For anyone who doesn’t know

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/revealed-how-the-west-set-saddam-on-the-bloody-road-to-power-1258618.html

The CIA also played a central role in preparing the death lists of those who were to be eliminated after the coup by squads from the Ba’ath party. Mr Aburish says that he believes 5,000 were killed of whom he has collected the names of 600, including many doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors who formed the educated elite of Iraq.

The death lists were drawn up in CIA stations across the Middle East with the help of Iraqi exiles. In Egypt the agency was helped by an Egyptian intelligence officer who got much of his information from Saddam Hussein living in exile in Cairo. But Mr Aburish says: “The American agent who produced the longest list was William McHale, who operated under the cover of a news correspondent for the Beirut bureau of Time [magazine].”

As the CIA lists reached Baghdad the result was a massacre of extraordinary ferocity. Pregnant women and old men were killed, some tortured to death in front of their children. Mr Aburish says: “Saddam Hussein, who had rushed back to Iraq from exile in Cairo to join the victors, was personally involved in the torture of leftists in the separate detention centres for the fellaheen [peasants] and the muthaqafeen, or educated class.”