1953—Iran (Project “Ajax”): Prodded by British oil interests, “Kim” Roosevelt (grandson of TR, the “Original Colonizer”) and others engineer an overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, propping up the Shah in the process. Gee, that worked out well.
1954—Guatemala (Project “Success”): Representing the interests of the United Fruit Company and freedom-loving people everywhere, the US covertly overthrows elected President Jocobo Guzman Arbenz, sinking a British merchant vessel in the process. Inaugurates a series of brutal dictatorships through the 1980s, with residual corruption and human rights abuses continuing to this very day.
1956,1957—Syria (Operations “Wakeful” and “Wappen”): US attempts to trigger coups to forestall the “leftist” Ba’ath Party. Both fail miserably. Pass the So’oap.
1957-1958—Indonesia (Operation “Archipelago”/ Project “Haik”): USA assists and conducts unsuccessful paramilitary operations against the government of Achmed Sukarno in reaction to his non-alignment strategy, under which he had proposed such inflammatory ideas as an American-Soviet summit (Hey, like we said, you’re either with us or against us!).
1959—Iraq (Codename unknown): US sets up interagency group to consider covert operations to prevent a Communist takeover. Six months later comes the attempted assassination of the Iraqi leader Abdul Karim Qasim by a young up-and-comer named Saddam Hussein.
This and the following have been gleaned from Safe For Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA, by John Prados… who gleaned them from the extensive research of unclassified documents we don’t have the means (or energy) to access.
