot to incapacitate Mahdawi around the same time. Note that Qasim had effectively outlawed the Iraqi Communist Party in January, causing Iraq's relations with Washington to warm considerably.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:59, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

• Gibson also uses a wide array of documents to debunk the already threadbare propaganda hoax that the U.S. was complicit in the 1959 assassination attempt on Qasim. In addition to the fact that Allen Dulles had expressed skepticism on October 2 over the "generally wrong" "rumors" predicting an assassination attempt on Qasim might be made "within the next two months" (the Ba'ath struck Qasim just five days later, on October 7) and U.S. intelligence was predicting a nationalist coup would likely fail, it is now clear that U.S. officials were supporting Qasim at the time out of the belief that there was no viable alternative and his overthrow might lead to civil war or a communist takeover. In addition, when Qasim was hospitalized, U.S. officials warned the friendly governments of Jordan and Iran against "taking military action" in Iraq to exploit Qasim's perceived weakness.

Extended content:

NB: Probably not worthy of mention, but while Wolfe-Hunnicutt agrees that the U.S. had absolutely nothing to do with the assassination attempt—"I am unaware of any evidence of covert relations between the CIA and the Ba'th prior to October 7"—he cannot resist making the claim that "American officials were well aware that nationalist forces were planning an assassination attempt, and ... made no effort to warn Qasim." But wait—as noted above, the U.S. intelligence community repeatedly stated in the days leading up to the attack that "no organization capable of bringing off a successful coup is known to exist." How were they supposed to "warn Qasim" when they had nothing to go on except intuition and rumors?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 08:08, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

• As mentioned above, in contrast to those who claim the CIA instigated the revolt, the Kennedy administration repeatedly rejected Kurdish requests for arms in their fight against Qasim. Gibson demonstrates that, per the Soviet archives, the outbreak of the Kurdish War in 1961 was actually part of a Soviet plan.

In sum, despite closely monitoring the situation, the Eisenhower administration ultimately pursued a policy of non-intervention in Iraq, which appeared to have been successful by the time Eisenhower left office. The Kennedy administration effectively ignored Iraq until a series of crises in 1961 (the Kuwait crisis, the outbreak of the Kurdish War, and the expropriation of 99.5% of the Iraq Petroleum Company's concessionary holdings) caused it to change course, adopting a dual strategy of diplomatic engagement and covert action (with an emphasis on the former as the CIA had relatively few assets in Iraq). With regard to the CIA's efforts at "regime change" in Iraq during the Kennedy administration, the memoir of Jack O'Connell (CIA station chief in Amman from 1963 to 1971), declassified CIA records, and especially interviews with a former CIA official with first-hand knowledge of the events reveals the following:

• By at least 1961, the CIA had penetrated the Iraqi wing of the Ba'ath Party with at least one high-level informant who kept the Agency aware of the Party's plans.
• Kennedy ordered the CIA to begin planning Qasim's overthrow in the spring of 1962. We can now confirm that Archie Roosevelt, Jr. was tasked with leading the operation.
• While the CIA was interested in the Ba'ath Party, the Iraqi military was its primary focus.

The claim that the CIA actively supported or "masterminded" the Ba'athist coup is, as we have seen, dubious (and denied by every CIA agent who has ever gone on record to discuss the topic). Gibson challenges the notion that the U.S. even had advance knowledge of the coup, citing declassified documents that show a measure of uncertainty over which of the many factions known to be plotting against Qasim was responsible (e.g., "Information presently available has not confirmed that Qasim is actually dead. A National Council was established consisting of six officers, one colonel, two captains and three lieutenants. Some members of this council have been identified as being members of the Bath Party. Most military units have reported in or officers from the military units have sent messages reporting their loyalty to the coup ... The coup appears to be in the hands of the Bath Party. Rumors have been widespread that that party had been planning a coup for several months. It is believed by members of CIA that the coup was triggered by Qasim's recent arrest of a large number of Bath Party members."), despite the fact that many have used the Komer memo to portray this as axiomatic. In my view, the strongest evidence in support of Gibson's thesis is a declassified CIA document from July 1962, "Cancellation of Coup Plan by Ba'th Party of Iraq". According to Gibson:

• "In mid-July 1962, the CIA's source in the Ba'th reported a coup was scheduled for the next day, but was cancelled at the last moment. Three days later, Roger Davies, the American Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad, met with British Ambassador Sir Roger Allen to discuss the situation. Like the CIA, the British had cultivated sources within the Ba'th, since Sir Roger revealed specific details of the aborted coup, stating anti-Qasim officers had planned to assassinate Qasim during his recent trip to Karbala and seize Baghdad with armoured and air units, though he did not explain why it had been called off."

