Somebody sent me this UPI article about Saddam Hussein’s early unsuccessful career as a CIA hit man. Since I haven’t seen much about it in other news sources, I thought it was worth discussing here. Apparently we hired him way back in 1959 to assassinate the Iraqi prime minister, and the plot was badly botched:
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.
If they’d fired his ass like they should have after that, instead of giving him a second chance as dictator of Iraq, the Middle East might be a more peaceful place today.