The Deep State Under JFK in 1963

On the eve of the Iraq War … a reminder of earlier fateful decisions by the U.S. Government. The Kennedy administration continued the assassination projects of the CIA under Allen Dulles. History teaches us the lessons of today and the renewed attempt by the United States along with Israel to establish supremacy in the region. Tools used are assassinations, propaganda and bloodbaths. See biography of PM Abd al-Karim Qasim, deposed Iraqi leader by CIA under President Kennedy in 1963.

○ A New Biography Traces the Pathology of Allen Dulles and His Appalling Cabal | The Intercept |

A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making | NYT Opinion – March 13, 2003 |

Washington’s role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America’s anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem’s harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington’s Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt — much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s against the common foe of Iran. By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel’s arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country’s old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East — all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form — Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.

More below the fold …

In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies — chiefly France and Germany — resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshaled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.’s ”Health Alteration Committee,” as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. ”Almost certainly a gain for our side,” Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

○ CIA Lists Provide Basis for Iraqi Bloodbath by Hanna Batatu

Abd al-Karim Qasim | Wikipedia |

FOREIGN POLICY

Qasim soon withdrew Iraq from the pro-Western Baghdad Pact and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union. Iraq also abolished its treaty of mutual security and bilateral relations with the UK. Also, Iraq withdrew from the agreement with the United States that was signed by the monarchy during 1954 and 1955 regarding military, arms, and equipment. On 30 May 1959, the last of the British soldiers and military officers departed the al-Habbāniyya base in Iraq.[citation needed]

Qasim supported the Algerian and Palestinian struggles against France and Israel.[citation needed]

However, he further undermined his rapidly deteriorating position with a series of foreign policy blunders. In 1959 Qasim antagonized Iran with a series of territory disputes, most notably over the Khuzestan region of Iran, which was home to an Arabic-speaking minority,[25] and the division of the Shatt al-Arab waterway between south eastern Iraq and western Iran.[26] On 18 December 1959, Abd al-Karim Qasim declared:

“We do not wish to refer to the history of Arab tribes residing in Al-Ahwaz and Mohammareh [Khurramshahr]. The Ottomans handed over Muhammareh, which was part of Iraqi territory, to Iran.”[27]

…

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Qasim attempted to bring about greater equality for women in Iraq. In December 1959 he promulgated a significant revision of the personal status code, particularly that regulating family relations. Polygamy was outlawed, and minimum ages for marriage were also set out, with 18 being the minimum age (except for special dispensation when it could be lowered by the court to 16). Women were also protected from arbitrary divorce. The most revolutionary reform was a provision in article 74 giving women equal rights in matters of inheritance. The laws applied to Sunni and Shi’a alike. The laws encountered much opposition and did not survive Qasim’s government.

○ Undeniable Blowback from Decades US Foreign Policy – 1996
○ CENTO: Cold War Boundaries In Caspian Sea Region

Author: Oui

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2 thoughts on “The Deep State Under JFK in 1963”

  1. Sometimes Wikipedia is a poor source for historical context when I linked through to Declaration by “United Nations”.

    The United States and the Founding of the United Nations, August 1941 – October 1945

    The impetus to establish the United Nations stemmed in large part from the inability of its predecessor, the League of Nations, to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War.  Despite Germany’s occupation of a number of European states, and the League’s failure to stop other serious international transgressions in the 1930s, such as Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, many international leaders remained committed to the League’s ideals.  Once World War II began, President Franklin D. Roosevelt determined that U.S. leadership was essential for the creation of another international organization aimed at preserving peace, and his administration engaged in international diplomacy in pursuit of that goal.  He also worked to build domestic support for the concept of the United Nations.  After Roosevelt’s death, President Harry S Truman also assumed the important task of maintaining support for the United Nations and worked through complicated international problems, particularly with the Soviet Union, to make the founding of the new organization possible.  After nearly four years of planning, the international community finally established the United Nations in the spring of 1945.  