In trying to reconcile these competing narratives, let's reexamine Chritchfeld's Frontline interview: "In 1961 and 1962, we increased our interest in the Ba'ath—not to actively support it—but politically and intellectually, we found the Ba'ath interesting. We found it particularly active in Iraq. Our analysis of the Ba'ath was that it was comparatively moderate at that time, and that the United States could easily adjust to and support its policies. So we watched the Ba'ath's long, slow preparation to take control. They planned to do it several times, and postponed it." While I have not seen the original source, in a 2003 AP interview Chritchfeld reportedly expanded on his earlier comments, stating: "We knew perhaps six months beforehand that it was going to happen." Based on the evidence, I am inclined to agree that while the CIA had clearly been informed of the July 1962 aborted coup and was well aware of the preparations the Ba'ath Party was making, the exact timing of the successful February 8 coup was in all probability a surprise to the U.S. government, as it was dictated by two key internal factors over which the U.S. had no control and which forced the Ba'ath Party to act sooner than it had planned: 1). The secret talks that led the Kurds to support the Ba'ath Party against Qasim in January 1963, and 2). Qasim's subsequent arrest of a large number of Ba'ath Party members, which convinced those still at large that "if they were ever going to attempt such a coup it would have to be done now." This would explain why Ed Kane claims to have been blindsided by Qasim's overthrow, yet Komer says "CIA had excellent reports on the plotting." Either way, a former CIA official stationed in Iran who was working with Roosevelt "denied the CIA was behind the Ba'thist coup, explaining instead that his plan to overthrow Qasim had not yet been finalized when the Ba'th Party seized power": "I was still engaged in contacting people who could play a role in a coup attempt against [him and whatever] progress we had made went for naught when Qassem was assassinated."

Important extra detail:
NB: According to Wolfe-Hunnicutt, the U.S. embassy was also informed of an aborted Ba'thist coup in December 1962, which Gibson seems to have overlooked, presumably due to his focus on the CIA. Regardless, Wolfe-Hunnicutt's account only provides further corroboration that the U.S. does not seem to have been alerted in February 1963.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:26, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

• As for the most notorious allegation, that the CIA provided the new Ba'athist regime with lists of communists to round up and in many cases kill, it is important to consider the source: King Hussein of Jordan (who added the disclaimer "Some of those who now rule in Baghdad do not know of this thing but I am aware of the truth"), quoted in Al-Ahram, 27 September 1963, as cited by Hanna Batatu in The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. Contrary to the many sources that have misrepresented Batatu as supporting King Hussein's allegation, he actually reaches the opposite conclusion: "It is not clear what prompted Husain to say these things. He had, of course, never been a friend of the Ba'ath party. But his observations should be read in the light of the recent revelation that he has been since 1957 in the pay of the C.I.A. It is perhaps pertinent to add that a member of the 1963 Iraqi Ba'ath Command, who asked anonymity, asserted in a conversation with this writer that the Yugoslav embassy in Beirut had warned certain Ba'athi leaders that some Iraqi Ba'athists were maintaining surreptitious contacts with representatives of American power. The majority of the command in Iraq was, it would appear, unaware of what was said to have gone on. Be that as it may, it is necessary, in the interest of truth, to bring out that, insofar as the names and addresses of Communists are concerned, the Ba'athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years—1957-1958—when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels." Per Gibson: "The existence of these lists is supported by documents, but the evidence supports Batatu's conclusion that the Ba'th had created them on their own. For instance, an INR analysis from February 15 stated '[Communist] party members [are being] rounded up on the basis of lists prepared by the now-dominant Ba'th Party.' A separate INR analysis from February 21 pointed out that during the 1958-59 period, the communists had 'exposed virtually all its assets' whom the Ba'th had 'carefully spotted and listed.'"

