The US supported the 1968 coup that brought the Ba’ath Party – and Saddam – to power. With Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, however, the US turned on him, and has been entwined in Iraq’s politics ever since, including two wars, sanction regimes, the toppling of Saddam in 2003, and repeated attempts, as recently as this month, to install a government that it considered acceptable.