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• Supported a CIA backed coup helping the Ba'athist Party to overthrow the Iraqi government, with the execution of Iraqi leader Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, soon after Kassem helped to form OPEC and nationalized Iraq's oil fields. One of the Iraqi conspirators working with the CIA was a young, ruthless insurgent named Saddam Hussein. After a purge and revolt, the Ba'athists took total control of Iraq. Saddam Hussein took power in 1979. • Committed US Marine "advisors" to Indochina, joining the CIA, with the purpose of foiling social reforms and asserting US hegemony over the region. US involvement in Vietnam began shortly after WWII when Truman decided to back French colonial rulers, who had collaborated with the Japanese, against former US ally Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh forces. With astonishing political naiveté, Ho Chi Minh wrote many letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America’s help in liberating Vietnam from the French. Washington never replied to the letters and the US developed an aggressive stance toward Vietnamese independence, backing the French colonialists, who used Japanese troops against the Vietminh. Ho Chi Minh had hoped to free Vietnam from foreign rule and to create a democratic and egalitarian society forged with respect toward the US. In fact, his “Vietnamese declaration of independence,” was modeled on the American version, and begins with the words: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with...”. Seemingly a victim of propaganda himself, Ho Chi Minh, who once called the US “the champion of democracy,” had seriously misjudged the US Plutocratic ruling class and their desire for political and economic dominance in Indochina. The Geneva Conference in 1954, put a formal end to the French Southeast Asian war. However, the Eisenhower administration, which was already assembling a paramilitary force inside Vietnam, refused to sign the Final Declaration. A committed cold warrior himself, Kennedy made the decisive move to escalate US aggression in Indochina. First, Kennedy defended the repressive puppet dictatorship of Ngo Dinh Diem, whom vice-president Johnson had called "the Churchill of Asia,” and then shortly before his assassination, Kennedy expressed approval of the overthrow of the increasingly unmanageable Diem regime. Diem’s generals overthrew him and then murdered him and his brother. General Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy’s principal military advisor later observed, “The execution of a coup is not like organizing a tea party; It’s a very dangerous business. So I didn’t think we had any right to be surprised … when Diem and his brother were murdered.” • Sought to overthrow the Cuban government by direct military assault, numerous assassination attempts and terrorist plots. The infamous attack at the Bay of Pigs, Aside from being at once a major victory for the Cuban Revolution and a major embarrassment for Kennedy and the CIA, set the stage for the major confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union: the missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. In the meantime, perhaps as a result of the Bay of Pigs embarrassment, Kennedy’s obsession with eliminating Castro grew. A plan code-named “Operation Mongoose”, attempted to eliminate Castro by any means necessary. An Army memorandum from March 1, 1962 titled, “Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba,” outlines a number of ideas, including Operation Bingo, a plan to fake an attack on the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba that would provide cover for a devastating military assault on Havana. Operation Dirty Trick, in which Castro would be blamed if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed. Other CIA plots included hiring Mafia hit men and devising a poisoned scuba suit as a gift for Castro. • Supplied US military aid, training, arms, and contributed to the anti-populist politicization of Latin American police and military forces who served as US gendarmes. The triumph of these US proxies was closely correlated with the ending of democracy in the region, along with the rise of death squads, disappearances, and systems of torture. Hopes for democracy could not interfere with Kennedy's Fear of the spread of "Castroism", and "an immediate improvement in the low living standard of the masses" throughout Latin America, where 11 constitutional regimes were overthrown by US supported militants in the 1960s alone.
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