Extended content:

NB: Wolfe-Hunnicutt notes that Lakeland had compiled a "Who's who" list of 129 supposed Iraqi communists from Iraqi news media in April 1962, commenting "While it is unlikely that the Ba'th required CIA assistance in identifying its enemies ... it's not unreasonable to suspect that that list—or ones like it—would have been shared with the Ba'th."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:26, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Once I get a copy of Gibson's Sold Out?, I will be in a better position to correct some of these glaring inaccuracies that Wikipedia has, unfortunately, been promoting for a very long time.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:33, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

That's an excellent debunking, that deserves an article of its own. If there was a Wiki version of Politifact, this would surely qualify. However as secondary as the US-role was, it's not fair to say that it was zero. Regarding the specific involvement of the CIA, you do note that "Kennedy ordered the CIA to begin planning Qasim's overthrow in the spring of 1962. We can now confirm that Archie Roosevelt, Jr. was tasked with leading the operation." The Kennedy administration's (and it seems Britain's) main objective was to replace Qassim, not necessarily to put the Baathists in charge. The plotters probably understood that much, and assumed - correctly - that their new regime could count on unambiguous US support after they got "firmly into the saddle". Such an understanding certainly facilitated the coup. Naturally, the fact that the US did have such an objective (and acted upon it) does NOT imply that it organized actual coup in 1964. Gucci@81.88.116.27 (talk) 14:46, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

More indication of the complicated relationship between Washington and Qasim here; More on the assassination attempt of 1959 here, same source. No mention of the imagined US-link. -Gucci-81.88.116.27. (talk) 15:44, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

So, I was reading through bits of William Blum's Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower—purely for the laughs, I assure you—and the section on Iraq under Qasim is unusually unreliable, even for Blum, as he manages to be wrong with just about every factual assertion he makes. (Addendum: The original 1995 version of Killing Hope is slightly more palatable on this subject.) But I did find one bit slightly intriguing, and, while it doesn't change any of my analysis above, I thought I'd share it here. According to Blum: "Papers of the British cabinet of 1963, later declassified, disclose that the coup had been backed by the British and the CIA." Given that I've looked at this entirely from the perspective of the American archives, I was naturally curious to see if British records give a significantly different account, possibly pointing towards more substantial Western involvement, and I think I've found what Blum was talking about. Reproduced below is the text of a January 1, 1994 Guardian article by Seamus Milne, "Cabinet Papers 1963: Iraq: Ministers Eager to Sell Arms to New Rulers After Bloody Coup":

EVIDENCE of the British government's strong support for the first Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party is revealed in the enthusiasm with which Macmillan's cabinet secretly agreed to arm the new Baghdad regime, writes Seumas Milne.

The Ba'athist overthrow of General Kassem in February, 1963, in a bloody anti-communist coup backed by the CIA, was accompanied by the killing of about 5,000 communists and supporters of the dead leader.

Less than two months later Edward Heath - then Lord Privy Seal - gave a sympathetic report to cabinet on an Iraqi request for military aircraft and armoured personnel carriers.

"If these inquiries reflected a disposition on the part of the new government of Iraq to reduce their dependence on the Soviet Union, we should seek to take advantage of it," the future prime minister said.

The only worry was that British equipment might be used to attack Kuwait, but the government pressed ahead with the arms supplies anyway.

By June, there was some ministerial nervousness at the "ruthless methods" being used by the Baghdad regime against the Kurds.

Lord Home, then foreign secretary, warned that the government might be criticised if British weapons were used to repress the Kurdish community. The cabinet slowed the flow, but in September military supplies were again sharply stepped up.

They included 16 Wessex helicopters, 20 training aircraft, small arms, mortars, ammunition, Saracen carriers and 3,000 rockets. "These arms are wanted urgently by the Iraqis for operations against the Kurds ... our interest lies in a gradual supply of arms to meet Iraqi requirements," one minute to Macmillan reads.

"I agree," the prime minister has scribbled across the bottom, asking that the matter be "pushed forward energetically".

Duncan Sandys, the colonial secretary, reported to cabinet in May that the Iraqi government had "found it necessary to imprison a number of supporters of President Nasser and to execute certain adherents of the previous president." He said the agreement to supply military equipment would increase British influence in Iraq.

While an interesting find, it is worth noting that the cabinet papers do not seem to suggest any British (or American) participation in the coup itself; the only mention of the CIA comes from Milne.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:43, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Might be worthwhile to mention that here. I suppose that, according to one formulation, "support" for a coup involves not just direct operational support, but something a little broader. It may include things like agreement that the coup was desirable (like "I support marriage equality") and subsequent material support immediately after the coup's success. With notable exceptions, these things are arguably far more important covert logistical support. The whole point of a coup is that it is done mainly by domestic forces. Anything else is an invasion. Of course the word "support" itself should probably be used only for cases of direct pre-coup support to avoid confusion. But it does not mean that the role of outside powers stops there.

