Iraq - The CIA

Sometimes you wonder when the boys in Langley screw things up that maybe they rehearse and script it so our enemies think they screwed up. But there is no hiding that perhaps 300 Iraqis died in 1996 in a failed CIA attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The blundering almost cost the United States northern Iraq and was one of the agency's biggest failures in its 50-year history. The attempt to oust Saddam was spawned by the CIA's belief that Saddam was ripe for a downfall after the defection of his son-in-law Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamil al Majid in 1995.

In early 1996, President Bill Clinton approved $6 million (not a whole lot when you come to think of it) for a covert ops group set up by the CIA called the Iraqi National Accord. Drafted from the ranks of former Iraqi officers, its mission was to destabilize Baghdad through bombing attacks. Saddam responded by having his tanks roll through Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan after a Kurdish leader invited him into the region to solve the inter Kurdish fighting-by crushing the other side.

Saddam took advantage of this to waste every CIA operative who was unfortunate enough to be in town. Three thousand Iraqis and Kurds on the CIA payroll had to be evacuated out of Iraq through Turkey and Guam to the United States, where, we presume, more than a handful had their faces and fingertips changed. The CIA has spent some $100 million since 1991 in an effort to bag Saddam Hussein.