Friday, March 04, 2005

CIA and British Intelligence Planned Assassination of Syrian Leaders in 1957

Juan Cole today references reports from September 2003 of the discovery of papers showing that the American CIA and the British MI-6 planned to assassinate three Syrian Leaders in 1957. The plans were not implemented.

I am posting this today because it indicates why America is not universally loved in the Middle East. We haven't been always the good guys over there just to trade and buy oil. We have been deeply involved in manipulating the Middle Eastern governments since World War II, and we haven't been very nice about it.

Given the Cold War, I'm not sure what I would have done differently, but the aftereffects (or "blowback") of those efforts should be recognize and acknowledged so that they can be adequately dealt with.

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