Since I know little about this topic (and don't intend to study it), I'll leave the rest to you.Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:57, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

• Final point: The main Iraq–United States relations page includes a highly salient detail from Sold Out? not mentioned at all in Gibson's thesis—and which I almost overlooked:

On February 5, 1963 Secretary of State Dean Rusk informed the U.S. embassy in Iraq that the State Department was "considering carefully whether on balance U.S. interests would be served [at] this particular juncture by abandoning [its] policy of avoiding public reaction to Qasim's charges [regarding the Kurds]," with the reluctance stemming from the desire to avoid compromising the CIA's "significant intelligence collecting operations": On February 7, State Department executive secretary William Brubeck informed [McGeorge] Bundy that Iraq had become "one of the more useful spots for acquiring technical information on Soviet military and industrial equipment and on Soviet methods of operation in nonaligned areas." The CIA had earlier penetrated a top-secret Iraqi-Soviet surface-to-air missile project. With access to crucial intelligence hanging in the balance, U.S. officials were showing "great reluctance about aggravating Qasim."

• On the one hand, U.S. officials were keeping all options open with regard to Iraq right up until the day before Qasim was overthrown: Avoiding any support for Kurdish rebels because they knew (as did the Soviets!) that the rebellion was only driving Iraq further into the arms of Moscow, drawing up contingency plans for a coup but also continuing attempts at diplomatic outreach, and focusing more on the communist/Soviet presence in Iraq than on Qasim personally. On the other: Well, it's not hard to see how the conspiracy-minded could take the February 5 memo in complete isolation from any other declassified documents and leap to the conclusion that Rusk's reference to "intelligence collecting operations" was merely a euphemism for the impending coup—as many did!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:06, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Contrasting American and British perceptions of the Ba'th

In his aforementioned thesis, Wolfe-Hunnicutt paints a portrait of a U.K. that was much more bearish about the Ba'th than the U.S.: "For some ... the fall of the Ba'th [in November] demonstrated the flaws in the larger U.S. strategy of reaching a limited accommodation with the forces of pan‐Arab nationalism, whether of the Nasserist, or Ba'thist variety ... The British Ambassador to Iraq Sir Roger Allen fell into this category ... In a meeting between [U.S. ambassador Robert] Strong and Allen, the British Ambassador ... appeared 'rather pleased ... The Ba'th is dead' and adopted a kind of 'I told you so' attitude ... In this document British officials are described as 'gleeful' over the Ba'th's problems." If that is true, one might ask why these perceptions were reversed after the Ba'th regained power in 1968. Compare these two radically different analyses of the second Ba'th regime: "(Saddam) struck me as a much more 'serious' character than other Ba'thist leaders; and his engaging smile, when he deployed it, seemed part and parcel of his absorption with the subject at hand and not, as with so many of the others, a matter of superficial affability. I should judge him, young as he is, to be a formidable, single-minded and hard-headed member of the Ba'thist hierarchy, but one with whom, if only one could see more of him, it would be possible to do business" (British); "The level of political violence is very high ... The Ba'thist regime has used violence systematically since its 1968 coup, and Saddam al-Tikriti, who now poses as the 'good guy' of the regime, has been the pre-eminent practitioner ... This is not a happy situation nor a happy government for the U.S. to try to do business with" (American). One possible explanation is that the U.K. had previously supported Qasim (and his "Iraq first" policy) as an alternative to its arch-rival Nasser (even informing Qasim of Nasser's plan to overthrow him in December 1958, which led to blowback during the Kuwait crisis), and therefore was not as enthusiastic about his overthrow at the hands of a pan-Arab party. After the split between the Iraqi Ba'thists and the Nasserists led by President Arif, the U.K. sought to undermine Arif (principally by arming Kurdish rebels rather than through overt collaboration with the Ba'th) and welcomed his July 1968 overthrow. Conversely, the primary U.S. foreign policy concern was the Cold War, so the U.S. was willing to tolerate both the horrific excesses of the first Ba'th regime and Nasser's influence as long as Iraq maintained an anti-communist domestic policy, but was alarmed by the second Ba'th regime's close relationship with Moscow. In this analysis, then, both American and British observers—consciously or otherwise—allowed the national interest to color their perception of various Iraqi regimes. I'm not sure I believe that, but hey, it's food for thought. Another, far simpler, explanation is that diplomats very often end up displaying marked sympathy towards their interlocutors (the U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Iraq during most of the second Ba'th regime).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:12, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

