{"id":343,"date":"2003-04-13T10:03:00","date_gmt":"2003-04-13T10:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jmatt.net\/?p=343"},"modified":"2013-11-28T02:42:20","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T02:42:20","slug":"saddams-second-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Saddam’s Second Chance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somebody sent me this UPI article<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was
\ncompletely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA
\nofficial said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his
\nnerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim’s driver
\nand only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm.
\nDarwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets
\nthat did not fit his gun and that another had a hand
\ngrenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.<\/p>\n

\n“It bordered on farce,” a former senior U.S.
\nintelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the
\nfloor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf
\nhad been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped
\nto Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence
\nagents, several U.S. government officials said.<\/p>\n

\nSaddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by
\nEgyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to
\nDarwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam
\nwas in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam’s apartment and
\nput him through a brief training course, former CIA
\nofficials said. The agency then helped him get to
\nCairo, they said.\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-5x","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}