The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region (Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي في العراق Hizb Al-Baath Al-'Arabi Al-Ishtiraki fi Al-'Iraq) is a ba'athist regional organisation founded in 1951 by Fuad al-Rikabi. This regional organisation was a part of the original Ba'ath Party (1951–1966) and changed its allegiance to the Iraqi-led Ba'ath movement (1966–2003) following the 1966 split within the Ba'ath Party.

Fuad al-Rikabi founded the Iraqi-cell of the Ba'ath Party either in 1951 or 1952. There are those who claim that the Iraqi-cell was established by Abd ar Rahman ad Damin and Abd al Khaliq al Khudayri in 1947, and not al-Rikabi, after their return from the founding congress of the Ba'ath Party held in Damascus, Syria in 1947. Another version states that al-Rikabi established the Iraqi-cell in 1948 with Sa'dun Hamadi, a Shia Muslim, but became Secretary of the Regional Command in 1952. The Iraqi-cell was Arab nationalist and vague in its socialist orientation. Al-Rikabi, expelled from the party in 1961 for being a Nasserist, was an early follower of Michel Aflaq, the founder of Ba'athism. During the party's early days, members discussed topics regarding Arab nationalism, the social inequalities that had grown out of the British "Tribal Disputes Regulation", and the Iraqi Parliament's Law 28 of 1932 "Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators". By 1953 the party, led by al-Rikabi, was engaged in subversive activities against the government.

Iraq (/ɪˈræk/ or ⁱ/ɪˈrɑːk/; Arabic: العراق‎ al-‘Irāq); officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic:  جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.

Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the southwest and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country.

Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.

Historically, Iraq was the center of the Abbasid Arabic Islamic Empire. Iraq has been known to the west by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' (Land between the rivers) and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.

The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي Hizb Al-Ba'ath Al-'Arabi Al-Ishtiraki‎) was a political party founded in Syria by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar and associates of Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party espoused Ba'athism, an ideology mixing Arab nationalist, pan-Arabism, Arab socialist and anti-imperialist interests. Ba'athism calls for the renaissance or resurrection and unification of the Arab world into a single state. Its motto—"Unity, Liberty, Socialism" (wahda, hurriya, ishtirakiya)—refers to Arab unity, and freedom from non-Arab control and interference.

The party was founded by the merger of the Arab Ba'ath Movement, led by Aflaq and al-Bitar, and the Arab Ba'ath, led by al-Arsuzi, on 7 April 1947 as the Arab Ba'ath Party. The party quickly established branches in other Arab countries, although it would only hold power in Iraq and Syria. The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party was merged with the Arab Socialist Party led by Akram al-Hawrani in 1952 to form the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. The newly-formed party was a relative success, and became the second-largest party in the Syrian parliament in the 1954 parliamentary election. This, coupled with the increasing strength of the Syrian Communist Party, led to the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR), a union of Egypt and Syria. The union would prove unsuccessful, and a Syrian coup in 1961 dissolved the union.

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.

As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.

Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a "five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award."

He first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.