BTW: If you don't have the time to read either thesis under discussion, Wolfe-Hunnicutt also suggests that—despite their contacts with the Ba'th, documented above—the British were cultivating assets in Jordan for the purpose of restoring the monarchy. Although the events of 1958 would tend to indicate such an endeavor was doomed from the start, this disclosure provides further confirmation that neither the U.S. nor the U.K. actively worked to install the Ba'th to power in Iraq, despite the obvious pleasure they took in Qasim's downfall. Given that both the U.S. and the U.K.—not to mention Archie Roosevelt, Jr. himself—had been actively attempting to overthrow the Ba'th-dominated government in Syria just a few years earlier (during the "Syria Crisis" of 1956–57), assertions to the contrary always seemed open to question—but could not be dismissed out of hand, because the events in Syria also proved that the Ba'th was more nationalist than Communist, despite its willingness to seek close relations with the USSR. (It was disagreements between Communists and Ba'thists in Syria's Leftist coalition, and finally the union with Egypt, that drove the Syrian Communist Party underground—not any of the rather comically ineffective Western meddling). (And as everyone knows, of the two nations unfortunate enough to have experienced the ideology of Ba'thism in practice, Moscow was always more closely aligned with Syria than it was with Iraq.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:41, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Arabic Wikipedia

It was interesting to confirm that the Arabic Wikipedia treats the events of February 8, 1963 as a completely internal Iraqi affair. The only place I could find where the allegations of American involvement are even alluded to is al-Sa'di's biography (via Google Translate): "There were some rumors about his statement by saying (we came to power train US in 1963), but his son has denied that his father told any of these statements, and it's fabrications of his opponents communists." (This is an allusion to the "CIA train" quote repeated uncritically by Weiner et al., which I have long suspected may well be apocryphal or a smear propagated by the Ba'th's opponents—including Nasser, who sought to imply the Ba'thists were not true socialists by publishing the Al-Ahram interview with King Hussein. After all, it would have been suicidal for any Arab nationalist to openly admit to collaborating with the mad dogs of imperialism, even if it were true.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:20, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

CIA officer Harry Rositzke's full account of the CIA's penetration of the Ba'th Party prior to February 1963

I had a lingering feeling that the sources discussed above tended to quote Rositzke selectively depending on their point of view, so when I realized that I could get Rositzke's The CIA's Secret Operations from Amazon for less than $5 including shipping, I jumped at the chance. I now know that—while Rositzke has been quoted selectively—all of the salient bits were excerpted elsewhere. (The rest of the book is still worth the $5.) The full passage on Iraq is as follows:

Extended content:

An ironic aspect of Washington's continuing concern with coups is that in almost all cases the American government cannot or will not take any action on the basis of coup reports. There have been hundreds of coups in the past thirty years, many of the most marginal concern to the American interest, and yet the intelligence agencies compete to report them first. The simple fact appears to be that no American President likes to be surprised by any dramatic event anywhere even though he can do no more than watch it happen. ... Iraq is the title holder for frequency of coups per decade, and illustrates the difficulty of predicting such actions. The coup of July 14, 1958, that ended the monarchy in Iraq was no great surprise to Washington, though its precise timing was not forecast by anyone. Rumors of army plotting had been circulating for months in Baghdad. A week before the coup agents reported: "Things are really moving now." Neither CIA agents nor the Iraqi plotters could tell when the coup would take place, for the timing depended on a fluke. Two brigades of Iraqi troops under the command of one of the army plotters were ordered to move from one part of the country to another via Baghdad. Through an oversight the normal order to remove their ammunition during transit was not given by the king, and once in the capital the troops seized the palace and vital installations. Since not even the brigades' commanding officer knew the preceding afternoon that he would carry out the coup the next day, no agent could have reported it before midnight. There are instances, however, when precise prediction is possible. A later coup in Iraq, the result of long-term plotting by the radical Ba'th Party, was forecast in exact detail by CIA agents. Agents in the Ba'th Party headquarters in Baghdad had for years kept Washington au courant on the party's personnel and organization, its secret communications and sources of funds, and its penetrations of military and civilian hierarchies in several countries. The Ba'th plan was to take over Iraq as a base, then Syria, and finally the western bastion in Jordan, giving the Ba'thists control of the Fertile Crescent. CIA sources were in a perfect position to follow each step of Ba'th preparations for the Iraqi coup, which focused on making contacts with military and civilian leaders in Baghdad. The CIA's major source, in an ideal catbird seat, reported the exact time of the coup and provided a list of the new cabinet members. CIA reporting on the Iraqi coups illustrates the diplomatic-intelligence bind that underlies all coup reporting. To call an upcoming coup requires the CIA to have sources within the group of plotters. Yet, from a diplomatic point of view, having secret contacts with plotters implies at least unofficial American complicity in the plot. This sensitivity has increased over the years as almost any coup anywhere has been uniformly ascribed to the CIA or the State Department. The bind on intelligence operators is a tight one: The ambassador normally wants to know who is plotting what, and when the plot will come off, but he does not want the CIA station to be in touch with the plotters for fear of diplomatic involvement. In many cases, therefore, the choice is between involvement and ignorance. One cannot read a conspiracy from a distance.—Harry Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations, Reader's Digest Press, 1977, pp. 108-110.

