Reply #1: CIA toppled the socialist government in 1963

[IndianaGreen]

and put the Baathist in charge who in turn, made the Communist Party illegal, and made business deals with the West.

On edit:

This is a story on a recent demonstration celebrating the 1958 coup that installed the republic.

Iraqis celebrate 1958 coup
Robert F. Worth NYT
Tuesday, July 15, 2003

BAGHDAD In its first official act on Sunday, the new Iraqi governing council abolished all the old state holidays.

But Monday, thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad to joyfully flout that directive, in commemoration of the coup that ended the monarchy in 1958.

For most marchers, the occasion seemed less a rally than a raucous celebration of free speech itself. Members of the Iraqi Communist Party, banned for 35 years under the Ba'athists, marched in a throng down Sadoon Street, holding up broad red banners proclaiming their revival. Others chanted about the crimes of Saddam Hussein, or the need for an Iraqi constitution. A group of street cleaners from the Rissala neighborhood, on the east bank of the Tigris, held up shovels and bellowed. "Our party will not die, it will live on for eternity," went one Communist chant. "Let's go forward in peace," went another. Some marchers held up pictures of Abd al-Karim Qasim, who led the 1958 coup, or posters of the star-shaped symbol of pre-Ba'athist Iraq. A small group of Sunni tribesmen marched along with the crowd, intoning, somewhat incongruously, "There is no God but God, and America is the enemy of God."

http://www.iht.com/articles/102778.html