Iraq has a weak tradition of military rule. In 1958, Brigadier 'Abd al-KarimQasim and Colonel 'Abd al-Salam 'Arif overthrew the British-nominated monarchy, declared a republic andfashioned the state after the Egyptian Free Officers coup led by Nasser in 1952. Thinking that this was anopening for an end to the repressive rule of the elites, the emboldened Iraqi Communist Party set up centersof popular resistance (al-Muqawama al-Sha'biyya), but Qasim went after these organizations as his dictatorshipincorporated, then smashed, workers' and peasants' unions. As the military felt more confident in its power,it dismantled its opposition. Saddam Hussein, then a twenty-two year old Ba'thist member, participated in afailed assassination attempt on Qasim in October 1959. As Qasim alienated himself from the organized forces insociety, a section of the army (led by 'Abd al-Salam Arif and the Ba'th) overthrew him in 1963 and set up thefirst Ba'th government (under the nominal leadership of the Nasserite Arif, and then after his death in ahelicopter accident in 1966, his brother). The classic military dictatorship lasted, then, only from 1958 to1963. What followed was rule by the Ba'th, by its civilian branch and by its Military Bureau (set up in 1962).The 1963 had the appearance of a lateral shift by members of the military against one of their own, when itwas actually a take-over of the state by this Syrian born semi-fascist party. In 1968, the Ba'th, who hadruled behind the scenes since 1959, took power and the new president of Iraq was Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr (amilitary officer, but a Ba'thist first and foremost). Saddam Hussein took charge from him in July 1979 (whenhe executed his enemies in a famous convention of the Ba'th party). Saddam Hussein is not a military dictator,although he has at his disposal an immense apparatus of force to undermine dissent, to kill his opposition andto wage war.