Rositzke later expounds on the moral issues involved, albeit not specifically in relation to Iraq:

Extended content:

A third level of complicity is more tenuous: inaction in Washington when it learns of a planned coup or assassination attempt through its intelligence channels. What responsibility does the U.S. government have to warn foreign leaders of planned attempts against their regimes or lives? Hundreds of coup attempts and dozens of assassination plans have been reported by CIA agents over the years. These reports have all been passed to the Department of State or the White House, among others, for such action as they might wish to take. In dozens of cases, when the reports appeared reliable, they were passed to friendly governments as a warning of hostile action. Similar reports about actions planned against "unfriendly" governments are not normally passed to them. The judgement in each case is a pragmatic one: What serves the U.S. interest? A policy of selective inaction is difficult to place on a moral spectrum.—Harry Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations, Reader's Digest Press, 1977, pp. 202-203

Since 2003, Rositzke's book has been cited as "evidence" that the first Iraqi Ba'thist coup was in reality a CIA operation along the lines of Iran and Guatemala, but it's hard to see how any fair reading could sustain such an interpretation, and it does not seem it was taken that way by any readers back in 1977. Obviously the CIA was not rooting for a successful "radical Ba'th Party" coup in Jordan, even if it was keeping tabs on the Party's activities there, too. Then again, the U.S. would surely have shared any actionable intelligence with King Hussein—as it did not with Qasim. There is no publicly available record to substantiate Rositzke's claim that the CIA was told "the exact time of the coup," but Rositzke's long history with the Agency lends it significant credence. (Even if the CIA and the State Department had "only" been informed of the aborted coups of July and December 1962—with the CIA cultivating assets within the Ba'th from 1961 on—Ed Kane's insistence that the U.S. was "blindsided" is clearly much more misleading than Komer's contemporary declaration that "CIA had excellent reports on the plotting.") The accuracy of the CIA's testimony that the Ramadan Revolution was "an event we had nothing to do with" therefore depends on how you parse it.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 15:40, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

"Alleged" in the infobox

I appreciate Skornezy fleshing out this article (and other articles related to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East) with generally high-quality academic sources, where contentious claims were at one point attributed to much lower-quality sources. However, his latest edit is a misleading WP:CITEBOMB, and a poorly-formatted one at that (with duplicate sfn targets). I could just as easily create my own WP:CITEBOMB and use it to present the opposite viewpoint as an academic consensus, to wit:

• Barrett, Roby C. (2007). The Greater Middle East and the Cold War: US Foreign Policy Under Eisenhower and Kennedy. I.B. Tauris. p. 451. ISBN 9780857713087. Washington wanted to see Qasim and his Communist supporters removed, but that is a far cry from Batatu's inference that the U.S. had somehow engineered the coup. The U.S. lacked the operational capability to organize and carry out the coup, but certainly after it had occurred the U.S. government preferred the Nasserists and Ba'athists in power, and provided encouragement and probably some peripheral assistance.
• Hahn, Peter (2011). Missions Accomplished?: The United States and Iraq Since World War I. Oxford University Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780195333381. Declassified U.S. government documents offer no evidence to support [Batatu's] suggestions.
• Gibson, Bryan R. (2015). Sold Out? US Foreign Policy, Iraq, the Kurds, and the Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. xvii, 58, 200. ISBN 978-1-137-48711-7. However, a careful examination of a wide range of documents and interviews raises important questions about the veracity of these claims as to whether the CIA was behind the 1963 Ba'thist coup. ... In sum, barring the release of new information, the preponderance of evidence substantiates the conclusion that the CIA was not behind the February 1963 Ba'thist coup. (Salim Yaqub cites Gibson as "the most detailed and comprehensive study to date of U.S.–Iraqi relations from the late 1950s to the 1970s".)
• West, Nigel (2017). Encyclopedia of Political Assassinations. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 205. ISBN 9781538102398. Although Qasim was regarded as an adversary by the West, having nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company, which had joint Anglo-American ownership, no plans had been made to depose him, principally because of the absence of a plausible successor. Nevertheless, the CIA pursued other schemes to prevent Iraq from coming under Soviet influence, and one such target was an unidentified colonel, thought to have been Qasim's cousin, the notorious Fadhil Abbas al-Mahdawi who was appointed military prosecutor to try members of the previous Hashemite monarchy.
• Citino, Nathan J. (2017). "The People's Court". Envisioning the Arab Future: Modernization in US-Arab Relations, 1945–1967. Cambridge University Press. p. 222. ISBN 9781108107556. Although the United States did not initiate the 14 Ramadan coup, at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed. (emphasis added)

