Interrogation of Saddam Hussein age of 20, Saddam Hussein joined the nascent Ba'ath Party, which was founded on a socialist form of Pan-Arabism. After participating in an unsuccessful 1959 assassination attempt on then Prime Minister of Iraq Abd al-Karim Qasim, Saddam became a fugitive, and eventually fled to Syria and then Egypt. Following the Ba'athists overthrow of the prime minister in the February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état, and the counter-coup half a year later, Saddam was jailed in Iraq from 1964 to 1966. The Ba'ath party returned to power after another successful coup in 1968. General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a relative of Saddam Hussein,
Iraqi nationalism of our people, the cause of defending the republic and its homeland." Saddam Hussein and Iraqi Ba'athist ideologists sought to fuse a connection between ancient Babylonian and Assyrian civilization in Iraq to the Arab nationalism by claiming that the Bablyonians and ancient Assyrians are the ancestors of the Arabs. Thus, Saddam Hussein and his supporters claim that there is no conflict between Mesopotamian heritage and Arab nationalism. Saddam Hussein as President of Iraq expressed himself as an Iraqi in state art - associating himself as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar II and wearing both Arabic and Kurdish headgear in such art. Saddam