An Insight into the Mindset of Iraq’s Security Service

Iraqi state and intelligence documents seized from the North of Iraq in 1991, provided one of the first insights into the mindset and the discourse of Iraq’s security apparatus. This mindset can be characterized by a justification of brutal human rights abuses against Kurds in the name of Arab and Iraqi nationalism and euphemistic terms employed to sanitize these actions. Examining such documents not only reveal the thinking of Iraq’s security organizations, but also Saddam Hussein himself.