This, my friends, is an *actual* coup.

[ozone_man]

40. Is regime change also a coup?

For example, what the U.S. is doing in Syria now. It seems there are many variations on what may be considered coups. Here is a list of regime changes and coups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions

Covert United States foreign regime
change actions
1949 Syrian coup d'état
1953 Iranian coup d'état
1954 Guatemalan coup d'état
1959 Tibetan uprising
1961 Cuba, Bay of Pigs Invasion
1963 South Vietnamese coup
1964 Brazilian coup d'état
1973 Chilean coup d'état
1976 Argentine coup d'état
1979–89 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone
1980 Turkish coup d'état
1981–87 Nicaragua, Contras
2011–present Syrian uprising


The United States has been involved in and assisted in the overthrow of foreign governments (more recently termed "regime change&quot without the overt use of U.S. military force. Often, such operations are tasked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Regime change has been attempted through direct involvement of U.S. operatives, the funding and training of insurgency groups within these countries, anti-regime propaganda campaigns, coups d'état, and other activities usually conducted as operations by the CIA. The United States has also accomplished regime change by direct military action, such as following the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and the U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Some argue that non-transparent United States government agencies working in secret sometimes mislead or do not fully implement the decisions of elected civilian leaders and that this has been an important component of many such operations,[1] see plausible deniability. Some contend that the U.S. has supported more coups against democracies that it perceived as communist, becoming communist, or pro-communist.[1]

The U.S. has also covertly supported opposition groups in various countries without necessarily attempting to overthrow the government. For example, the CIA funded anti-communist political parties in countries such as Italy and Chile; it also armed Kurdish rebels fighting the Ba'athist government of Iraq in the Second Kurdish-Iraqi War prior to the Algiers Agreement.

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