Interestingly, in this edit Skornezy cites the very same Citino 2017 as being "unequivocal" about U.S. support for/involvement in the coup, whereas in my reading Citino 2017 seems to largely agree with Gibson 2015. Citino's quote stating that "Washington backed the movement by military officers linked to the pan-Arab Ba'th Party that overthrew Qasim in a coup on February 8, 1963" appears before his later statement clarifying that "Although the United States did not initiate the 14 Ramadan coup, at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed"; the latter statement adds context to the earlier one, not the other way around. Even Wolfe-Hunnicutt, in 2011 at least, was ultimately agnostic on the question of whether U.S. support was "material or simply moral," though he was adamant that it "was significant to the ultimate historical outcome" in either case (pp. 88-89). Finally, if Skornezy himself feels comfortable echoing Wolfe-Hunnicutt's language about "suspected" U.S. involvement, why is "alleged" a bridge too far?

Based on this edit summary, Skornezy is contending that because U.S. material support to the new government after the coup, helping it to consolidate power and eliminate domestic opponents, is not disputed, the "allegation" label is hence inapplicable. However, the infobox for an article like this (i.e., an article discussing a coup, rebellion, or war) is usually limited to the event itself, not the aftermath. (See the "Date: 8–10 February 1963" at the very top of the infobox, for example.) In fact, it's rather confusing to readers to conflate Citino 2017 with (say) Jacobsen 2013, when the latter contains an allegation about the U.S. having participated in the planning of the coup, which Citino does not state. That's why the article body is there to explore nuance/interpretation, whereas infoboxes generally list basic, uncontested facts. Considering that the "U.S. involvement" section is the largest part of the article, listing the U.S. in the infobox but with a note stating that the role of the U.S. is "alleged," and (wiki-)linking to the appropriate section where this idea is sourced/examined in greater detail, seems like the only reasonable compromise at this time. In any case, further WP:BOLD reverts without consensus could be seen as violating Wikipedia's collegial editing environment.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 14:35, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello @TheTimesAreAChanging, and thanks for starting this discussion.

The sources you cite dispute direct CIA involvement in the coup itself, but they don't address the question of whether there were supportive contacts between the U.S. and the Ba'athists. The assertion of direct CIA involvement is disputed, but the contacts between the Ba'athists and the USG don't seem to be by the sources you have listed.

Interestingly, in this edit Skornezy cites the very same Citino 2017 as being "unequivocal" about U.S. support for/involvement in the coup, whereas in my reading Citino 2017 seems to largely agree with Gibson 2015. Citino's quote stating that "Washington backed the movement by military officers linked to the pan-Arab Ba'th Party that overthrew Qasim in a coup on February 8, 1963" appears before his later statement clarifying that "Although the United States did not initiate the 14 Ramadan coup, at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed"; the latter statement adds context to the earlier one, not the other way around.

There is an important level of nuance that you're missing here; supporting a coup and initiating one are two different things. None of the sources cited in the infobox state that the U.S. government (USG) initiated the Ba'athist coup, however they do state that they supported it, thus they do not contradict Citino 2017. (e.g. Wolfe-Hunnicutt: I do not go so far as to claim that the CIA initiated the coup, I do examine available documentary evidence to argue that the CIA very likely collaborated with the Baʿth in the run up to the coup, and that the Kennedy administration enthusiastically embraced the regime that emerged out of that coup—despite (or because of) that emergent regime’s brutality directed against suspected Communists.). There is no contradiction between Citino and the other sources on the basic point of USG support.