    Origins of the United Nations

              The concept of creating a global organization of member states dedicated to preserving international peace through collective security increased in popularity during World War I.  The bloodshed of the “Great War” persuaded President Woodrow Wilson, and a number of other American and international leaders, to seek the creation of an international forum in which conflicts could be resolved peacefully.  The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, which Wilson negotiated on behalf of the United States, contained a framework for a League of Nations, intended to maintain peace and stability.  However, despite Wilson’s efforts to gain the domestic support of political leaders and the American public, he was unable to convince the United States Senate to approve U.S. membership in the League.  This was due to strong isolationist sentiment and partisan conflicts, stemming in part from his failure to include any prominent Republicans in the peace negotiations.  The League’s opponents criticized it as a threat to American sovereignty and security, and objected most stridently to Article Ten of the League Charter, which committed member states to protect the territorial integrity of all other member states against external aggression.  Many American lawmakers argued that Article Ten might obligate the United States to take part in wars in defense of dubious, often contested, colonial boundaries.  After considering membership in the League with reservations, the Senate ultimately prevented the United States from joining the League.  The absence of the United States weakened the League, which was also hindered in its efforts to resolve disputes by the widespread economic crises of the 1930s, its inability to compel states to abide by its decisions, and its requirement that many decisions–including those involving a response to aggression–be decided unanimously.  The fact that member states involved in a dispute were granted a seat on the League’s Council, thereby allowing them to prevent unanimous action, meant that the League eventually resorted to expelling aggressor states such as Japan and Italy, with little effect.  

    Creation of the United Nations

              The basic framework for the proposed United Nations rested on President Roosevelt’s vision that the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and China would provide leadership in the postwar international system.  It was these four states, with the addition of France, that would assume permanent seats in the otherwise rotating membership of the United Nations Security Council.  At the Anglo-American Malta Conference in early 1945, the two sides proposed that the permanent members of the Security Council would have a veto.  Immediately thereafter, at the Yalta Conference, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom agreed on veto power for the permanent members of the Security Council.  This crucial decision essentially required unanimity between the five permanent members on the pressing international decisions related to international security and use of force that would be brought before the Security Council.

              Churchill and Roosevelt also made an important concession to Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s request that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic be seated in the United Nations General Assembly, thus increasing the Soviet Union’s seats in that body to three.  Stalin had originally requested seats for all sixteen Soviet Socialist Republics, but at Yalta this request was turned down, and the compromise was to allow Ukraine and Byelorussia into the United Nations.  The United States originally had countered Stalin’s proposal with the request to allow all fifty American states into the United Nations, a suggestion that encouraged Stalin to agree to the compromise.  At Yalta, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom also drafted invitations to a conference beginning in April 1945 in San Francisco that would formally establish the United Nations.

               After Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, days before the scheduled San Francisco Conference, Vice President Harry S Truman took the oath of office and immediately announced that the Conference should go forward as planned.  Moved by Roosevelt’s death, Stalin, who had initially planned to send Ambassador Andrei Gromyko as the Soviet representative to the San Francisco conference, announced that he would send Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov as well. This news heartened American officials, who had been concerned about maintaining Soviet interest and participation in the United Nations after a number of disagreements over the extent of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and the fate of Germany in the postwar period.  In an address to Congress shortly thereafter, Truman called upon Americans “regardless of party, race, creed or color, to support our efforts to build a strong and lasting United Nations organization.”

              The San Francisco Conference, formally known as the United Nations Conference on International Organization, opened on April 25, 1945, with delegations from fifty countries present.  The U.S. delegation to San Francisco included Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., former Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Senators Tom Connally (D-Texas) and Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan), as well as other Congressional and public representatives.  Among the most controversial issues at the San Francisco Conference was the seating of certain countries, in particular, Argentina, the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics, and Poland.  The vote to seat Argentina was particularly contentious because the Soviet Union strongly opposed Argentine membership arguing that Argentina had supported the Axis during the war.  However, the other Latin American states refused to support the Ukrainian and Byelorussian candidacies if Argentina were blocked.  The United States supported Argentina’s membership, but also defended the Ukrainian and Byelorussian seats in order to maintain the Soviet Union’s participation in the United Nations.  The makeup of the Polish government was a continuing source of tension between the wartime allies, and thus a Polish delegation was not seated until after the conference.

              At San Francisco, the delegates reviewed and often rewrote the text agreed to at Dumbarton Oaks.  The delegations negotiated a role for regional organizations under the United Nations umbrella and outlined the powers of the office of Secretary General, including the authority to refer conflicts to the Security Council.  Conference participants also considered a proposal for compulsory jurisdiction for a World Court, but Stettinius recognized such an outcome could imperil Senate ratification.  The delegates then agreed that each state should make its own determination about World Court membership.  The conference did approve the creation of an Economic and Social Council and a Trusteeship Council to assist in the process of decolonization, and agreed that these councils would have rotating geographic representation.  The United Nations Charter also gave the United Nations broader jurisdiction over issues that were “essentially within” the domestic jurisdiction of states, such as human rights, than the League of Nations had, and broadened its scope on economic and technological issues.

    1. A compromise was reached at Yalta to admit Ukraine and Byelorussia to the United Nations instead of Stalin’s initial demand for seats for all sixteen Soviet Socialist Republics. The United States’ first response to phrazle Stalin’s proposal was to propose admitting all fifty American states to the United Nations, a notion that eventually convinced Stalin to accept the compromise.

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