So where did we leave of "We really had the T's crossed on what was happening," says James Critchfield, the head of the agency in the Middle East which organized it. "We regarded it as a great victory." When we left Iraq it was during the February Coup which was organized by the Ba’ath party in 1963 and this would be the last time an Iraqi would lost their grip on the country without a full on foreign invasion. Iraqis always suspected that the Coup of 63 was engineered by the CIA in much the same way they had restored the Shah into power in 1953. The only difference was the Iraq coup was a lot bloodier which ended with their President General Abdel-Karim Qasim being tied to a chair and shot dead. Now the CIA didn’t really end there, they also played a role in preparing a shitlist of those who should be eliminated after the coup to solidify the Ba’athist regime. As the CIA lists reached Baghdad the result was a massacre of extraordinary ferocity. Pregnant women and old men were killed, some tortured to death in front of their children. It was the height of the Cold War. The CIA had just tried and failed to orchestrate the overthrow of Fidel Castro in Cuba by a rebel invasion force. America was increasing its involvement in Vietnam, where it similarly backed the elimination of 20,000 communists and anti-government sympathizers by assassination squads under the CIA's Phoenix program. A similar CIA- backed purge was about to be carried out in Indonesia.The foreign base for the Iraqi coup was Kuwait, something Saddam Hussein may have remembered when he invaded the emirate in 1990. King Hussein of Jordan, who had close relations with the CIA, says that during the planning phase of the coup "many meetings were held between the Ba'ath party and American intelligence - the most critical ones in Kuwait." King Hussein of Jordan would tell Egyptian writer Mohammad Heikal that on the day of the coup, a secret radio broadcast was made from Kuwait “that relayed the name and addressed of the communists to those that carried out the coup. Iraq would drop the claim that Kuwait was there’s for the time being. On Tonight’s episode of a conversation before the world ends we are venturing part to Iraq but this time under the control of the Ba’ath party and most notably Saddam Hussein. We will learn about his upbringing, the party that took him in, His purge to supremacy and the conflicts that would make him Super Villain No. 1 and the role that the US played in all that. Insta: @convo_btweTwitter: convo_btweFacebook: A Conversation Before the World Ends Tiktok: convo_btwe