Citino and Gibson definitely do not agree with one another. Gibson completely dismisses USG support/involvement entirely, whereas Citino states that the USG backed the Ba'athists, but that the exact extent of this backing remains unknown (likely due to the USG's continued classification of the pertinent documents). That's hardly an agreement!

Finally, if Skornezy himself feels comfortable echoing Wolfe-Hunnicutt's language about "suspected" U.S. involvement, why is "alleged" a bridge too far?

Again, nuance is important here; the "suspicions" are regarding direct U.S. involvement in the coup, however supportive contacts between the Ba'athists and USG have been substantiated. "Alleged" implies that there is no proof for these contacts having occurred, when in fact as Matthews 2011 points out:

Matthews, Weldon C. (9 November 2011). "The Kennedy Administration, Counterinsurgency, and Iraq's First Ba'thist Regime". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 43 (4): 635–653. doi:10.1017/S0020743811000882. ISSN 0020-7438.

[Kennedy] Administration officials viewed the Iraqi Ba'th Party in 1963 as an agent of counterinsurgency directed against Iraqi communists, and they cultivated supportive relationships with Ba'thist officials, police commanders, and members of the Ba'th Party militia. The American relationship with militia members and senior police commanders had begun even before the February coup, and Ba'thist police commanders involved in the coup had been trained in the United States.

Based on this edit summary, Skornezy is contending that because U.S. material support to the new government after the coup, helping it to consolidate power and eliminate domestic opponents, is not disputed, the "allegation" label is hence inapplicable. However, the infobox for an article like this (i.e., an article discussing a coup, rebellion, or war) is usually limited to the event itself, not the aftermath. (See the "Date: 8–10 February 1963" at the very top of the infobox, for example.)

This may or may not be an error on my part, but I was using the infobox in 1952 Egyptian Revolution as precedent, specifically the source cited for United States support which states:

Wilford, Hugh (2013). America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Basic Books. pp. 135–139. ISBN 9780465019656.

... whether or not the CIA dealt directly with the Free Officers prior to their July 1952 coup, there was extensive secret American-Egyptian contact in the months after the revolution.

Regardless, this point is moot as it's documented that supportive contacts existed between the U.S. and the Ba'athists before the coup.

In fact, it's rather confusing to readers to conflate Citino 2017 with (say) Jacobsen 2013, when the latter contains an allegation about the U.S. having participated in the planning of the coup, which Citino does not state. That's why the article body is there to explore nuance/interpretation, whereas infoboxes generally list basic, uncontested facts.

Fair to say, although Citino and Jacobsen both agree and do not contradict on the general point of USG support as you mistakenly assert. For the record Jacobsen does not that state that the U.S. initiated the coup either (none of the scholars I have cited do).

Considering that the "U.S. involvement" section is the largest part of the article, listing the U.S. in the infobox but with a note stating that the role of the U.S. is "alleged," and (wiki-)linking to the appropriate section where this idea is sourced/examined in greater detail, seems like the only reasonable compromise at this time. In any case, further WP:BOLD reverts without consensus could be seen as violating Wikipedia's collegial editing environment.

Except this is partly misleading as it gives the impression that U.S. supportive contacts with the Ba'ath are merely alleged (without proof), when in fact they objectively occurred. What is up for debate is the extent of U.S. direct involvement in the coup, not the that there were contacts. Therefore, I propose removing the "alleged" tag, adding a citation that wiki-links to the "U.S. involvement" section of the page, and citing Matthews 2011 with the above quote regarding the objectively true supportive contacts that occurred between the Ba'ath Party and the USG. This seems entirely fair to me. Skornezy (talk) 20:09, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi again, @TheTimesAreAChanging.

You can go ahead and just ignore my previous response to you, I have slightly modified the infobox to preserve the "alleged" tag, whilst still including Matthews 2011 about the objective contacts between the USG and the Ba'athists prior to the coup. I hope you are satisfied with the infobox as of now as I am, if you have any concerns or objections feel free to let me know.

Thanks.

Skornezy (talk) 16:27, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I removed the alleged tag because no source disputes that the US "cultivated supportive relationships" with the Ba'ath (Matthews 2011) "before, during, and after" coup (Wolfe-Hunnicutt 2014). The disputes are regarding whether the US directly helped organize and orchestrate the coup, which is different than supporting a group that eventually independently carry out a coup and overthrow the government. Skornezy (talk) 05:08, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

How did this fit into the Arab Cold war?

Which side did Saudi Arabia support? 2A00:23C7:5882:8201:60D4:D325:461C:B512 (talk) 22:41, 13 February 2024 (UTC)