Timeline of United States military operations communist attack on a U.S. installation in central Vietnam, the United States escalated its participation in the war to a peak of 543,000 military personnel by April 1969. 1961: Cuba: The Bay of Pigs Invasion, known in Hispanic America as Invasión de Bahía de Cochinos (or Invasión de Playa Girón or Batalla de Girón), was an unsuccessful military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on April 17, 1961. 1962: Thailand: The Third Marine Expeditionary Unit landed on May 17, 1962 to support that country during the threat of Communist pressure from outside; by July 30,
CIA activities in Iraq recipient of the handkerchief, as CIA officials would likely have remembered an attack on the Iraqi head of state. While Qasim was not a colonel but a brigadier general and did not openly promote Soviet interests in Iraq, the pro-Soviet head of Iraq's "People's Court," Colonel Fahdil Abbas al-Mahdawi, fits the above description perfectly. Qasim effectively banned the ICP in January 1960, but Mahdawi remained a crucial conduit between Qasim's government and several communist-front groups—including the "Peace Partisans," which was allowed to operate in public despite being formally outlawed in May 1961—and was known for his outspoken praise for Fidel